I'm certainly no Negro League expert, but everything I've read and heard on Santop is that he's our first true no-brainer NL selection. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but it sure seems like the expert opinion is unanimous on him.

Santop, Mackey, Gibson... are they all HOM-ers?

Not saying they can't be... Cochrane, Hartnett & Dickey probably will be too.

That will certainly take care of our catcher glut.

Of course Santop is not running against Mackey & Gibson just yet. He's running against our current backlog.

I meant catcher shortage...

Santop, Mackey, Gibson... are they all HOM-ers?

In my view, yes. Mackey and Gibson will be eligible in 1949 and 1952, respectively. With Cochrane, Hartnett, and Dickey becoming eligible in 1943, 1947, and 1952, we still have a long way to go before we have a bumper crop of catchers . . .

OK... thanks... this helps put the differences in their eligibility dates into perspective for me. For some reason I thought they were all essentially contemporaries. My bad.

I've posted my Santop MLE's to the Files section of the HOM Yahoo egroup.

Don't have the Double Duties book with me right now but IIRC, Santop did better than any of the other pioneer era blacks in voting among both experts & former players as most deserving to be in Cooperstown but not currently in the Hall.

Negro League's best catcher's seem to be:

1910's - Louis Santop
1920's - Biz Mackey
1930's - Josh Gibson
1940's - Roy Campanella/Josh Gibson

Thought I’d continue to get data on Negro League players uploaded: here’s Santop

Louis Santop Data

Expert Evaluations summary

HF% Career Name-pos (born) BJ – MVP - All-Star
76% 09-26 Louis Santop-C (1890) #2 c - 7 - 7*

Note: "MVP" is the sum of Bill James and John Holway MVP awards. Santop was probably did not play at MVP level for seven seasons, but Holway and James agree that he was the best player in 3 or 4 seasons.


From Holway

Seasonal listings
1909 no data; Riley lists Santop as ending season with Phi Giants
1910 no data; Riley lists Santop with Philadelphia, but no listing in Holway
1911 .333 for NY Lincoln Giants (no ab data), split catching duties w/ Pete Booker
1911 1-14 in Cuban Play
1912 .412 for NY Lincoln Giants (7-17) listed as outfielder
1913 .264 for NY Lincoln Giants, listed as outfielder; Holway all-star
3-13 vs. Pete Alexander & Walter Johnson
1914 .517 for NY Lincoln Giants, listed as outfielder; Holway all-star
13-36 in Cuban Play for NY Lincolns
1915 .259 for NY Lincoln Stars; listed as outfielder
2-8 vs. major-league competition
1916 .250 for NY Lincoln Stars; listed as catcher
1-3 in winter ball in Florida
1917 .414 for Bkn Royal Giants (12-29); c, Holway all-star
8-28 vs. Chicago Am Giants in World Series
4-12 vs. Joe Bush & a partly big-league squad
1918 .444 for Bkn and Phil (12-27); c, Holway all-star, drafted
1919 .464 for Bkn (13-28); c. missed part of season in army
1920 .265 for Phi Hilldales; c
6-16 in playoff vs. Bkn
7-24 vs. major-league competition
9-17 in Cuban Play
1921 .340 or .354 for Phil Hilldales; c, Holway all-star
0-10 in play-off vs. AC Bacharachs
5-13 in “World Series” vs. Chi Am Giants
1922 .404 or .286 for Phil Hilldales, .404 best in east; c, Holway all-star
1923 .230 for Phil Hilldales; c
4-17 vs. major-league competition, mostly Phil Athletics
1924 .328 for Phi Hilldale Giants; c, Holway all-star
8-24 in World Series vs. Monarchs; fielding error loses game 8
1925 .240 for Phil Hilldale
0-2 in World Seies vs. Monarchs
1926 no data; released by Hilldales mid-season

Career Totals
.318 (297-933) career avg. by Holway’s calculation
13-45 (.289) vs. major-league competition by Holway’s calculation

My totals from Holway
.343 (23-97) in Cuban Play
.341 mean avg., 1911-1925
.270 (20-74) vs. major-league competition


From Riley

.406 lifetime avg. vs. all competition
1911-1914 hit .470, .422, .429, .455 vs. all competition
.316 lifetime avg. vs. major-league pitching
1921-24 hit .373, .358, .364, .389 for Hilldales, .333 in 1924 world series (matches Holway)
1925-6 hit composite .268 as pinch hitter, primarily.

