The journey to find the most substantial Major League Baseball players that wore the number 43 on their uniforms starts by looking at who the Baseball Hall of Fame has in their hallowed halls. Enshrined number ones of professional baseball are:
Another telling clue to find the best is to see who has the MLB number 43 retired by their respective teams. This list of retired number 35s includes:
Okay, now it is time to put our knowledge to work and pick the greatest players that wore number 43 in MLB history based on performance stats. We do not have all of the players from some of the Negro Leagues in place yet but when we do we will certainly update the list so please excuse us on this. The criteria is simple we pulled stats from Baseball-Reference and Stat-Head on some important numbers. Is the player in the Hall of Fame? What were the Wins After Replacement or the team victories gained or lost after they entered the lineup versus the player they replaced? Where do they rank in the following categories in history: Home Runs, Runs Produced, Strike Outs, ERA. We mash this information up and see how many of the criteria rankings they have and then multiply that number (0-6) times the number of years they wore the particular uniform number we are discussing and then add it to bonus points if in the Hall of Fame and for earning any Gold Glove Awards and/or Cy Young Awards. We call that calculated number our Ranked Formula and use it as a basis of Comparison to give you the Top Fifteen at the uniform number.
The stats may not be placing this group in order of importance but what it does do is identify the top 25
Here are our stats and findings:
The picture in the banner above is from the Wikipedia Commons photo collection of the Public Domain of a cropped version of the 1953 Bowman Color baseball card of Ralph Kiner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, card number 80.
Special thanks to Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com and the most wonderful book by Larry Lester and Wayne Stivers, The Negro Leagues Book, Volume 2.
