From Bill James to someone (not me) on his website. Do we agree here? What is our experience having experimented with all sorts of leagues? Does the WIS experience shed any light on this? Is it a statistical no-brainer? Here is the exchange:
Q. Casey Stengel was reported as saying "good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice-versa." I was wondering: if you had two leagues and one was filled with only great pitchers and great hitters (say, people who pitched like Prime Koufax and batters who hit like Prime Ted Williams) and the other league was filled only with weak pitchers and weak hitters (guys like Jose Lima at his worst pitching to hitters like Neifi Perez at his worst) -- would the league averages just end up normalized so that both leagues would have similar ERAs, batting averages, and OPS, etc in line with MLB averages? Or would there be some notable advantage for the pitchers or hitters in one of the scenarios? Thanks!
Asked by: Roel
Answered: 11/20/2020
A. It seems unlikely that there would be PERFECT agreement between the two leagues, even over time. There would surely be some differences somewhere. But both leagues could certainly wind up with the same ERA and the same batting average, etc.