Archive Diving: The Black Ink and Gray Ink Tests

Sorry for not posting anything yesterday. I've been working on something kind of big these last few days. It should be up sometime later today.

In the meantime, I thought it'd be a good idea to continue the Archive Diving series so that anyone new to Wezen-Ball.com can get a good sense of what we're about. For today, I'm taking us back to one of the first few stats-driven pieces that I wrote.

The "Black Ink" and "Gray Ink" tests over at Baseball Reference are an interesting little way to rate players, assigning points for the various categories that they led the league in (or were in the top 10 in) over their career. They can be used to give one a rough idea of a player's worth during his career, and might signify a Hall of Fame candidate. After Tom Stone from Seamheads.com pointed out that there isn't really a resource for year-by-year Black Ink and Gray Ink leaders, I took it upon myself to fix that. I even modified the standard Gray Ink Test to weight a player's finish in a particular stat (i.e., a 7th place finish in home runs earns you less points than a 1st place finish).

Here, then, are the single season leaders for the Black Ink Test and Gray Ink Test. There are some truly remarkable seasons to be found (like Walter Johnson in 1913, Joe Medwick in 1937, and even Randy Johnson in 2002). Go take a look and let me know what you think.