Blacks in Baseball – A Question of Quality, not Quantity

On October 10, 2008, Carl Bialik wrote an article in the WALL STREET JOURNAL entitled Out of Left Field: The Errors In Counting Black Ballplayers. Here are four excerpts from the article that reflect its message.

“For 61 years, ever since Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier and won the National League’s Rookie of the Year Award in the same season, African-American players have starred in the majors.”

“In the past decade, though, dozens of articles have lamented the declining proportion of black players, from 27% of all major leaguers in the mid-1970s to 8.2% last season, even as the percentage of Americans who are of African descent has inched up in recent decades.”

“For all its currency, that decline appears to be way off. In recent years, two baseball researchers, working independently, have found that blacks probably never made up more than 20% of major leaguers.”

“The findings are interesting because research on race in baseball can have an impact beyond the diamond.”

I read this article with interest because I too had been hearing comments recently to the effect that the percentage of black ballplayers in the major leagues had been declining for some time.

This article got me thinking in a somewhat related but different vein. For the past four years (since my retirement), I have been working on a project to identify the best careers by baseball players during the 20th century. This work was the subject of my book BASEBALL’S BEST: The TRUE Hall of Famers(Booklocker, 2007) in which I created and discussed a rating system called the NEWS Hall of Fame Gauge based on the Win Shares system developed by Bill James.

Over the past year, I have refined some of the thoughts reflected in that book and have given my metric a new name, the CAWS Career Gauge(CAWS = Career Assessment/ Win Shares). The CAWS score is identical to the NEWS score.

The question I posed to myself regarding this article was: If the percentage of black players never exceeded more than 20% of the player population, what percentage of the GREAT players since 1947 were/are African-American?

Quality, not Quantity

The CAWS Career Gauge sets a benchmark (for each baseball position) to determine whether a player posted obvious Hall of Fame numbersduring his career. That is, for example, did third baseman Wade Boggs post good enough numbers during his playing career to warrant serious consideration for the Hall of Fame? A third baseman needs a CAWS score of 270 in order to qualify. Only ten third basemen in the 20th century have achieved that benchmark. Wade Boggs, with a CAWS score of 317, qualifies easily.

The CAWS Career Gauge deals only with the numbers – as reflected by win shares. My viewpoint is that any player who did post obvious HOF numbers should be in the Hall of Fame .Of course, this does not mean that if a player did not post the numbers he should not be in Cooperstown. It is possible that a player who did not post the numbers should also be in the Hall since voters may consider other factors when deciding their votes (such as sportsmanship, etc.)

The CAWS Gauge concludes that there are only 111 position playersand 49 pitchers (a total of 160 players)who posted Hall of Fame numbers during the 20th century (from 1901 to 2007). And I decided to look closely at those players who started their career in 1947 or later (the year the “color barrier” fell).  I will call this period the Integrated Era.

I found that 67 of the 111 “great” position players and 25 of the 49 “great” pitchers played during the Integrated Era (see the list of these players at the end of this article). A player must have completed ten major league seasons in order to be considered for the ranking.

I decided that an interesting question would be: Of these 92 “great” players, what percentage are black?

I confess that I expected that the percentage would be higher than 20% since I had the vague notion that there have been many outstanding black players during the Integrated Era. But I did not expect the percentage to be quite as high as it turns out to be. (I apologize in advance if I have confused the racial background of any of these players.)

The following results were found for the position players:

• Six of the top ten players were black = 60%. They are: Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Joe Morgan, Frank Robinson and Rickey Henderson.

• Five of the next ten players were black = 50%. They are: Reggie Jackson, Gary Sheffield, Frank Thomas, Willie McCovey and Dick Allen.

• Of the 67 outstanding position players, 29 were black = 43%.

What I am suggesting here, of course, is that 43% of the outstanding position players during the Integrated Era were/are black. I am 73 years old and grew up in New York City and I have seen all the great players since 1946. But, even so, I find this to be a startling result. And it speaks volumes about the quality of the black ballplayers over that stretch of time.

As I expected, the result was not as dramatic for the pitchers. Of the 25 great pitchers since 1947, only three have been black: Bob Gibson, Fergie Jenkins and Lee Smith. That means that 12% of the outstanding pitchers were/are black.

