If Pitches Are Fixed, Baseball Is Broken

In 1919, Shoeless Joe Jackson was a top-10 position player in baseball. He led his White Sox to the World Series, where he hit .375/.394/.563 over eight games against the Cincinnati Reds and topped the other hitters in win probability added and championship win probability added. No one who appeared in more than three games of that series had a higher wRC+ than Jackson’s 164. On the surface, the stats seemed to support what Jackson claimed in September 1920, as he testified before a grand injury that was seeking to indict dirty Sox players for throwing the series: “I tried to win all the time.”