Fangraphs can haz WAR comparison

Appelman:

The other new feature are the WAR graphs where you can compare up to 4 players at a time in various ways:

Highest hitting WAR to End a Career

B-R blog:

Here is a look at the players with the best final seasons since 1901.

Rk	Player	WAR/pos	Year	Age	Tm	Lg	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	IBB	SO	HBP	SH	SF	GDP	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	Pos
1	Shoeless Joe Jackson	7.4	1920	30	CHW	AL	146	649	570	105	218	42	20	12	121	56	0	14	7	16	0	0	9	12	.382	.444	.589	1.033	*7
2	Happy Felsch	4.9	1920	28	CHW	AL	142	613	556	88	188	40	15	14	115	37	0	25	4	16	0	0	8	13	.338	.384	.540	.923	*8
3	Jackie Robinson	4.6	1956	37	BRO	NL	117	431	357	61	98	15	2	10	43	60	2	32	3	9	2	9	12	5	.275	.382	.412	.793	*54/37

…

Rare Deadball Era baseball footage

From 1909-1920:

The Black Sox are there (2:06): Buck Weaver (4:55), Shoeless Joe Jackson (4:39), Dickie Kerr (3:32), Eddie Cicotte (3:59), Kid Gleason (5:26) and more.

Buck Weaver shouldn’t have been banned. Reinstate the Ginger Kid!

Fangraphs introduces wRC+

Appelman:

As you may have noticed, there’s now an extra column in the “Advanced” section for batting stats called “wRC+”. You can think of this stat as a wOBA based version of OPS+. It’s park and league adjusted and it’s on a very similar scale as OPS+. The difference is that it uses wRC, which is based on wOBA. …

Tango has more.

Here’s the career leaderboard. Notice Dick Allen? The only Top 25 guy that’s not in the HoF?  Shoeless Joe is #9.

Was Shoeless Joe Jackson innocent?

Studes:

Eliot Asinof’s notes for his signature baseball book, Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, were released to the public recently, and some folks have gone through them. Some Chicago lawyers, actually. And a subsequent article in the Chicago Lawyer Magazine (now, there’s one magazine I never thought to read) raises the question of whether Asinof really knew enough to write such an authoritative book. …

A look at the Shoeless Joe Jackson museum & Baseball Library

Dave Hoekstra:

In April 2006, the red brick home in which the legendary White Sox lived and died was dismantled and moved to across the street from Fluor Field, the beautiful new stadium of the Greenville Drive, the Boston Red Sox’ Class A affiliate. The home opened as the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum & Baseball Library in June, 2008. The house is at 356 Field Street — in honor of Jackson’s .356 lifetime batting average, the third highest in baseball history.A life-size bronze statue of Jackson has been erected downtown in the Joe Jackson Plaza. The statue base is made from original bricks salvaged from Comiskey Park. …

WAR updated all the way back to 1871

Chone “Rally” Smith:

And finally, the numbers go all the way back to 1871 for hitters and 1876 for pitchers. Some of the estimates used to fill these stats in, like the baserunning regression formula or the JAARF fielding numbers, are not to be trusted as anything more than a reasonable guess. Catcher defensive ratings are based on passed balls and errors only. It is not worth it to even try to estimate performance against the running game by catcher assists. Mike Piazza had about as many assists per game as Johnny Bench. Enough said.

Here’s the WAR database.

And here’s Shoeless Joe Jackson. And Eddie Collins. And Luke Appling.

And Red Faber. And Ed Walsh. And Ted Lyons. And Eddie Cicotte. And Billy Pierce.