I9s career MLE totals

6212 ab, 1905 hits, 359 2b, 101 3b, 118 hr, 461 bb, 741 k, .307 ba, .355 obp, .454 slg, 809 ops, 983 rc

Louis Santop played in Cuba in 1912 and in 1920 were he batted .368.
hit either 316 or 296 against major league competition
Hit 406 for his career

The original "Black Babe Ruth," Louis Santop was a solid catcher but was more famous for his power. In a 1912 game, he was credited with a tape-measure 500-foot blast.

caught for Negro League legends Smokey Joe Williams and Cannonball Dick Redding

in the 1952 Pittsburgh Courier Poll was voted the 3rd best catcher after Josh Gibson and Roy Campanella

James Riley gives a story in which Santop would squat behind the plate in pregame practices and zip the ball to every position in the infield for a full 15 minutes.
Historian Robert Peterson reports that Santop, a superlative showman who sometimes called home runs before he whacked them over the fence, earned $500 a month, an enormous amount for that era

From blackbaseball.com
He hit 470 in 1911
He hit 422 in 1912
He hit 429 in 1913
He hit 455 in 1914
He hit 358 in 1922
He hit 364 in 1923
He hit 405 in 1924 and 333 in the World Series against the Kansas City Monarchs.

From geocities.com/Colosseum/Arena/6925/black.html
Louis Santop had 735 at bats 236 hits 14 Hrs 321 batting avg
Won batting titles in the
1912 east hitting 412
1914 east hitting 517
1922 east hitting 404
And a HR title in the 1921 east hitting 8

yest, are you back to stay? Were you having problems with the new site?

yes for some reason my computer wouldn't let me register

yes for some reason my computer wouldn't let me register

Glad to have you back, yest! Were you using Netscape when you were experiencing the problems?

Glad to have you back, yest!
Thank You

Were you using Netscape when you were experiencing the problems?
no AOL

no AOL

They use Netscape (which this site had a problem with for a while). I have AOL myself and was forced to use Internet Explorer (ugh!) until the problem was corrected. I had posted the solution at this site and at the HoM site at Yahoo not that long after the change over, but I assume you missed it.

bump...

You must be senior to me, sir, right away sir!

I just posted... I didn't do anything different. :-)

Had to be done anyways... it had been almost exactly 30 days since the previous post. A few more hours and we would have needed Joe to reopen it.

I’m going to post my construction of Santop’s career in win shares, since that sort of construction has been of interest for other players. Three points of explanation first.

1) The main base for this construction is the i9s projection, compared against my own analysis of the extant data. Their career projection matches the extant data well (with the usual 5% reduction) but their season-by-season distribution does not. Both Riley’s numbers for Santop’s play against all competition and Holway’s numbers for Negro-League play show Santop as a tremendous hitter 1911-1914. Riley shows .444 mean avg, which translates to ,311-.333 MLE, while Holway shows a .382 mean avg., which translates to .324 - .343 MLE. I9s shows him at only .317 for these seasons. However, Holway’s numbers show a trough for Santop 1915-1917, with an MLE of .261-.276, while i9s shows him hitting .309. Since these were lower offense years after the minor boom in the early teens, some drop in raw average is to be expected, but i9s smooths out the peak and valley, as they probably should be regressing fragmentary data towards the mean. Anyway, if you look at the raw data and expect to see great numbers from Santop 1911-1914 in my WS construction, you won’t see it, but you will see _much_ better numbers 1915-1917 than the raw data would lead you to expect. For the career, I think it balances out. I created WS totals by finding Santop’s closest ML match as a hitter each year and modifying the number accordingly. I have found that this method reaches similar conclusions to Jeff M’s calculated WS, but you may prefer his data.

2) The reconstruction of Santop’s value is made more difficult by the question of his defensive position. I9s treats him as a catcher throughout his career, and their projection of his playing time appears predicated on this assumption. Holway, however, indicates that Santop played a lot of outfield 1911-1915; he treats him primarily as an outfielder 1912-1915 and makes him an all-star there in a couple of seasons. I have followed Holway in my assignation of defensive position. As an outfielder, I give him the defensive value of a typical right fielder of this era in the WS system (B-/C+ grade as an outfielder) and projected that into his playing time. Since he would probably have had _more_ playing time each season as an outfielder than i9s projects him for as a catcher, there is a case to be made that my1911-1915 constructions undervalue Santop. Anyone wishing to adjust them may do so by taking my WS numbers and the i9s playing time and projecting them out to the playing time you consider likely for a healthy starting outfielder. In rating Santop’s catching value I treated him as a B-/C+ defender, similar to Bresnahan and Chief Myers. He had a great arm and was tremendously strong, but he had no reputation for great hands or agility. Here are the positions I assigned Santop throughout his career: catcher 1909-1910; c/of 1911; of 1912-5; c 1916-24; ph 25-26

3) Finally, there is the question of war-time credit for Santop. He served in WWI and missed much of the 1918 and 1919 seasons as a result. The statistics for his partial seasons in both years are outstanding. I have credited him with two slightly above average seasons (21 win shares each), which in my own system I then boost to 25 with the catcher adjustment. Others may wish to credit him differently, either more or less. He probably had about 2/3 of a full season in 1918-9 actual play.

