However, on "Luke Easter Night" on August 17, 1963 in Rochester, Easter told the crowd that he was really 52 years old, which would have made his birth year 1911...

Love that story.

A comment from what will be my 2010 ballot, unless I am persuaded otherwise:

Luke Easter – The case of Easter, I truly believe, is sui generis. Exceptionally victimized by circumstance, the historical record shows his career was unique for its longevity.

I ran quick-and-dirty MLEs for Easter's AAA stats: first adjusting for league AVG/OBP/SLG context between AAA and the AL, then multiplying his AVG/OBP/SLG by .87, and finally adjusting for season length. (Two points to bring up: most of his AAA seasons are missing OBP data, so I added .068 to his AVG to estimate OBP; .068 was the average ISO OBP of his last three seasons. Secondly, the 1949 PCL does not have league AVG/OBP/SLG available, so I used the 1950 PCL averages.) These translations show a career 124 OPS+ hitter in AAA, matching his 124 OPS+ in the majors.

Easter finished his career as a Matt Stairs-type power bat, averaging about 100 games and 280 plate appearances for his last three seasons, with OPS+ lines of 121-115-110. What's remarkable is that those were his age-44, 45 and 46 seasons. In all, Easter played 1794 G with 6530 PA from the age of 33 on, with 924 G and 3143 PA from age 40 forward. (Also of note is that he was more durable after he got older and went back to the minors. This fits into the historical record, though.) He might be the greatest 40+ hitter in baseball history.

However, Easter is not so exceptional an outlier in this respect as to reject the idea that he could have racked up that much playing time in this portion of his career. There are 22 players in MLB history with at least 5000 PA from age 33 on. (Easter would be third on this list in PA.) This population had an average (weighted by PA) OPS+ of 123.48. Easter fits squarely into this group, so I looked at what this population did on average from 25 to 32, which covers Easter's career from 1941 to 1948. (The historical record shows Easter as an established, quality player in the Negro Leagues in this time period and covers war credit.) They averaged 4764 PA with an OPS+ of 135.87. Adding 12 points to Easter's MLB/AAA translated OPS+ of 124 gives you a 136 OPS+ from 25-32. Dividing 4764 PA by 4.2 PA/G gives you 1134 G (an average of 142 G and 596 PA over that eight-season span). All told, the translated record gives him 2928 G, 11294 PA and a 129 OPS+, which fits right into the Eddie Murray/Dave Winfield/Carl Yastrzemski (and Rafael Palmeiro) class of long-career HOM “corner bat” inductees (though noting Yaz's defensive value).

(A quick note about his defense: Easter was not some lumbering -10 slug at first base. Both Smith and Rosenheck see him as around average in his MLB career, and both have his 1950 season at around +5. This captures Easter at his most injury-plagued, so it seems likely his glove isn't taking anything off of the table. Well, not until he's simply mashing in his mid-40s.)

Obviously, there is probably no way to know for certain if Luke Easter was a late bloomer like Edgar Martinez or a superstar aging gracefully like Willie Mays. There is probably no way to know for certain the shape of what would have been his first seasons leading up to his peak. (Something like 110-123-126-129-138-142-150-160 OPS+ can perhaps be justified.) However, the way Easter beat the crap out of the PCL is what a great hitter would do and it's the first season in the “formal” professional record. Furthermore, the unique longevity shown by his professional record is another sign of a great player. The weight of the evidence, and the weight of the historical circumstances, leads me to accept the above projection as a reasonable career estimate.

(One last note: if we are talking about “missing” players from the 1940s and 1950s, perhaps Easter is the top candidate.)

I'll give him a closer look. I've voted for him before, but he kind of slipped off my ballot at some point.

I love these discussions about guys like Easter and Marvin Williams and Bus Clarkson. I can't really add anything, just wanted to say thanks and keep on chugging along.

I used a few different proxies to come up with what Luke Easter should look like including Gil Hodges, Tony Perez, Dave Winfield and Orlando Cepeda through age 32. Dolph Camilli is also a decent proxy. Note that none of these guys is a real "peak" star, even Winfield wouldn't rank very highly without his long career. I think we can use Ryan Howard as a modern comp for his ceiling.

It's a pretty wide error band for Luke Easter, the best case scenario is he's clearly a HoM player like McGwire, Killebrew, Winfield or McCovey. In the most reasonable worst case scenario he's in a glut with Cepeda and Perez. Right now I have him around 50th on my list.

I just checked Luke Easter's minor league stats page on Baseball Reference, and it now has seasonal walks data. I'm now incorporating this data into my MLEs instead of a flat ISO OBP of .068. Using the method I describe in my longer post above, here are his new MLEs (minor league numbers only, adjusted to 162 games):



Add that in to his MLB career:

I think Eric Chalek and Chris Cobb used the square of the BA factor as the ISO factor in the past (so in Easter's case that would be .76 rather than the .87 James uses). I've rerun the MLEs with this change; I'm also using .90 as the PCL factor rather than .87, reflecting its reputation as the top AAA league during this period. Lastly, my MLEs are a bit lower than James's even for BA and OBP (where they should be the same), but I think this is because James's are placed in the context of the AL without pitchers, whereas mine are placed in the context of the AL with pitchers included.

Year mle BA mle OBP mle SLG OPS+
1949 0.319 0.426 0.603 180
1952 0.276 0.367 0.527 155
1954 0.272 0.353 0.464 131
1955 0.235 0.344 0.402 108
1956 0.266 0.377 0.495 136
1957 0.244 0.340 0.464 126
1958 0.269 0.356 0.490 138
1959 0.225 0.335 0.387 104
1960 0.270 0.331 0.434 113
1961 0.257 0.320 0.442 109
1962 0.244 0.323 0.423 107
1963 0.231 0.297 0.341 85

Also, what about Easter's parks? Per Wikipedia, Offermann Stadium in Buffalo, where Easter played from 1956-1958, was a hitter's park, 321 to left, 345 to left-center, 400 to center, 365 to right center, 297 to right. Silver Park in Rochester, Easter's home field from 1959 to 1964, was 320 to left, 420 to center, and 315 to right (wikipedia doesn't mention whether it was considered a hitter's park or a pitcher's park).