We motivate a new methodological framework for era-adjusting baseball statistics. Our methodology is a crystallization of the conceptual ideas put forward by Stephen Jay Gould. We name this methodology the Full House Model in his honor. The Full House Model works by balancing the achievements of Major League Baseball (MLB) players within a given season and the size of the MLB eligible population. We demonstrate the utility of our Full House Model in an application of comparing baseball players' performance statistics across eras. Our results reveal a radical reranking of baseball's greatest players that is consistent with what one would expect under a sensible uniform talent generation assumption. Most importantly, we find that the greatest African American and Latino players now sit atop the greatest all-time lists of historical baseball players while conventional wisdom ranks such players lower. Our conclusions largely refute a consensus of baseball greatness that is reinforced by nostalgic bias, recorded statistics, and statistical methodologies which we argue are not suited to the task of comparing players across eras.
翻译:我们的计算方法是将史蒂芬·杰·古尔德提出的概念概念化。我们以他的名义将这种方法命名为全院模型。全院模型通过平衡大联盟棒球球员在特定季节的成就和MLB合格人口的规模来运作。我们展示了我们的全院模型在应用棒球球员跨时代业绩统计比较方面的效用。我们的结果显示,棒球最伟大的球员急剧重新排名,这与人们在合理的统一人才培养假设下所期望的一致。最重要的是,我们发现,最大的非洲和拉丁美洲球员目前处于史无前例的史无前例的棒球运动员名单之上,而传统的智慧则排在这些球员的低位。我们的结论在很大程度上驳斥了棒球伟大程度的共识,这种共识得到了新式偏见、有记录的统计数据和统计方法的加强,而我们认为这些都不适合比较不同时代的球员的任务。