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.

Imagine being halfway into the second round of your draft, whether or not you’re in a keeper league or not, how exciting is it to see Matt Holliday fall to the 16th pick? Well I was less than excited. I’m the type of fantasy player who doesn’t want to have to draft a player because they fall to them. Most fantasy players would be excited to get a first round player in the 2nd round of the draft (remember the draft was in a keeper league, but in fresh leagues Holliday is probably a late 1st/early 2nd player anyway).

Don’t get me wrong I like the fact that I’m getting a hitter who can reach a .400 wOBA, and is projected by 5 different projections to be above .390 for 150 games. So let us focus on Matt Holliday the player, not the fact that I “had” to draft him.

In 2004 Matt Holliday broke into the show with the Rockies and promptly played 121 games, hit 19 homers, and held his own with a .358 wOBA. As a rookie this is really good, but the Coors Field effect cast doubts on his actual ability.  In 2005, ‘06, and ‘07 he continued to get better as his wOBA increased every season as well as his playing time, with 2007 being the career year, 36 homers, and an amazing .428 wOBA.

2008 saw Matt Holliday going backwards some with 12 less balls leaving the stands as home runs, costing his wOBA to drop to .418, which was just the 6th best hitter in the league. Because of Holliday’s looming payday the Rockies decided to ship him off to the highest bidder who turned out to be Oakland, Oakland then turned him over to St. Louis mid-season.

Last season Matt Holliday played a full season and mashed the ball again. His counting stats matched 2008, however he played 20 more games, dropping his wOBA to .390. This drop could be from park effects, age, injury, or just general decline. However, the forecasters named Bill James, CHONE, Marcel, Zips, and the Fans of Fangraphs, all have Holliday matching last years effectiveness with a full season in St. Louis. His projected wOBA ranges from .390 to .399, and playing time they see him getting at least 597 or more plate appearances.

As a 30 year old Holliday still has some life to live in the major leagues. His game is based on power, speed, eye, and ability, and that’s why he got paid this last off season. As a fantasy owner, getting first round talent in the 2nd round, well I just made myself feel better. In your draft you may have to decide do you want Pedroia, Zimmerman, Sizemore, or Holliday… I had the choice made for me already, but it might not be a bad idea to just take Holliday as he has the ability to regress and be better than the others, while he also has a chance to get lucky (a few extra seeing-eye singles, a few cheap homers) and put up another .400+ wOBA year.

Last March, most fantasy baseball owners saw Mets’s shortstop Jose Reyes , go in the first two rounds of their draft. His top flight speed, matched with above average hitting skills, mixed in with a position that lacks fantasy studs, there’s no question everyone who drafted him expected huge returns.

However, Reyes who had played 150+ games a season for the previous four years, managed only to squeak out 36 games played in 2009. He was still pretty good in those 36 games, but six weeks of playing doesn’t really pay off for a blue chip draft pick.

Coming into spring training this season, Jose appeared to be healthy, until doctors found out he had a thyroid issue. They prescribed rest to help the elevated levels return to normal.

The health issue is being described as not serious, but Jose’s weak hamstrings and now varying hormone levels are likely to scare away potential suitors come draft time. Their worry could be your potential gain.

What can we realistically expect from Reyes this season? According to FanGraphs.com three of their four projection systems peg him to have a full season of over 150 games played. Only the Marcel projections have Reyes for half a season. These projections all came out before the thyroid condition came into play, which if it fixes itself, should not be much of an issue.

All four projection systems project Reyes to be a .351-.366 wOBA player which sticks him in between Tulowitski and Jeter being the third best hitting short stop when he’s playing. When he’s playing he does everything right, he gets on base, he hits with enough power to not hurt your team, and steals bases. This makes in an incredibly medium-high risk, very high reward player in any draft.

As long as Reyes on the field he is a fantasy game changer, the risk for Jose Reyes lies completely with how many games he plays in 2010. Because he is so good, he’s still valuable if he only gets in half a season as his production will likely out weigh a mid-level short stop, and generally those points, stats, or whatever counter your league(s) use still count.

The shortstop position is thin for elite talent, so getting a great player pays great dividends, while having a bust here, and having to replace a Hanley, Tulo, or Jose, doesn’t put you to far behind most of the teams. The risk is there, but it is far from crippling.

I would be comfortable taking Jose Reyes before or after Jeter is off the table, likely in the second or third round, if it’s round four and you haven’t filled the shortstop position, calling out Jose Reyes’ name should be extremely exciting.

Nabbing a backup shortstop would not be a high priority either, as the mid level short stops are not likely to be much better than the waiver wire pick-ups likely to be available, depending how deep your league goes.

My fantasy league has evolved many times over its 6 year existence. Being a group of friends who loved fantasy football, we started with a Yahoo based, head to head weekly match-up with as many categories as we felt fit. We were not happy with a 5×5 setup, and so we added the rest to get somewhere in the neighborhood of a 12×12 league.

Thankfully this all changed last year when ESPN allowed us to do a points league and that’s where my work began. I had become pretty familiar with sabremetrics at least on small level of understanding. I didn’t know how they came up with the statistics they used, but I trusted that they worked and understood the results of the work.

Everyone knows that baseball is based on who scores more runs than the other team, but recently its becoming more popular to understand that preventing a run is just as good (if not possibly better) than scoring one. With that in mind I wondered why fantasy leagues couldn’t be based in the same manner. Baseball games aren’t won on lost based on categories, at the end of the day its runs scored vs runs scored.

Reading Tom Tango’s book taught me how his research allowed him to weight events that occur in baseball such as outs, singles, doubles, homers, etc. These values all have a value in how often they score runs. The nice thing about these numbers is that they are linear statistics so Tango scaled these into a statistic called weighted on-base average (wOBA, sounds like woah-bah).

Tango scaled wOBA to mirror on base percentage which most baseball fans are pretty familiar with, so that it wasn’t necessary to become familiar with another scale of good, average, and bad. I took the weighted values and turned them into points for a fantasy baseball league. Then I took fielder independent pitching (FIP, sounds like fip, not f i p) which measures the abilities pitchers have to get through games and prevent runs on their own. Pitchers get points for getting outs, strikeouts, get docked for giving up home runs, and walks.

It took me a solid week by I was able to get pitchers and hitters on the same level and hey, we have a new league. So like a good commissioner, I tested this league out by manually entering stats and scenarios and came up with some ground rules. Each week each team can only have 7 games started by pitchers. We limit each team to one free agent pick up per week, thus creating a strategy based league that requires quality over quantity.

The end result was very pleasing, even though nobody else in the league really understood wOBA or FIP, they understood the points and what they meant and were able to compete very well. My team rode a hot August and September from Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander, and Ubaldo Jiminez get get a spot in the playoffs and then eventually win out. It wasn’t easy and 8 teams were pretty competitive all season, even my fiancee’s team turned up the heat late and before the season she could name more Cardinals from the 1998 team, then she could have from the 2009 team (now she has favorite players, and has a passion of dislike towards Brad Lidge, she’s awesome!)

For a fun friends and family league the first season was absolutely successful. Everyone liked the points format as they could better understand how they were doing each week, they saw how preventing runs came in handy, if not just as handy as scoring them. This year everyone wanted to continue with the system and we’re getting ready to draft here in 3 weeks, and by the keepers chosen, I can see that everyone has caught on. Back to the cellar for me? Well my fiancee is scheduled to face off against me in week one, and she plans on starting off with a win.