Ottoneu 201: 2017 RP Replacement Levels

Earlier this month, we took at a look at starting pitcher replacement levels for 2017. Today, we will continue this process for relief pitchers using the same methodology. Please refer back to that post as a primer on how I put my replacement levels together, though I’ll recap some of the methodology here.

2017 Replacement Levels: SP

There are two ways that replacement levels can be defined. This is either as a specific point per game (P/G) or point per inning total (P/IP) or as the nth player ranked at a position. For example, I could say, replacement level for RP is about 6.67 P/IP, or I could say that replacement level for RP is about the 70th RP.

As I acknowledged in my starting pitcher post, from my research in the past, I tend to lean heavily in the “nth player ranked” camp. So, when I reference replacement levels, this will be what I am referring to. I will include a standard P/IP as a baseline, but what I really want to know/convey is how many players are needed within a league to meet the appropriate game caps at each position. This number of players needed to meet each game cap can inform your decision on how many players to include above replacement value when you build your values, based on whatever projection system you decide to use in creating your own values. This could be Steamer, Zips, Pecota, or Pod Projections. Or it could be as simple as plugging in you own opinions of how a player will perform for the upcoming season.

As I mentioned with starting pitchers, the first thing you need to do is determine the amount of innings relief pitchers will make up in your league. I have added in the table from that post as it helps show a range of scenarios. While there isn’t a cap on relief pitcher innings, there is a theoretical limit to how many innings you can expect from the position due to having 5 lineup spots, and the daily volatility of appearances. I will refer to this as a cap, but in reality, it is the number of innings I am allocating to relief pitchers across each team.

As you can see, the number of innings relief pitchers throw as a whole depends on your assumptions. With 5 RP pitcher slots, you’re looking at getting somewhere between 50 and 65 innings per 5 RP slot, for a range of 3,000 to 3,900 for the league. Certainly, we all have our opinions on how many RP innings will actually be used, so feel free to use an assumption that fits your beliefs. This could be expanded upwards if you expected to be able to get 75 innings from each RP slot.

In 2014, I calculated replacement levels for every position across the ottoneu universe. This was a lot of work, but I did this to help calculate better dollar values as I prepared for my upcoming auctions. At the time, looked at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, and “All-Time.” (The “All-Time” data set is actually 28 years, as 1986 was the first year holds was tracked). So, for example, year 1 included 2014, the 2 year data set included 2013-2014, while the 3 year data set included 2012-2014. In doing this, I found that replacement levels over multiple year data sets were very sticky. Certainly over any one individual season, the appropriate replacement levels could produce more variation, but over multi-year periods, the historical replacement levels from 2014 were pretty consistent.

A couple of things stick out, first the over all number of players needed to meet the RP innings “cap” has stayed relatively constant (68-71) over each iteration I ran. However, we are all aware of the specialization of relief pitchers, so we would expect the P/IP associated with a replacement level RP in 2014 to be higher than the 5 year data set. In each iteration I ran, the the P/IP associated with replacement level relief pitchers increased. To determine these totals, I removed every pitcher who started 10 games or more, as they were included in our starting pitcher player pool, and I also removed anyone who pitched under 20 IP. Looking back from 2014, teams have needed about 5-6 RP to meet the allotted innings they are allocating to RP.

However, this only accounts for 1986-2014, and one could easily say that “the game is becoming more specialized”, causing a higher level of relief pitcher dominance in recent seasons. While I would agree with these statements, we want to make sure we don’t misunderstand the gradual shift in relief pitcher values to believe that replacement levels for relief pitchers are drastically increasing. To account for this potential shift, I have calculated replacement levels for each each of the past 3 seasons (2014-2016) under the two most extreme relief pitcher scenarios I outlined above (250 per team to 325 per team). Under these assumptions, I have show the number of relief players needed to meet the necessary innings cap for the league, as well as the associated P/IP with these ranges. Let’s take a look at the current replacement levels.

Over the past 3 years, the number of players needed (and expected P/IP) have stayed very consistent. A quick note. In the historical replacement levels, I did not include a range. The only scenario I ran at the time was the 325 RP innings per team scenario. So if you wanted to compare historical levels to current replacement levels, you would have to compare the “Low” columns. In doing so, we can see that even including historical levels puts us somewhere between 67-71 relief pitchers needed, while the expected P/IP produced from these RP has increased. Currently, I would expect replacement levels to be somewhere between the 50-70th RP, depending on how conservative you want to be with RP innings, with my personal preference to be near 70. Next up, we’ll look at position players.