Orioles => Highlanders redux
Posted by Sean Forman on February 26, 2010
From the discussion that ensued in the previous post about this topic, it is pretty clear that while it may be a justified decision to split them, I'm going to need to study this a bit more. It seems to me that there are many such circumstances in baseball's primordial past that warrant further study. So my decision is to punt and do nothing. I'm going to leave it as is until we can come up with a reasonable process to study each and every one of these issues. Perhaps this would be a good job for the SABR Executives and 19th Century committees. Just a thought. Thank you to everyone who commented.
February 26th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
I think each case is different. The wording of the various histories is of no real help, either. I've seen it noted that Troy and Worcester moved to New York and Philadelphia, but most historians say that Troy and Worcester folded and the league awarded Philadelphia and New York new franchises. Of course, some of the same players showed up in those two cities because there still was a limited amount of talent.
Sloppy language in histories have mucked up the works.
February 26th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
A wise decision, Sean. A site with a reputation as great as this one's should not make changes willy-nilly. Considering the circumstances of all such franchise transactions and moves before making policy changes is the prudent course of action.
I would still suggest that J.R.'s idea of adding links on franchise pages to "subsets" based on franchise location (e.g. on the A's page have links that separate Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Oakland) would be a reasonable addition, and probably not too complicated to implement. That way those who wish to consider "Yankees history" as beginning in 1903 could check out those pages and have the 1901-02 Orioles excluded. Also, those interested in Braves history since moving to Atlanta can do so more conventiently. But the main franchise record pages would still remain intact.
February 27th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
i would like to... er... second (?) my own suggestion about the franchise splits. and tomepp, i completely agree with your statement. this site is looked at as one of the beacons of baseball knowledge, not just for its amount of content, but for its accuracy of said content. sit tight, and as soon as there is, if there is, definitive proof either way, make your decision. thanks guys.
February 27th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
In terms of creating leaderboards, you can do that on the play index. We don't have the city leaderboard idea, but maybe someday.