How many hits did Cap Anson have?

[absintheofmalaise]

Cwright looks into this question and comes up with different answers. It all depends on who you ask.

 

[4 6 3 DP]

I think this is a very fun article.
 
I would love to get more of an understanding of why the administrative decisions in the last year were made the way they were, but any time an article makes me want to learn more it has done its job. Well done.

 

[JimBoSox9]

So, this is the part I can't make up my mind on:
 

However, Anson’s most controversial hits came to light in 1969. In 1887, for one season only, the league decided that all bases on balls should be counted as hits. Anson’s 60 walks had therefore been added to both his season and career hit totals. The Special Baseball Records Committee (which had banished National Association statistics from major league totals) ruled that the 1887 records should be adjusted to exclude walks from hits totals. When baseball’s first encyclopedia, The Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia, was published in 1969, its publisher followed the committee’s guidelines and subtracted those 60 “hits” from the previous total of 3,055. 

 
That's a pretty existential binary to me.  Is a walk in 1887 a walk or a hit in 2015?  I want to say it's a hit, because you can't post hoc changes the rules that were being played under, but there's got to be some threshold for just erasing a temporary and obvious mistake.  Those 60 hits are by far the biggest variable in the equation; without them it's very very hard to form a credible case Anson is a member of the 3,000 hit club.

 

[The Tax Man]

I think the biggest argument for including Cap is the 400 hits from the National Association. I know MLB and the Hall of Fame don't recognize the stats from the NA but from 1871 - 1875 most of the best players and teams were in that league. Cap should get credit for those hits especially since the record keeping wasn't great during his career.

 

[cwright]

I think this is a very fun article.
 
I would love to get more of an understanding of why the administrative decisions in the last year were made the way they were, but any time an article makes me want to learn more it has done its job. Well done.

 
Thanks - I really enjoyed writing it. I never put much thought into the history of record-keeping, so I learned a lot.
 
Like JimBoSox, I'm torn on using the 60 walks - it doesn't seem fair somehow. But I also figure his 400+ hits in the National Association should count for something, kind of like Ichiro's hits from Japan. Either way, it was fascinating to me that there are still so many discrepancies in early stats.

 

[Koufax]

Like Tax Man, I'd include the 400 but exclude the 60.

 

[Average Reds]

Like Tax Man, I'd include the 400 but exclude the 60.

 
Let's talk about the 60 walks and I'll try to articulate why I would also exclude them.
 
From a record keeping perspective, my bias is always to defer to the rules as written at any given time.  For example, what we now know as an automatic double was considered a home run until 1930 (American League) or 1931 (National League.)  So we know that if he had played the majority of his career under the rules as they exist today, Babe Ruth would not have 714 home runs.  However, any attempt to lower the number of Babe Ruth's home runs would be tantamount to ignoring the actual outcome of the games as they were played, because he was awarded a home run at the time.
 
We do not have the same paradox with walks.  Because regardless of how we categorize what happens, there is no inconsistency with the fact that the player ended up on first base.  So if we have accurate figures for how many walks Cap Anson got in 1887, I have no problem removing these from his hit total.
 
I do believe that Anson's hits in the National Association should count, but because he was probably the single most important figure in terms of the imposition of the original color line in baseball, I'm quite pleased to allow this injustice to stay on the books.
 
In short, f&ck 'em.

 

[Koufax]

I did not realize that today's ground rule double was yesterday's home run.  That's quite a surprise.
 
The logic of the rest of your post is unassailable, right down to the last sentence.

 

[DJnVa]

I did not realize that today's ground rule double was yesterday's home run. 

 
Automatic double. Not ground rule.
 
 
 
Also, wasn't there a period of time, when if someone hit what would today be a walk-off HR, he didn't receive credit for it, but only for the number of bases needed to winning run to score? So, a HR in bottom of 9th in tie game with runner on third was only credited as a single.

 

[Average Reds]

 
Also, wasn't there a period of time, when if someone hit what would today be a walk-off HR, he didn't receive credit for it, but only for the number of bases needed to winning run to score? So, a HR in bottom of 9th in tie game with runner on third was only credited as a single.

Yes, but my understanding is that they changed that rule and restored the "missing" stats.

 

[Max Power]

 
 
We do not have the same paradox with walks.  Because regardless of how we categorize what happens, there is no inconsistency with the fact that the player ended up on first base.  So if we have accurate figures for how many walks Cap Anson got in 1887, I have no problem removing these from his hit total.
 
 

 
That's my feeling on it as well. But how about the uneven application of sacrifice rules and whether it counts as an at bat? That's also simply a categorization issue, but I don't believe any of the record keeping organizations have ever retroactively changed batting averages to conform with the current rules.
 
Here's a brief history of the rule from 1980.
 
http://research.sabr.org/journals/sacrifice-fly