So here's what we have from Chris Cobb:

HF%..Career..Name-pos.......(born)..BJ....MVP..All-Star
44%..06-25...Bruce Petway-C.(1883)..#5 c..-1-..7*

James says that Petway could rank higher, and the All-Star totals might be modified higher since teams weren't selected prior to 1909.

Three numbers here jump out at me. One, the 44% HF selection from the Cool Papas book. I seem to recall that there is a slight timeline from that book, but I could be wrong. If so, then that number should also be revised higher. The second is the 7 (probably more) All-Star selections. I don't think we have any available catcher with that many retroactive selections. Finally, Petway has 19 years of experience. Even with a discount, Petway's totals are impressive.

For the period, I tentatively have the catchers as Santop, Schang, Petway, and Schalk, all of whom will probably make my ballot some day. Bresnahan seems to be just below these four in my system, not because of a timeline, but because of the relative shortness of his career, both overall and at catcher. Bresnahan is currently on my ballot.

It seems that Petway suffers from the Bobby Wallace syndrome. He just isn't as good as the top contemporary at his position (Louis Santop) who may be in the upper echelon greats. Wallace generally had Davis and Dahlen for competition. (Of course, Wallace also had Wagner, but I put Wagner in the Josh Gibson realm as so good they can't even be compared to others at their position.)

Generally Petway consistently ranks anywhere from 3-5 among all-time Negro League catchers. Biz Mackey and Roy Campanella were probably better, but I don't know about Ted Radcliffe. This group might agree with the premise that Negro League catchers as a whole were better than their white counterparts. I would urge further exploration of Petway before dismissing him.

Right now, I'm not yet sold on Petway:

Both Bill James and McNeil have Double Duty Radcliffe ahead of Petway (of course, Radcliffe getting some credit for pitching also).

The SABR Top 40 Negro Leaguers Petway was #39, tied with Quincey Trouppe and behind Radcliffe.

7 retro All-star selections is impressive, but Radcliffe has 6 REAL All-star selections, Quincey Trouppe had 5, and even Larry Brown had 6.

He was certainly a good player, but right now I have him in the "2nd group" of Negro League Catchers, below Gibson, Mackey, Santop, and Campanella, but with Radcliffe, Trouppe, Joe Greene, Larry Brown, and Frank Duncan.

KJOK, have you done your translations for Petway and made them available?

What method have you been using to derive Runs and RBI? I've been referring to your translations, so just trying to understand them better.

Haven't done Petway yet as I was hoping to have a new, improved method, but that may not happen for a few more days (or weeks), so I will probably try to run one very soon with the old method.

RBIs and Runs are certainly the weakest part of the method, and should probably be ignored, - but for both I basically take the ratio of the player's "performance" vs. league (using major league as a proxy) and then "gross up" to the NL 1955-2003 time period rate of runs and RBI's.

Bruce Petway data

Arranged in the same form as the post on Poles, but I've commented at the end as well.

Summary of Expert Evaluations

HF% Career Name-pos (born) BJ – MVP - All-Star
44% 06-25 Bruce Petway-C (1883) #5 c - 1 - 7*

From Holway

1906 – no batting data, played for Chicago Leland Giants
1907 – no batting data, played for Philadelphia Giants
1907 – 6-33 (.182) for Phil Giants in Cuba
1908 – 3-22 (.137) in world series for Phil Giants vs. Leland Giants
1909 -- .150 for Phil Giants (teammates listed with 20-22 ab) mostly in series vs. Leland Giants
1909 – 2-10 vs. major-league all-star team in Cuba
1910 – 13-30 (.433) for Chicago Leland Giants; Holway all-star
1910 – 6-41 for Leland Giants in Cuba
1910 – 5-23 vs. Tigers and Athletics in Cuba
1911 -- .238 for Chicago American Giants (teammates listed with 32 & 37 ab); Holway all-star
1911 – 16-96 (.167) in Cuban Play
1912 -- .200 for Chi Am Giants (teammates listed with 96 & 112 ab)
1913 -- .262 for Chi Am Giants (teammates listed with 95, 150, 152 ab)
1914 -- .311 for Chi Am Giants (no ab data available); Holway all-star
1915 -- .182 for Chi Am Giants (no ab data available)
1915 – 18-51 (.353) in Cuban Play
1916 -- .189 for Chi Am Giants (no ab data available)
1917 -- .136 for Chi Am Giants (no ab data, listed as “ut” not “c” by Holway)
1917 – 5-19 in world series for Chi Am Giants vs. NY Lincoln Stars
1918 -- .235 for Chi Am. Giants (no ab data listed); Holway all-star
1919 -- .209 for Detroit Stars (no ab data listed, listed as “of” by Holway)
1920 -- .193 for Detroit Stars (no ab data listed)
1921 -- .310 for Detroit Stars (no ab data listed); Holway all-star
1922 -- .244 for Detroit Stars
1923 -- .320 for Detroit Stars; Holway all-star
1923 – 2-8 vs. St. Louis Browns
1924 -- .324 for Detroit Stars (listed as “ut” by Holway); Holway all-star
1925 – not listed as playing

