Yes, there is a lot of luck. For one thing, the gap between very bad players and very good players is fairly small in an absolute sense; for example, a player who gets a hit 25% of the time would have trouble staying in the league, but a player who gets a hit 30% of the time has a good chance of being an all-star. A 5% increase in your success rate separates the very worst players from the very best.<p>There is a great saying about baseball: Every team is going to win 54 games and every team is going to lose 54 games; it is what you do with the other 54 games that counts. (There are 162 games in a season)