The replacement level player is a fairly new concept in baseball. I don’t know about the origin of it, but I know that I first gathered the concept while reading some Baseball Prospectus article on VORP (Value over Replacement Players). Other sites use different tools to value players in other leagues, but the bottom line typically is called a replacement player. A replacement player is qualified as a player who is freely available at the minimum cost. From year to year the quality of this player can change, but most of the time it is fairly stable.

How about in fantasy baseball. What determines a replacement player? In our home league here we have 16 teams gearing up for a draft.    Each team has a six bench slots to help fill in from time to time, but our league limits the ability to freely pick up guys from the waivers or free agents. Other leagues are much different in how they may only have one or two bench slots, but you can rotate your roster via the wavier wire all season long if you really wanted to.

This makes defining replacement level extremely tough as its going to be different for each and every league. However, because this blog is for curbing the standard in hopes to outreach to new players, we’ll use our home league as the example to debate how to define a replacement level player.

We have 16 teams that carry one player at every position, a utility hitter, and five starting and five relief pitchers.

So for each batting position replacement level has to start somewhere past the 16th best player, and each role of pitchers past 80th. Then you may have to dig a little deeper as the utility role swallows up 16 more players from 9 hitting positions, so each position on average (while likely mostly OF and 1B) loses another player.

Bench adds another twist, each best is likely to have at least one starting pitcher (break glass in case of emergency (like if all your pitchers only pitch once that week)) maybe another starter and or reliever, so anywhere from 1-3 bench spots in pitchers. Then hitters in a perfect world you have a backup catcher, infielder, and outfielder.  Finding a guy who can play all 3 OF spots is easier, the infielders gets harder, and catchers it might not even matter, as the 18th best catcher doesn’t have great odds of playing everyday.

So another 100 players past the starter’s point are going to be swarmed up in bench spots spread fairly evenly across all positions. So another 8 players are gone. Then we have to consider that we carry a DL in our league, so injured players allow a few more players to get soaked up past the 1 pick up per week.

How should replacement level be considered?

The most accurate would be to look at the first 5-8 players available in the pool at any given time and average their production. Typically a best available player is not around, and replacement players I hope are only used to plug holes for very short periods of time, or even in a one game situation, thus meaning you might not pick the best guy available if the guy below him is more likely to put in 6 games a week, and may have a more favorable schedule.

If we find an acceptable replacement level number for fantasy baseball in our sabremetric style points league, does it really mean anything?

Yes and no, typically if your opponent picks up a guy from the waivers he’s more likely to go 0/4 or 0/5 for negative points than he is to hit a double with a walk to net some considerable value. So in that way its not very important, as you know your starter is going to be way better than that player anyway. However rating players against this baseline gives you a better sense of their actual production across the board.

Its easy to compare 2B to 2B, however if you want to compare a 1B vs a 2B things get quite a bit more tricky. 20 points a week from your 1B is worth less to your team than 20 points from your 2B. In the end it means the same (20 points for your team). Odds are however, that if you have a 20 point week from Chase Utley (2B) and he has a 20 point week from his Prince Fielder (1B), you’re ahead because its more likely you have a 1B who can put up 12-18 points in a given week, where as his 2b would typically fall in the 8-14 range.

This is necessary because points do not care what position a player plays its hard to see the actual value of the player. If you can freely get a Casey Kotchman (1B) in the Free Agent pool and he averages 12 points a week,  there’s not quite a drop off from that 20 point mark. However if the best available SS is Jack Wilson and he can only be expected to get you about 8 points a week, makes Hanley Ramirez (SS) potential of return much higher as he is less easily replaced.

In our head to head style of play, its much like baseball on the field, the Jack Wilsons’ can score a few runs for the Mariners and be the story of the game, and look like Honus Wagner, the same can happen in our league where Jack Wilson could go 8/18 with 3 doubles, 3 walks and a stolen base and net you 18 points.

This metric would mean much less in the day to day aspect, much like wOBA, WAR, and VORP is meaningless on the field. However pre-draft and looking forward, its a good idea to know what players over the season would net you the most value to give you the best chance to win.