Ty Cobb's racial reckoning is unjust, except perhaps in a poetic sense

Kind of the like the Trump verdict

Major baseball is rewriting its record book. Statistics posted by players in the Negro League will now be incorporated into the MLB record book.

For example, Josh Gibson has supplanted Ty Cobb as the leader in all-time batting average. Cobb is in second place. Oscar Charleston is third. Ted Williams has been pushed down from fifth to tenth.

Gibson might have been a better player than Cobb when you consider his prodigious power. Charleston might have been a better player than Williams when you consider his fielding and baserunning.

But Gibson and Charleston don’t deserve to be first and third in all-time batting average. The fact that they now are is due race-pandering and wokeism, not fairness.

Here’s why:

We know that the pitching Gibson and Charleston faced in the Negro League was inferior to the pitching Cobb and Williams faced in the American League. We know this because in the post-segregation eras, white major league pitchers have been dominant.

It’s not that blacks don’t pitch well. It’s that most pitchers are non-black which, in turn, is due to the fact that most Americans are non-black.

Let’s consider the top starter pitchers in MLB right now. None of the top ten in ERA as of today is black. Two are Latino. One of them, Ranger Suarez, is from Venezuela. Neither Cobb-Williams nor Gibson-Charleston would likely have faced a pitcher from that country. Another Luis Gil, is from the Dominican Republic. Gibson-Charleston might have faced his equivalent.

But blacks have turned away from baseball to some extent in recent years, so maybe looking at current stats is unfair in assessing how blacks pitched in the Negro League. The better analysis is to consider how black pitchers have fared since baseball became fully integrated.

Among the top ten starters in career WAR (wins above replacement, per Baseball Reference) whose careers began when baseball was fully integrated, nine are white — Roger Clemens, Tom Seaver, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Phil Niekro, Bert Blyleven, Gaylord Perry, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan. The other, Pedro Martinez, is a black Latino. Two other blacks, Bob Gibson (American) and Fergie Jenkins (Canadian) are in the second twenty.

One can quibble with this list. For me, Gibson belongs in the top ten. Juan Marichal (a Latino from the Dominican Republic) belongs in the top 20.

But the larger point cannot be disputed. The vast majority of top pitchers in the integrated eras have been white. Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston must have faced few of the best-of-the-best when they played.

Indeed, if you wanted to populate an all-black pitching staff today (or at any time since desegregation), you would have to reach deep into Triple A baseball and maybe into Double A, as well. Again, this is not a reflection of the individual ability of black pitchers. It’s a reflection of demographics.

The simple fact is that Gibson, Charleston, and the other great Negro League hitters compiled their impressive statistics against mediocre-to-subpar pitchers with a few greats like Satchel Paige sprinkled in. Their accomplishments ought not be compared to those of Cobb, Williams, and the other great Major Leaguers who faced a considerably stronger cohort.

What about the accomplishments of Negro League pitchers like Paige? Here comparisons to white pitchers are less egregious. Black non-pitchers are well-represented among post-segregation leaders in WAR. In fact, Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron top the list.

Even so, the clear majority of leaders are white.

There are other problems with comparing Negro League players to whites who played in the American and National Leagues. The Negro League season typically lasted only 60-80 games. The smallness of these sample sizes is exacerbated by the fact that box scores don’t always exist for Negro League games. MLB estimates it has box scores for 75 percent of all Negro League games from 1920 to 1948. For these reasons, individual season stats for items like batting average, slugging percentage, and earned run average are skewed.

The shortness of seasons has less effect on career averages because the sample sizes are larger. However, Gibson’s .372 batting average reflects only 2,255 at-bats (although he obviously had many more). Cobb had more than 11,000 at-bats. Charleston’s batting average is computed based on 3,153 at-bats. Williams had 7,706.

In addition, Gibson played during much of World War II, when the ranks of all baseball leagues were thinned. The quality of Negro League pitching was even worse than normal during these years.

Cobb had long-since retired. Williams missed three years due to the war. Neither man got to play against American League pitching at its worst.

I should add that these all-time leader lists are badly skewed to begin with. Take batting average (which isn’t considered among the more important stats these days). Modern players tend not to have high ones. No player who began his career after 1950 makes the career average leader board until we get to Tony Gwynn at #16. Rod Carew and Wade Boggs are next at 29-30. (I’m using the list that excludes Negro Leaders here.)

For career home runs, it’s the opposite. Among players who began their careers before 1950, only Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Ted Williams make the top 20.

The same dynamic holds for career pitching records. The “wins” list is dominated by old-timers. The strikeout list is dominated by modern-era players.

Accordingly, these lists are pretty misleading. The addition of Negro Leaguers will make them even more so.

The case for adding Negro League records rests mainly on the fact that teams of Negro Leaguers apparently outperformed teams of Major Leaguers during off-season “barnstorming” games. In my opinion, this case fails for two reasons.

First, although Negro League seasons were fairly short, the players kept playing for most of the year in order to make ends meet. They barnstormed and in many cases played in Latin America during the winter.

By contrast, major leaguers relaxed or, more often, worked in non-baseball jobs. Thus, they tended to be out-of-shape and out-of-practice compared to the Negro Leaguers they faced. (The original purpose of Spring Training was much to get players back into shape as to sharpen their baseball skills.)

Thus, it’s not surprising that Major Leaguers struggled in their off-season encounters with Negro Leaguers.

Second, in exhibition games the Negro Leaguers could use their best pitchers without dipping into the run-of-the-millers where the league’s lack of pitching depth would be exposed. Major Leaguers would face Satchel Paige, for example, a disproportionate number of times. The Triple A-caliber pitchers would not be called upon.

Accordingly, I don’t find the barnstorming argument to be a persuasive reason for altering the record books.

However, there is poetic justice in Ty Cobb being supplanted by a black player. Cobb was a notorious racist, even by the standards of his era. He was also said to be obsessed with being first — especially when it came to batting average, but even when it came to something like being first to arrive for a game.

Thus, Cobb’s ghost may be receiving condign punishment. But that’s not a good enough reason to distort baseball’s record book.