Replacement players

The term replacement players is usually used to refer to those players hired to fill in for the 1995 season when it looked like the 1994 strike would not be settled. Many players who had been on strike were critical of the replacement players, with Mike Piazza in the forefront. The players appeared in spring training but the strike was settled before the 1995 season was to begin. This was copied on a strategy used by the NFL during its 1987 strike, whereby it managed to keep staging games while the regular players were on strike, eventually forcing a settlement favorable to the owners.

Quite a few replacement players made the majors in the following years, with the first ones, such as Mike Busch, facing a hostile locker room environment. As they were not members of the MLBPA, replacement players did not have their identities revealed in games such as Statis Pro Baseball which were licensed by the MLBPA.

Replacement players had also been used on previous occasions, most notably on May 18, 1912, when members of the Detroit Tigers went on strike in protest of a suspension handed to teammate Ty Cobb. The team was forced to field a team of coaches and replacement players in a game against the Philadelphia Athletics. The scrubs suffered a lopsided 24-2 loss, not surprising given the mismatch in talent.

For a partial list of replacement players, see Category:Strike Replacement Players.

Further Reading

• Kevin W. Barwin: "Paper Tigers: How a Player Strike Put a Team of 'Misfits' on a Major League Field for a Day", Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Vol. 52 Number 1 (Spring 2023), pp. 5-13.