totals derived from Holway
46-221 (.208) in Cuban Play
9-46 (.196) vs. white major-leaguers
.226 mean average, 1907-1924

From Riley
1910 -- .397 vs. all competition for Leland Giants
1914-16 – missed substantial time due to injuries
1916 – 1918 hit .253, .208, .200 (vs. all competition?)
1916 -- .333 in Cuba
1921-25 in Detroit hit .313, .268, .337, .341, .156

Riley lists him as hitting .210 in Cuba, lifetime
.171 avg. vs. major-leaguers in exhibitions

I9s.org MLE projections:

5284 ab, 1429 hits, 195 2b, 45 3b, 21 hr, 455 bb, 352 K, 192 sb, 89 cs
.270 ba, .328 obp, .336 slg, .665 ops
589 rc

Commentary

Since Petway was a catcher, career totals have to be evaluated carefully, because he would have played fewer games, especially later in his career, and his ability as a hitter over the course of his career was clearly quite uneven. Given that, I decided to include some commentary along with the data.

I believe that the "mean average" I derived from Holway is probably significantly below what Petway's lifetime average would have been, since his averages from several of his early seasons, when he was probably at his best as a hitter, are based on a very small number of games played under the most challenging available conditions. In 1908, for example, Petway's .137 ba is based on 5 games, 4 of which were pitched by Rube Foster and Walter Ball, the two best pitchers in black baseball at that time. In 1909, the pitching he faced was not quite as good, but again his average is based on about 6 games, mostly against the best pitching available. The period of 1906-1911 is the period in which Petway probably played the most games per season and probably hit his best (taking deadball conditions into account, of course). So I have no difficulty believing Petway's average was considerably higher than the .226 "mean average" I've calculated.

On the other hand, I don't believe it could have been as high as the .270 MLE average that i9s has projected for him. I don't see any evidence that his batting average against black teams would have been that high for his career, so I don't see it as likely that his MLE average would have been higher than his average against black teams. The fact that he was playing in an extreme pitchers' park 1911-1918 needs to be remembered, but still, .270 seems very high.

Even with the i9s optimistic offensive estimate, Petway wasn't as productive at the plate, in a career sense, as Roger Bresnahan, whom baseball-reference credits with 664 rc in 5195 PA (as opposed to Petway's 589 in 5739 PA). Of course, Petway was an outstanding defensive catcher with a much longer career than Bresnahan. My view of Petway's offense is that he was, at best, for his career, pretty close to Ray Schalk. He probably had a better batting peak than Schalk did: I expect he would have hit .300-.310 in the majors in 1910 and might have typically hit 10-20 points above league average in much of the first half of his career. And he had a bit more power than Schalk. But Schalk took walks more than Petway did, and Petway's early value as a hitter is highly conjectural. My own estimates place him at somewhere between .216 and .230 for his career, in a .255 league. He's Schalk for career with a higher peak at his high-end estimate, and Lou Criger with a much higher peak and a longer career at the low end estimate.

On defense, I would judge Petway to have been as good as anybody. Holway notes that in 1909 Petway was compared to Lou Criger. Not a flattering comparison on the offensive side (though possibly accurate), but Criger was an A fielder as a catcher, and all the reports indicate that Petway was great defensively.

I plan to do a more detailed seasonal analysis of Petway this week. He and Poles both look like borderline candidates to me, could end up anywhere between 10 and 40. I look forward to seeing what others do with these numbers: my confidence level in my own conclusions is still pretty low.

Great stuff guys, keep it coming . . .

"7 retro All-star selections is impressive, but Radcliffe has 6 REAL All-star selections, Quincey Trouppe had 5, and even Larry Brown had 6."

Uh, what's the difference between a 'retro' and a 'real' selection? Seems they should be given the same weight to me . . .

Maybe "retro" should get more weight. You can't trust the general population to select the right guy. For example, have you seen the current All-Star voting? See also the 2000 presidential election. :-0

Uh, what's the difference between a 'retro' and a 'real' selection? Seems they should be given the same weight to me . . .

