Bleacher Bums Forum

Does that mean that the "wrong" team won in 1945, 1966, 1983?  I'm a traditionalist.  I'd like to think an "earned" victory in the past is equal to one today, but the rules today are negating that.  Let's move the fences in another 100 ft. and then claim the new home run record is equal to Judge's.   Let's allow aluminum bats and then claim the game's the same.   Let's move first base five feet closer to home. 

You change the rules, you change results.   People forget that first and third base umpires did not call checked swings years ago.  The plate umpire had to decide without help. 

That's not even close to being the most annoying thing about it.

I would like to be against the 10th inning rule but since the only way I can watch a game now is to record it and then zap the commercials, I'll reluctantly accept almost anything that shortens games.

No US-born Black players on expected World Series rosters

http://www.espn.com/espn/wire?section=mlb&id=34882944

Jason Heyward identified a good portion of the problem a couple years ago when he told Len Kasper that college baseball players usually get only ¼ or ⅓ of a scholarship.

Agree, plus when a black kid gets a huge bonus to skip college, they jump at it.

No US-born Black players on expected World Series rosters

http://www.espn.com/espn/wire?section=mlb&id=34882944

Math has never been my strong suit, so please check the figures to ensure no mistakes have been made.  But let’s assume that distribution is truly random. 

If so – there are 25 players per MLB team, and 30 teams, which means that there are 750 MLB players

On the Cubs 25 man roster ending the season, there were 11 players who were not born in the United States.  If you feel that that is not typical, I would be interested in the actual numbers.  But if it is typical, that means that 56%, or about 420 MLB players are born in the United States.

Blacks make up about 14 percent of the United States population, so we would expect that a random distribution would give us 58 players who would be black players born in the United states.

Divided equally between teams, each team would be expected to have 1.96 U.S. born black players.  Since fractional players are not possible, let’s round up to 2 players per team.

But there is no reason to believe that United States born black players would be distributed anything other than randomly among the teams, which means that some teams would have more than 2 and some less than 2, with some even having 0 United States born black players.  (I will let those with greater math skills than I to determine the odds of two teams ending up with 0 players facing each other in the World Series), but in light of the small sample size (1 year), I suspect that, while unusual, it is not likely to be anything other than random.

I would greatly appreciate a more rigorous mathematical examination if anyone is capable or interested.

As I said, math is not my strong suit.

And, like CurtOne, I live in the past.  (Although MY past is mostly the 20th and 21st centuries).