Recently, Bill James was approached via Twitter to see if he’d be interested in having a debate about the case for Thurman Munson to be elected to the Hall of Fame. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable request to have a famous baseball analyst take one side of the debate about a famous former player, and someone else defend the other side of the question.
Then James responded:
Well then.
Of course, the discussion didn’t quite end there. When pressed for a reason for his apparently strong feeling that Munson isn’t worthy of a discussion of his Hall of Fame case, James snapped at another commenter, then offered the following:
So, to run the risk of incurring his wrath by paraphrasing him, it seems that James feels there are a lot of catchers in front of Munson who aren’t in the Hall of Fame yet, and therefore it’s pointless to discuss whether Munson even has a case.
There are a couple of obvious problems with that statement.
The first is that the question posed wasn’t whether or not Thurman Munson was the BEST catcher not in the Hall of Fame, or the most deserving of induction. It was just a question of whether or not his case should be debated. The existence of a couple of recently-retired catchers (Buster Posey and Joe Mauer) who may have better Hall of Fame cases than Munson is pretty much moot. Their cases have nothing at all to do with whether or not Munson has a debate-worthy case, so those names constitute a red herring by James.
The other problem is that most of the other players James mentioned simply were not better than Thurman Munson. And that’s not my opinion, that’s Bill James’ opinion. In 2001, he wrote a very large book, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, in which he ranked the 100 best players in baseball history at each position. At catcher, he ranked Munson as the 14th-best catcher of all time, ahead of, among others, Darrell Porter, Lance Parrish, Bob Boone, Gene Tenace, and Sherm Lollar, five of the guys he just claimed on Twitter were better than Munson.
I have to presume he simply forgot about that, which is fine, but certainly raises a ton of questions. And one of those questions was about this followup from James:
The question begged is, of course, why does Willie Randolph (James’ 17th-best second baseman ever) or Roy White (James’ 25th-best left fielder ever) deserve a debate, while Munson (his 14th-best catcher) doesn’t?
I think the simple answer, once again, is that James just doesn’t remember that he ranked Munson higher among his peers than he ranked Randolph or White, and never bothered to check where he stood on the subject in the past.
All of this is really no big deal in the grand scheme of things. Some people have grumpy and/or confrontational online personalities, and some people have faulty memories, and sometimes people suffer from both, as is the case here.
The only real problem is that James is widely viewed as perhaps the preeminent baseball analyst of all time. Belligerently relying on your memory to start an argument where none exists, when you literally have your own book available to refresh your memory first, is a bad look.
And it’s not the first time James has had a faulty memory about Thurman Munson. In his 1995 book, Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?, James says the following about Munson’s case for Cooperstown:
“Munson’s career was terminated before it could build to the standards normally associated with the Hall of Fame, leaving two questions:
Should an allowance be made for him, because of his misfortune? and
Would he, absent the accident, have built a Hall of Fame career? The answers, to my way of thinking, are “No” and “No.”
Players in most cases have to be evaluated by what they actually did, not by what they would have done or might have done. I’ll make an allowance for certain types of career gaps - military service, players in mid-career before the color line was broken, and perhaps one or two other things. Munson’s situation is an injury, an extreme injury, but an injury. There are dozens of players who would have had Hall of Fame careers if they hadn’t been hurt. Hell, there are more of those than there are actual Hall of Famers.
Munson was pretty much through, as a player, anyway. At the time of his death he already had knee and back injuries which end the careers of most catchers. His last two or three games as a catcher, as I recall, he was replaced in mid-game by Jerry Narron, and in 1978 and 1979, despite respectable batting averages, he wasn’t putting many runs on the scoreboard.”
Let’s deal with his two questions in order.
First, James is certainly entitled to make no allowance for the accomplishments Munson may have compiled had he not died at 32-years old. I will grant him that. The flip side of that coin is that the rest of us get to judge whether or not that is a particularly harsh stance for James to take. To call a player’s death by airplane crash “an extreme injury” is, in my opinion, extremely tone deaf on top of being extremely heartless.
James’ second point is really where I want to focus, though, because it gets back to his faulty memory.