Combining the numbers together, we have the following conclusion:

32 of the 92 great players of the Integrated Era were/are black = 35% – at a time when the black population of the major leagues never exceeded 20%.

In fact, for the entire time frame cited here, the percentage of black ballplayers was well below 20%.

What conclusions can be drawn from this somewhat surprising result? Well, I am a mathematician and not a sociologist or an anthropologist so I do not want to go there. What I will say is that during my lifetime I consider myself fortunate to have been able to see so many gifted athletes compete at the highest level in a sport I love (after Jackie Robinson knocked down the color barrier in 1947).

Some of the players on the lists below may raise the eyebrows of some readers. And that is fine because research of this type sometimes does that. But that really does not diminish the statement above – because for every Tim Raines or Jimmy Wynn or Lou Whitaker on the list, there is a Will Clark or a Darrell Evans or an Alan Trammell.

The Position Players Who Began their Careers During the Integrated Era and Who Have HOF Numbers

The CAWS Career Gauge employs a defensive adjustment to the benchmark to determine whether a player has obvious Hall of Fame numbers. It is as follows: CAWS score of 280 for right fielders, left fielders, first basemen and designated hitters; 270 for center fielders and third basemen; 260 for second basemen and 250 for shortstops and catchers.

The 111 position players since 1901 who have HOF numbers are distributed as follows: 1B = 14, 2B = 14, 3B = 10, SS = 17, LF = 18, CF = 13, RF = 13, C = 10, DH = 2.A player is assigned (with very few exceptions) to the position where he played the most games during his career.

According to the CAWS Career Gauge, there are 67 position players who began their careers during the Integrated Era and who posted obvious HOF numbers on the playing field.

All numbers include the 2007 season.
Bold = Hall of Famer
Italic = Active Player in 2007
CWS = Career Win Shares
CV = Core Value (sum of win shares for 10 best seasons)
CAWS = Career Assessment/Win Shares = CV + .25(CWS – CV)

Asterisk * denotes an African-American player.

	Player	POS	CWS	CV	CAWS
1.	Barry Bonds*	LF	707	427	497
2.	Willie Mays*	CF	642	389	452
3 .	Mickey Mantle	CF	565	399	441
4.	Hank Aaron*	RF	643	356	428
5.	Joe Morgan*	2B	512	341	384
6.	Mike Schmidt	3B	467	338	370
7.	Frank Robinson*	RF	519	316	367
8.	Pete Rose	LF	547	307	367
9.	Rickey Henderson*	LF	535	308	365
10.	Eddie Mathews	3B	450	333	362
	Player	POS	CWS	CV	CAWS
11.	Alex Rodriguez	SS	369	332	341
12.	Carl Yastrzemski	LF	488	286	337
13.	Reggie Jackson*	RF	444	296	333
14.	Gary Sheffield*	LF	418	305	333
15.	George Brett	3B	432	296	330
16.	Craig Biggio	2B	428	294	328
17.	Frank Thomas*	DH	400	301	326
18.	Wade Boggs	3B	394	291	317
19.	Willie McCovey*	1B	408	285	316
20.	Dick Allen*	1B	342	304	314
	Player	POS	CWS	CV	CAWS
21.	Eddie Murray*	1B	437	273	314
22.	Cal Ripken Jr.	SS	427	276	314
23.	Robin Yount	SS	423	278	314
24.	Jeff Bagwell	1B	388	287	312
25.	Al Kaline	RF	443	268	312
26.	Paul Molitor	DH	414	270	306
27.	Duke Snider	CF	352	289	305
28.	Ken Griffey Jr.*	CF	383	278	304
29.	Tim Raines*	LF	390	275	304
30.	Harmon Killebrew	1B	374	279	303
31.	Billy Williams*	LF	374	279	303
32.	Roberto Alomar	2B	375	278	302
	Player	POS	CWS	CV	CAWS
33.	Manny Ramirez	LF	349	282	299
34.	Mark McGwire	1B	342	283	298
35.	Dave Winfield*	RF	415	259	298
36.	Johnny Bench	C	356	277	297
37.	Roberto Clemente	RF	377	269	296
38.	Ryne Sandberg	2B	346	278	295
39.	Tony Gwynn*	RF	398	269	294
40.	Rafael Palmeiro	1B	387	257	290
41.	Willie Stargell*	LF	370	263	290
	Player	POS	CWS	CV	CAWS
42.	Rod Carew*	2B	384	257	289
43.	Ron Santo	3B	324	275	287
44.	Mike Piazza	C	325	273	286
45.	Lou Brock*	LF	348	264	285
46.	Will Clark	1B	331	269	285
47.	Chipper Jones	3B	327	269	284
48.	Gary Carter	C	337	263	282
49.	Jim Thome	1B	328	267	282
50.	Darrell Evans	3B	363	253	281
51.	Barry Larkin*	SS	347	258	280
	Player	POS	CWS	CV	CAWS
52.	Jimmy Wynn*	CF	305	269	278
53.	Richie Ashburn	CF	329	257	275
54.	Brooks Robinson	3B	356	247	274
55.	Derek Jeter*	SS	301	264	273
56.	Carlton Fisk	C	368	240	272
57.	Bobby Grich	2B	329	253	272
58.	Jeff Kent	2B	331	252	272
	Player	POS	CWS	CV	CAWS
59.	Ernie Banks*	SS	332	247	268
60.	Joe Torre	C	315	244	262
61.	Lou Whitaker*	2B	351	232	262
62.	Larry Doby*	CF	268	257	260
63.	Ted Simmons	C	315	240	259
64.	Alan Trammell	SS	318	238	258
65.	Jackie Robinson*	2B	257	257	257
66.	Kirby Puckett*	CF	281	247	256
67.	Ozzie Smith*	SS	325	226	251