Louis Santop’s season-by-season win shares

1909 1.4 bws, 1.3 fws = 2.7,
1910 6.7 bws, 3.2 fws = 9.9
1911 12.4 bws, 3.0 fws = 15.4
1912 14.0 bws 2.4 fws = 16.4
1913 9.9 bws, 3.0 fws = 12.9
1914 18.0 bws, 2.6 fws = 20.6
1915 19.3 bws, 2.9 fws = 22.2
1916 15.5 bws, 7.2 fws = 23.2
1917 29.0 bws, 7.4 fws = 36.4
1918 war (21 ws)
1919 war (21 ws)
1920 20.2 bws, 6.1 fws = 26.7
1921 18.5 bws, 6.4 fws = 24.9
1922 10.0 bws, 3.7 fws = 13.7
1923 6.0 bws, 2.4 fws = 8.4
1924 14.5 bws, 4.5 fws = 19.0
1925 2.6 bws, .07 fws = 2.7
1926 2.0 bws, 0.0 fws = 2.0
299 cws, unadjusted

This total is meant to estimate what the Bill James WS system would produce for Santop. I myself apply three modifications to these figures: 1) a fielding adjustment, since I believe WS slightly underestimates fielding value prior to 1930, 2) a seasonal adjustment to turn 154-game seasons to 162-game seasons (these are 154-game constructions) 3) a catcher-adjustment based on average catcher playing time.

Santop’s career fielding adj. and season adjusted – 328 win shares
Santop’s adjusted career, catcher adjusted – 405 win shares

With no adjustment for catcher, Santop looks ballot-worthy. With adjustments, he looks like a truly great candidate, clearly stronger than Bresnahan; he will probably land at #1 on my ballot.

With no adjustment for catcher, Santop looks ballot-worthy.

Without an adjustment, he shoots to the top, IMO. With some or all of Chris' adjustments, that's just icing on the cake for Mr. Santop.

Chris, this doesn't make a huge difference but I'm curious. How certain are you that the offense levels in the Negro Leagues followed the same track as in the major leagues? (i.e., uptick in early teens with a quick correction) Is it backed up by the available data or just a general assumption?

Devin,

I'm not entirely certain, in that I haven't done any studies targeted at demonstrating that such a change took place, but it's not merely an assumption.

I've looked pretty closely at the batting data for quite a number of players (Spotswood Poles, Bruce Petway, Louis Santop, Christobal Torriente, Zack Pettus, Ben Taylor, Jules Thomas, Hurley McNair, Pete Duncan, Jess Barbour, Doc Wiley) who were in their during the teens, and it's my impression that their raw statistics consistently show a marked decline after 1914, with a rise again around 1920. It is certain that there was an offensive surge in the Negro Leagues at this later point, pretty much in tandem with the majors. The home run totals and the batting averages really leap upwards, and there's quite a lot of data from this period. The data is spottier at the beginning of the downturn, but I'm pretty confident that the Negro Leagues paralleled the white majors then as well.

From what I've seen of the figures, 1915-19 in the Negro leagues seems an extreme "dead ball era", a much deeper drop than in the white leagues, while there does not appear to be an equiavlent dead ball era before 1910. In other words, the hillock in 1911-13 may be the same but the deepest bit of the valley comes in the mid teens not the 00s. Presumably this is a park effect; do others see this pattern too?

could someone please explain to me why they put Santop so high on there ballot?

Consensus 2nd or 3rd best catcher in Negro League history.

Catching is thought to be the strongest position in Negro Leagues, in comparison to MLB. I mean, Josh Gibson is a pretty intimidating #1, no?

His competetition for 2nd is Biz Mackey, who was a defensive specialist; and some people value defense so much at ctahcer that they'll dis Mike Piazza when it comes time to vote HoF.

Additionally, Negro League rankings are generally biased toward more recent play; the guys we've evlected so far (Grant, Hill, Johnson) were NOT anywhere close to consensus top 3 at any of their positions.

Ergo, I'm pretty comfy with him at the top of a weak list.

He's already elected, but thought I'd pass on these numbers I compiled:

Louis Santop 1921
Hilldale Club NNL associate member

G-33 (team 41)
AB-110
H-44
D-5
T-3
HR-5
R-28
W-7
HP-1
SH-3
SB-4
AVE-.400 ((NeL .263)
OBA-.441 (NeL .324)
SLG-.636 (NeL .361)

To be sure, the vast majority of Hilldale's games were at home in what I'm pretty sure was a hitter-friendly park. Still, these are pretty kickass numbers against top NeL competition.

Btw, someone referred above to Biz Mackey as a "defensive specialist"; in fact, he was an excellent hitter, often the best on championship teams.

A while back, I was discussing with somebody here (I don't remember on which thread) Santop's military service in World War I, and how much non-military baseball he played in 1918-19. Riley says he missed most of 1918 and 1919 in the Navy, but Holway lists him as a regular both seasons.

It turns out Holway's right. Santop played professional baseball the whole 1918 season, as far as I can tell, and was out of the Navy and playing ball by May 25 the following year (1919). That's the short version; my blog has it in excruciating detail.

Luis Santop's Real Stats

CORRECTED LINK:

Louis Santop's Real Stats

Please click through for my latest Louis Santop MLEs.

If any additional info should arise, the MLEs will be updated.

Currently estimated at 59.7 WAR.