I'm having an argument with a friend who insists that Major League Baseball is a much poorer game now than before expansion. Pointing to the Sox 5th starter competition he says none of these guys would have even had a shot of the big leagues in the old days. I'll see him tomorrow at the bar so I pulled this info from the Baseball Reference data base and the US Census Bureau.

 

In 1953 out of every million Americans, 3.2 played in the big leagues. In 2003 the number is 3.1.

 

Although the number of players has more than doubled due to expansion, the talent pool has more than kept up through the increase in population and importation of players from other countries. The talent pool prior to 1953 was further diminished by the exclusion of black Americans before they broke the color line in the late '40s. I argue that you have to be a better player to make the majors today than ever before.

 

I don't know if I'll get this through his head, he doesn't accept the fact that Barry Latman, who made 21 starts for the '59 team going 8-5 on the way to as 13-13 career, not only isn't better, but couldn't even compete with Danny Wright.

 

I didn't combine the little countries into 'other' because it's kind of cool to see that a guy from South Viet Nam (Danny Graves), Greece (Al Campanis) or Afghanistan (Jeff Bronkey) has played in the bigs.

I totally agree with you here. Percentage wise the amout of good and lousy players is probably very close to the same as it ever was in the past.

It's sounds like you have a pretty solid theory to support your arguement, and statistics to back up the theory. Of course, this guy probably won't allow himself to be convinced.

Overexpansion has diminished the quality of all of the major sports. Nowadays you have a lot of players who should be playing at the minor leauge level in the big leauges because they need to fill out lineups. I'd say you had the right amount of teams just as the 90's began and before the wild expansion in all pro sports started.