I know there’s been a lot of baseball nuts sniffing around the blog, looking for something interesting, and I think you’re finally in luck. I’ve slapped together some Satchel Paige information- focusing on his 1933 season, reconstructed with the help of several sources. I’ll list those sources at the bottom of the piece, because that kind of stuff is extremely important to 5% of the readership, and extremely cumbersome (and/or useless) to the rest of us.
Why 1933? Why not. Satchel is 24 or 25 (or 28, 38 years old, whatever) and ascending into his peak. Here’s one of the greatest pitchers in the country, splitting his time between the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the spring and early summer, then an integrated semi-pro team in North Dakota and finally an all-star, all-black team in the California Winter League.
He pitched against the best black players in the country with the Craws, a mix of black, semi-pro and ex-minor leaguers in North Dakota, and finally a mix of high minor league and wintering Major Leaguers in California. The Craws totals will differ slightly from the Shades of Glory source listed below, because I’ve added one relief appearance against a top-notch white semi-pro team.
It’s not his best season, but this is Satchel on the rise, circa-1933 (sorry about formatting, I’m still in Blogging Spring Training here, trying to work on my game):
TEAM W L ERA* IP H BB K SV
Crawfords 5 7 1.85 97 54 12 57 1
North Dakota 8 0 1.52 77 49 14 136 0
California 9 1 1.10 90 50 30 129 0
TOTALS 22 8 1.50 264 153 56 322 1
*estimates
Oh, he had 30 complete games and 5 shutouts.
TEAM PITCH COUNTS** PER IP PER 9 IP
Crawfords 1289 13.29 119.5
North Dakota 1205 15.65 140.8
California 1471 16.34 147.1
TOTALS 3965 15.02 135.2
**I’ve used Tangotiger’s basic pitch count estimator
The vast majority of his innings pitched (at least 200+) were against quality hitters. One of his North Dakota starts was against a legitimate American Association All-Star team. He held them to 4 hits, 2 runs and struck out 14. Several of the other North Dakota outings were against all-star teams peppered with disgruntled Negro Leaguers, ex-or-future white minor leaguers, college players. If you add all this stuff together; the Negro Leaguers, the semi-pros, the wintering Major and Pacific Coast Leaguers in California, this has to be the equivalent of minor league ball. AAA? AA? High A? What do you think? And what do you make of the extraordinary pitch counts? What can we learn from that?
Now for those pesky sources. All the North Dakota data was compiled by me, using the Bismarck Tribune game accounts. Negro League data was culled from the book Shades of Glory, by Lawrence Hogan, plus the Pittsburgh Courier. The California data is from the book, California Winter League, America’s First Integrated Professional Baseball League, by William F. McNeil. As previously mentioned, I’ve used Tangotiger’s Basic Pitch Count Estimator.
2 Comments
October 29, 2008 at 12:30 am
Very nice post. This gave me more info on Satchel Paige then I previously had. I attended he Baseball Hall of Fame a few years ago and one thing that stood out from that trip was the big Satchel Paige statue they had on display. You can see that pic and more at my post about it: http://www.ontheblack.com/2008/10/13/my-trip-to-cooperstown-baseball-hall-of-fame/
October 29, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Thanks, Kerel. I looked at your slides from the Cooperstown visit. Looks like you had an awesome trip there.