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Negro Leagues (So-Called): Discoveries and Challenges
I thought I'd keep a little record here on my discoveries as I work on Negro Leagues. This is a learning experience for me, and one for which I am glad.
September 6th, 2021 Notes
In 2020 the MLB Commissioner announced plans to include 7 of the so-called Negro Leagues (the term "negro" is outdated and I wish MLB would use a different name, but I have resigned to the terminology). Each of these 7 would have been considered "major" leagues in their day, populated by the finest Black players. Here they are:
ANL - American Negro League (1929) ECL - Eastern Colored League (1923-1928) EWL - East - West League (1932) NSL - Negro Southern League (1932) NN1 - Negro National League I (1920-1931) NN2 - Negro National League II (1932-1948) NAL - Negro American League (1937-1948)
There is a history behind these leagues, obviously. The last 3 are the most important because of their longevity and relative stability.
NSB will include every known player line from each of these 7 leagues because they are retroactively considered official MLB leagues.
Normalizing stats from these leagues is a major challenge for a number of interesting reasons. For one things, not all teams played in their own parks. The Eastern Cuban Stars and the Western Cuban Stars (and a few other teams as well) played all their games on the road. They were traveling teams without a home. No matter how much research is completed, they will never have home/road splits.
Also, there are many players for whom we know nothing about their batting or throwing hand (and we are not likely ever to know this). They will be coded with a 'U' for 'Unknown'.
There are also a good many players for whom a year of birth is not known, which means that we do not know their age from season to season. In these cases the AGE field will be left blank.
A number of new cities have to be added to our collection. Many negro league teams played in cities never used by traditional MLB teams. For example, Birmingham, Little Rock, Montgomery, Harrisburg, Memphis, and Wilmington to name a few.
Schedules are HIGHLY erratic with a sometimes very large difference in games played between some teams and others.
Because relatively few games were played each season, it will often be advantageous to use career stats. So I am working on introducing a career database to our system. Otherwise, it's difficult to see how most Negro leaguers could qualify for our traditional player pools.
The good news is that, in time, we should be able to accomplish realistic modeling for these players. What we will never know is how to assess them vis-a-vis white players of their era. But since NSB is committed to the historic game, my thinking at this point is NOT to diminish their performances by treating them like AAA or AA players. We have already decided on this generous course with dead ball players. That means that we can expect Negro leaguers to play competently, and sometimes excellently, alongside other players in our database.
As of today I am leaning toward a model of "full integration." That means that these players will appear in our traditional pools and not be treated as a special case (e.g., candidates for Auxiliary Rosters or a special waivers collection). I am considering making the BEST of them perpetual free agents. More anon.