Sure, but same weight has Larry Brown and Quincey Trouppe right behind Petway, and I don't think either of those guys will be advocated as HOM worthy...

All-star games are just one criteria - part of it is, 'who did he beat out,' for the honor. I mean Robin Yount only played in 3 all-star games believe it or not. How many times would Jeter be the AL All-Star SS for the season, probably only 1999, losing out to ARod every year. Ozzie Smith was an All-Star 16 times, but does anyone think he was better than Yount - if so, you are very wrong.

It's just one thing to consider. But it's absolutely conceivable that a guy that was a 7-time All-Star could be miles ahead of a 6-time All-Star. Not sure if it applies here, but I wouldn't rule it out.

Joe is right. The real (East-West) selections were for All-Star games, which may take more than one catcher. The retroactive selections were for the entire season, and I think Holway only took one from each position, plus one UT player.

Trouppe, Brown and Radcliffe would probably not have had too many retroactive selections, competing with the likes of Mackey and Gibson.

Here's the breakdown for Holway's all-star selections at catcher. As you'll see, Ron Wargo's inference is correct.

Holway all-star selections at catcher for players in my candidate pool

13 Josh Gibson
8 Biz Mackey
7 Bruce Petway
7 Louis Santop
5 Frank Duncan
3 Doc Wiley
3 Quincey Trouppe
2 Bill Pierce
2 Joe Greene
2 Roy Campanella
1 "Strike" Gonzalez
1 Larry Brown
1 Double Duty Radcliffe

I've uploaded my MLE's for Petway to the HOM Yahoo egroup.

Thanks KJOK

Using KJOK's MLE's, here are the Sim Scores for Petway with a positional adjustment:

KENNEDY, TERRY (833)
MUNSON, THURMAN (819)
HAYES, FRANKIE (815)
McCARVER, TIM (812)
STEINBACH, TERRY (808)
SUNDBERG, JIM (807)
ROBINSON, WILBERT (805)
LOLLAR, SHERM (805)
SEWELL, LUKE (805)
O'CONNOR, JACK (803)

Here are Petway's batting WS using the old TangoTiger formula to convert Linear Weights to Win Shares for batting. The formula is:

Batting WS = ((LWTS Runs/10) + (Outs/100))*3

As someone (David?) pointed out, you may want to use something other than 10 as the divisor, but I've left it at 10 b/c that's what I used for Hill before David posted his comment -- you can apply your own discount, as I do. If you have another factor you'd like to use, let me know and I can plug that in pretty quickly.

So here are Petway's batting WS using (1) TangoTiger's converter, (2) the Integrated 9s MLEs and (3) Pete Palmer's LWTS. They are raw (no adjustments for season-length, park factors, league quality, uncertainty of data, etc.):

1906.....2.7
1907.....6.5
1908.....7.3
1909.....13.7
1910.....19.2
1911.....8.6
1912.....12.0
1913.....8.7
1914.....6.8
1915.....1.6
1916.....2.9
1917.....2.2
1918.....3.0
1919.....5.9
1920.....3.3
1921.....1.9
Total....106.1

For defense: based on the Integrated 9s MLEs, Petway had 5,739 plate appearances. Assuming approximately 4.1 PAs per game, that gives Petway about 1,400 games played. Assuming 90% of his games were played at catcher (which may or may not be accurate), then at about 8.75 innings per game played back there, he would have approximately 11,025 innings behind the plate.

Looking at the WS per 1,000 innings played of Hall of Fame catchers from the majors, a per 1,000 rate of 6.75 WS for Petway would make him a clear "A" defensive player among those HOFers (comparable to Berra, Carter and Schalk and better than Bench and Fisk).

So if you were to give Petway 6.75 WS/1000, you'd get another 74.4 fielding WS to add to his hitting totals, which would put him at about 181 WS.

Just numbers...make adjustments as appropriate for your systems. Or ignore them altogether. :)

1921 Bruce Petway
NNL Detroit Stars

G-44 (team 54)
AB-155
H-46
D-5
T-4
HR-2
R-18
W-7
HP-2
SH-6
SB-5
AVE-.297 (NeL .263)
OBA-.335 (NeL .324)
SLG-.419 (NeL .361)

In a few days I should have fielding numbers (included stolen bases allowed for catchers).

Bruce Petway's Real Stats

CORRECTED LINK:

Bruce Petway's Real Stats

Hey, everyone,

Here's my latest MLEs for Bruce Petway. These will be updated as new data becomes available.