To start, the Jerry Narron stuff is simply wrong, and I have no idea why he’d include it in a book without fact-checking box scores or something. Here are the facts:
Munson was NOT “replaced in mid-game by Jerry Narron” in “his last two or three games as a catcher.” The games in question were July 23, July 24, and July 27 of 1979.
Munson played all of the July 23 game.
In the July 24 game, Munson fell hard on his knee and bruised it while evading a wild pitch, so he was pulled to start the 5th inning.
He missed the next two games before coming back to start the July 27 game, his final one as a catcher. He played that entire game.
He missed the July 28 game because the knee was still sore, then played the next four games, three at first base and one as DH. Then, tragically, he died.
James can’t be mistaking these final games at catcher with any other stretch where Munson was regularly pulled mid-game, because no such stretch of games exists. The only other games within a month of the end of his career from which Munson was removed early were July 21 (pulled in the 7th, along with Lou Piniella, as the Yankees had a 10-4 lead), July 14 (pulled in the 6th as the Yankees had a 6-0 lead), July 11 (pulled in the 6th, along with Bobby Murcer and Reggie Jackson, as the Yankees trailed 11-0), and June 25 (pulled after a foul ball hit him in the knee in the first inning).
So the Jerry Narron stuff is just nonsense. Other than blowout games and minor injuries, Munson didn’t miss any time as the Yankees primary catcher in 1979.
As for James’ second point that Munson was “pretty much through, as a player, anyway,” that, too, is just wildly wrong. A basic review of Munson’s final couple of seasons includes:
In 1979, prior to the July 24 knee bruise, Munson had played 92 of the team’s 98 games, all at catcher, with the exception of a handful of DH or pinch-hitting appearances.
While Munson’s offense had dropped from his peak years, he was still posting a respectable batting line of .288/.340/.374, for an OPS+ of 95, which is perfectly acceptable for a good defensive catcher.
Munson had a poor April, but from May on his batting line was .302/.363/.392.
Munson was still a good defender at catcher. He posted 1.0 dWAR and 4 Fielding Runs while throwing out 46% of attempted base stealers when the league average was 36%.
Munson posted 2.4 WAR in 97 games in 1979, a 3.6 WAR pace if he’d been able to finish the season.
His 1978 season was essentially the same; .297/.332/.373 batting line, 3.3 WAR, played 154 games, caught 45% of base stealers, etc.
I don’t know how any serious baseball analyst can look at those seasons and conclude that Munson was “pretty much through”. He was a decidedly less valuable player than he’d been in his earlier years, sure, but a catcher posting 3.3 or 3.6 WAR over a full season and continuing to throw out 45% or more of the runners attempting to steal is still a remarkably valuable commodity. Given both his production and his durability, there is every reason to believe the Munson had several valuable seasons still in front of him had he not died.
One final point about Munson’s career. Here’s how he compares through age 32 to some of the other catchers James’ cites as having better Hall of Fame cases than him:
No one on that list was decidedly better than Munson, and most are clearly worse, through the same point in their careers. Posada isn’t even in the discussion since he didn’t play regularly until he was 27. Freehan started earlier and played about a season’s-worth more games, but was slightly worse both defensively and offensively. Posey was a better hitter and comparable defender, but didn’t have Munson’s durability. Only Mauer has a real case for a better career through age 32, and that’s by the barest of margins. He’d also already transitioned to being a full-time first baseman while Munson still a valuable everyday catcher.
In short, Thurman Munson has a very definite case for inclusion in the Hall of Fame, even without giving him any extra allowance for the stats he likely would have posted had he lived. James’ intransigent and heartless stance to the contrary is, frankly, baffling.
Even more baffling is the fact that a world-class baseball analyst would have a track record of relying on a provably faulty memory rather than facts.
If you’re going to do that, Bill, at least try being nice about it so people won’t fact-check you.
Was this written before or after Bill posted his atrocious “joke” about Munson as a pilot. It’s like he has a personal vendetta.
Bill James response is troubling, but certainly not baffling. For all his prodigious acumen and analysis regarding baseball; he is at heart a lifelong Red Sox fan, embittered by all the Yankees success. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, "sir, what is your reason for not acknowleging Munson's abilities?" James's response, "spite." 🙂👍⚾️