Jackie Robinson Day

A year go at this time, I was recuperating from brain surgery. And I had the idea that, for the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first major league game, I would run the translation process for Jackie Robinson’s 1946 season.

As it happened, I didn’t get home from the hospital unti April 12, which (combined with my fatigue level) meant I didn’t get a post ready by April 15. I did get it together shortly thereafter…can’t really remember now, but it was maybe a wek later.

But I didn’t post it. What would be better, I thought, was not just Jackie in isolation, but the whole International League for 1946.

And a little while later I had that, with a little help from the stats posted at baseball-reference.com. But I still didn’t post. Even better, I said to myself, would be the whole AAA for 1946, to be able to place Jackie in a reasonable prospect position. Sure I hadn’t planned on it, but after seeing what they had at b-ref I thought it would be pretty easy.

And it was. Still a little later on, I had the IL, PCL, and AA for 1946 all drawn up. It was nowhere close to Robinson’s debut date anymore, and I wasn’t coming up with any hook to wrap around it for a good post. So instead of posting anything, I just kept going, working my way through the AAA of 1947. And 1948. And so on.

By then we were through with the entire baseball season, and I still hadn’t posted anything about it. I had completed doing all the AAA teams, right up to 1980 where I had everything, and then started on b-ref’s list of Japanese teams.

So now, a year later, my head’s healed, and its another Jackie Robinson Day, and if I haven’t buried the lead enough already, and I’ve got translations for all AAA teams and players going back to 1946 posted on the site. And the Japanese Central and Pacific Leagues, along with all of their players, are translated back to those league’s debut in 1950. The links will be found under the “DTs by League” tab. The link for the league that started it all is here:

https://claydavenport.com/stats/webpages/1946/1946pageINTyearALL.shtml

In addition, the DTs links for all players should reflect their AAA stats.

There’s still some work to do with them. I still haven’t finished getting all of the fielding stats added, so lots of players are listed at the position “DH” – that’s the default when no fielding data is found. The park and difficulty factors are not as complete as they are for recent years…nature of the beast, I’m afraid. And there is, of course, no split data for minor league seasons before 2005.

Year Team         Lge  AB  H   DB  TP  HR  BB  SO  R  RBI  SB  CS  Out  BA   OBP  SLG   EqA EqR POW SPD KRt WRt BIP
1946 Montreal____ Int 470 137  33   5   3  67  42  90  52  33  11  349 .291 .392 .402  .284  75 -14  10  18   6   4 
1947 Brooklyn____ NL  600 168  37   3  16  68  54 134  50  39   0  445 .280 .372 .432  .289 100  -2  14  17   2  -4 

Robinson’s 1946 DT shows a clearly above average hitter, one with excellent contact skills and outstanding speed. He has a bigtime number of doubles – interestingly enough, his minor league double count would be 42 when projected to the same 600 AB as his 1947 major league line – but a distinct lack of home runs. With the exception of the home runs, his lines are extremely close (and his 1948 would be equally similar).