The following is from the unpublished manuscript LOST LEAGUES: The 1928 Negro National and Eastern Colored Leagues. An article based on this manuscript appeared in the SABR publication “Mound City Memories.”

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Professional baseball teams have had some really wild, wacky, humorous and unusual names.

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Major League Equivalents (MLEs) are a series of calculations designed to take non-major league baseball performance and estimate what that performance’s results would look like statistically in the context of the Major Leagues. Bill James gets credit for being the inventor of MLEs, as he outlined his method for batters in the 1985 Baseball Abstract. James was only interested at the time in making sense of minor league statistics, but MLE’s theoretically can be used to evaluate ANY baseball performance, including minor league, Japanese or other foreign league, Negro League, NCAA league, etc. Not only those, but you can actually use the basic MLE procedure to evaluate the performance of an American League player relative to the National League, or vice versa (NLEs, ALEs?), or perhaps calculate what type of batting statistics Ty Cobb’s 1909 performance would look like in the 2007 AL.

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I never like to assume, so once again a quick clarification from the previous segment:

In Step #4, Leagues Park Difference, the 13% Park Difference will expand or contract depending on the SPECIFIC parks a player is coming from and going to. For example, if a Japanese player is moving from pitcher-friendly Koshien Kyujo in NPB to hitter-friendly Coors Field in MLB, that 13% difference would be much smaller – perhaps 6% instead of 13%.

Secondly the statistics that follow are Major League Equivalents and not actual NPB statistics. For the NPB stats check this site.

Now, finally, on to the MLEs, and first up is……….(DRUM ROLL PLEASE)…………

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Before moving on to Part III, there’s a clarification I need to make regarding Part II.

In addition to factoring in the difference in league parks between any two leagues when doing MLE’s, you must also factor in the difference between league SCORING environments. In the previous Part II, I ‘plugged’ a 7% difference into the formula and called it the park difference. In reality, the 7% difference is actually the ‘context’ difference - a combination of park differences AND league scoring differences. Since we can calculate the league scoring difference, we really should use it, and plug ONLY the park difference.

In terms of the final results, it won’t change anything, but in terms of understanding how to ‘properly’ do MLE’s, not just for Japanese League players but for AAA, or Negro Leagues, etc., and for understanding the interaction of parks, leagues, etc. it’s important to understand how this works.

Japanese league scoring historically is less than MLB. Japanese League managers traditionally have used more one run, ‘small ball’ strategies, and the league scoring environments definitely reflect this. For the period 1962 – 2007, NPB scoring per game was 94% of MLB scoring per game.

I’ll walk thru complete examples for a hypothetical batter and pitcher again, this time doing it completely the ‘right’ way:

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As was mentioned in Part I, over 600 (664 by my count) players have played in MLB and NPB. Out of that 664, 32 of those have been native born Japanese players. If we break out the numbers by batters and pitchers, we get:

Japanese Pitchers to MLB - 23
Japanese Position Players to MLB - 9
Foreign Pitchers to NPB - 213
Foreign Position Players to NPB - 419

We have a good sample size of players moving to NPB, but rather limited data for players moving from NPB to MLB, especially for position players. Several studies have been done to estimate the difference in ‘quality’ between the two leagues, such as:

http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/analysisjalbright19.html
and

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1330

and also William McNeil, in his books “Baseball’s Other All-Stars” and “The King of Swat”. All seem to reach the same general conclusions:

1. NPB baseball quality is better than AAA baseball, but less than MLB.
2. Home Runs for batters going from MLB to NPB increase dramatically, and decrease dramatically for batters going from NPB to MLB.

While I plan to have a ‘super-duper’ study completed within the year on NPB quality that will also use U.S. minor league statistics to give an even better sample, for rough estimates I use a “90% of MLB runs” quality factor when creating MLE (Major League Equivalent) statistics for players moving to and from MLB. However, one point that is often missed is that ‘difference in quality’ is not the only factor to consider. Ballpark differences between MLB and NPB are a HUGE factor – so much so that they probably shape the perceptions of Japanese players coming to the U. S. more than any single aspect. The average/neutral NPB stadium is more offense friendly than its MLB counterpart, and MUCH more HR friendly. The average NPB park is 318-319 ft. down the lines, 371-372 ft. in the alleys, and 396 ft to dead center. The averages for MLB are 329, 378, and 402 ft. By my preliminary calculations for the ‘super-duper’ study, a neutral NPB park favors offense by 7% over a neutral MLB park, and favors home runs by a whopping 150%.

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Here on seamheads.com at “What’s On Second?”, we’ll be doing various ‘statistorian’ types of analysis, looking at the history and past statistics of baseball, hopefully with the goal of understanding the present a little differently.

Japanese baseball continues to have a bigger impact on U. S. baseball each passing year, with this year being the first time a Japanese born pitcher won a Wold Series game. This influx of Japanese players is of course relatively new, mostly occuring since Hideo Nomo debuted in 1995. But U. S. baseball impacting NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) has been going on for quite some time – over 600 players have played in both MLB and NPB. The influx of U. S. players to Japan geared up in the 1960’s, with players such as Larry Doby, Don Newcombe, Johnny Logan, Bob Nieman, Daryl Spencer, Norm Larker, Ken Aspromonte, Chuck Essegian, Don Zimmer, Don Blasingame, Dick Stuart, George Altman, Jim Gentile, etc. going over for at least a season, and later more accomplished players – all-stars, batting champs, and even MVP’s - such as Matty Alou, Zolio Versalles, Willie Davis, Joe Pepitone, Davey Johnson, Roy White, Reggie Smith, Bobby Tolan, Ben Oglivie, Rich Gossage, Bill Madlock, Bob Horner, Julio Franco, Jesse Barfield, Bill Gullickson, Tony Fernandez, Cecil Fielder, Mike Greenwell, Matt Stairs and Anfonso Soriano spent time in Japan.

Because more Japanese players are coming to America, the question this time of year becomes ‘Who is coming?” and “How well will they do?” By looking at the history of players moving between MLB and NPB, we’ll try to answer those questions intelligently in Part II.