Bill James Has a Bad Day

Bill James is taking heat over comments about players, and how easily the can be replaced:

“If the players all retired tomorrow, we would replace them,” James continued. “The game would go on; in three years it would make no difference whatsoever. The players are NOT the game, any more than the beer vendors are.”

James’ comments drew the ire of Clark and players past and present, including Houston Astros pitcher Justin Verlander.

“The comments Bill James made yesterday are both reckless and insulting considering our game’s history regarding the use of replacement players,” Clark said in a statement issued Thursday. “The Players ARE the game. And our fans have an opportunity to enjoy the most talented baseball Players in the world every season.

“If these sentiments resonate beyond this one individual, then any challenges that lie ahead will be more difficult to overcome than initially anticipated.”

James has actually held this position for quite a long time. His 1988 Baseball Abstract was written while the NFL was on strike, and games were going on with replacements.

The crucial difference between football and baseball in this respect is what I am going to call the players’ insulation: the minor leagues. In football, there is only a fine line distinguishing those who are good enough to have jobs from those who are out scrounging for regular work. Players come out of college trained, ready to play, many of them good enough to leap right into the league and contribute. Others are not quite good enough, barely, and so the are let go — free. Sometimes teams make mistakes in judging, and those who are really good enough to play are let go. Sometimes a player is let go by one team in August will be a star by December.

In baseball this doesn’t happen…

The difference, of course, is the minor leagues. The raw talent distribution of the two sports is exactly the same: talent in all sports is a pyramid. For every player who is this good, there are several times as many who are half as good, and hundreds who are half as good as that. In baseball those players are playing minor-league baseball. Because they are playing in the minor leagues, they wee themselves as standing in line, waiting for a chance which they know will come if they play will enough. They are within the structure that contains their eventual success. They will not violate that structure. The free football players know that their chance will never come within the existing structure.

I have the 1995 STATS Replacement Player Handbook. The people tapped as replacements were for the most part not very good. They were old, career minor leaguers, or youngsters without much of a future. So James was right about the level of play between MLB replacements and NFL replacements.

As for the three-year time span, there were 1348 players used in 2015, 1379 players used in 2018. There were 718 players from 2015 who were still active three years later, 53%. That’s a huge turnover. So yes, I suspect if AAA players took over, we would see a drop in talent at first, but in a few years the new talent would come along and fill in the holes.

James’s statement was not very diplomatic. Taken in the context of his history on the subject his gist that the game could take a huge loss of MLB talent and recover in a few years is correct.

from baseballmusings.com https://ift.tt/2PPLQn5