The Pitchers Who Began their Careers During the Integrated Era and Who Have HOF Numbers

According to the CAWS Career Gauge, there are 25 pitchers from 1947 to the present who posted obvious HOF numbers. Here are those pitchers. Three are African-American (Fergie Jenkins was actually born in Canada).

All numbers include the 2007 season.
Bold = Hall of Famer
Italic = Active Player in 2007
CWS = Career Win Shares
CV = Core Value (sum of win shares for 10 best seasons)
CAWS = Career Value = CV + .25(CWS – CV)

Asterisk * denotes an African-American player.

	Player	Years	CWS	CV	CAWS
1.	Roger Clemens	1984-2007	432	260	303
2.	Tom Seaver	1967-1986	388	255	288
3.	Greg Maddux	1986-	383	246	280
4.	Gaylord Perry	1962-1983	369	243	275
5.	Bob Gibson*	1959-1975	317	258	273
6.	Steve Carlton	1965-1988	366	240	272
7.	Phil Niekro	1964-1987	374	235	270
8.	Robin Roberts	1948-1966	339	246	269
9.	Jim Palmer	1965-1984	312	252	267
10.	Fergie Jenkins*	1965-1983	323	233	256
11.	Randy Johnson	1988-	305	230	249
12.	Bert Blyleven	1970-1992	339	218	248
13.	Juan Marichal	1960-1975	263	229	238

Player	CWS	CV	CAWS
Tom Glavine	314	203	231
Nolan Ryan	334	191	227
Don Sutton	319	187	220
Dennis Eckersley	301	183	213

These four are the only pitchers since 1901 to have done this.

Player	IP	CWS	CV	CAWS
Sandy Koufax	2324	194	190	191
Hoyt Wilhelm	2254	256	168	190
Goose Gossage	1809	223	173	186

Only five pitchers since 1901 have done this. Addie Joss and Dizzy Dean are the others.

Player	IP	CWS	CV	CAWS
Mariano Rivera	882	181	170	173
Bruce Sutter	1042	168	163	164
Lee Smith*	1289	198	152	164
Dan Quisenberry	1043	157	155	156
Rollie Fingers	1701	188	144	155

These are the only pitchers since 1901 to have done this. Rollie Fingers was close enough to the 1700 innings to include him here.

Michael Hoban, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus (mathematics) of the City University of NY. He is a member of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) and the author of three books on baseball (including the one mentioned in this article). He also contributes regularly to the website seamheads.com. Excerpts from his book, BASEBALL’S BEST , may be found on that site.