ESPN Positional Player Ownership and Replacement Levels

It’s time to understand how ownership trends are playing out this year. I will start by breaking down one of the most common fantasy sites, ESPN. I will go over the batter ownership rates for different league sizes so owners know which players are applicable to them. Additionally, I will find the current replacement level player for each position.

With fantasy experts using ownership rates to help find potential waiver targets, it is important to know each league’s ownership level. Historically, I know I should only worry about players owned in 10% of leagues or less but not everyone plays in 15-team or deeper leagues.

To start off with, here are the ownership rates for the top 350 owned hitters by increments of 10.

For each league, a person can find the ownership rates to focus on by adding their starters plus bench plus DL slots. Then, they can take the total times the number of teams for the total number of hitters. For example, in my Tout Wars league the number would be (14 starters + 3 Bench + 2 DL) * 15 Teams or 285. Yep, I am digging for players owned in less than 2% of standard leagues. I am not surprised I had to pick up Erick Aybar which is owned in only 1.9% of ESPN leagues (is up +0.6%).

For a simple comparison, here are the ownership rates for some standard league sizes (assuming six-person bench and three slots for hitters).

Owners should have an idea of which ESPN ownership level to focus on for their leagues. Now onto the replacement levels.

A major offseason change some owners had problems adjusting to was the lack of position scarcity (besides at catcher). Middle infielders hitting is up while production at first base and outfield are down. Some second base scarcity existed in AL-only leagues and third base in NL-only but in most mixed leagues, no scarcity existed.

With leagues now under way, I wondered if the difference still existed.  I ran a simple test to find the replacement level players for the standard 12-team, 14-starter, and three-bench team listed above. Then, I averaged the Steamer (ROS) season stats for the first three position players under 11.8% owned.

Additionally, I calculated a basic 12-team Standings Gain Points (SGP) value for each position. The formula helps to standardize different stats to a similar reference level. Here the positions ranked by the SGP value with the players used.

Besides catcher, there is a small amount of position scarcity for third base and shortstop with first base, outfield, and second base grouped at the top. The talent is still fairly equally distributed on the waiver wire. Just for reference, Howie Kendrick made both the second base and outfield lists.

I believe owners still believe second and short are shallow positions and will give them more value and third base less value. An owner may be able to make a 1:1 trade giving up their second baseman for an equally productive third baseman. With the replacement level higher on second baseman, they can then find a better replacement on the waiver wire.

That’s it for ESPN leagues. Next time, I will take a look at Yahoo! and see how it differs with its extremely liberal minimum position eligibility rules.