Replacement Level At Other Infield Positions
On Tuesday, I let slip a little secret I’ve been nursing for a few months – namely that replacement level middle infielders appear to be one WAR players. The incongruity of that statement – that replacement level equals one – has led to some public misadventures in player analysis. That’s a real world problem.
From a fantasy perspective, my conclusion was simple: don’t go out of your way to draft middle infielders. For somebody completely new to fantasy baseball, that seems like a big ol’ DUH! However, for most of my life, fantasy gospel stated that middle infield is scarce and therefore production up the middle is worth more than the same production at another position. Now it has flipped, although not enough to bother over-drafting other positions.
My advice for 2019: draft the best statistical fits for your roster. Don’t worry about position. And for Ruth’s sake, don’t worry about catchers. Now, let’s peek at replacement level for catcher, first base, and third base.
Catcher
Well we knew this would look terrible because 2018 was an unusually bad season for the weakest hitting position on the diamond. As with the previous article, I’m going to take a shortcut by using offensive WAR rather than converting category production into values. We’re shooting for “good enough.”
No surprise, J.T. Realmuto led the league. Any guesses on number two? That’s Francisco Cervelli. I bet he went undrafted in your league. Ditto fourth ranked Omar Narvaez. Possibly sixth ranked Kurt Suzuki (I picked up last round/$1 shares in virtually every league). Definitely seventh best Mitch Garver. Oh, hello there Buster Posey. He’s eighth-best.
For a 12-team, one catcher format, replacement level was in the range of Robinson Chirinos, John Hicks, Willson Contreras, and Gary Sanchez. Oh my. Two catcher leagues and deeper formats had Jonathan Lucroy’s four home runs and .241/.291/.325 batting line available.
The position was a catastrophe. One might think selecting an early catcher would be advisable. We tried that last year. Refer back to Sanchez, Contreras, and Posey. They weren’t zeroes on the stat sheet, but they were massive losses. In my TGFBI league, Sanchez was selected in the second round between Cody Bellinger and J.D. Martinez. Contreras was a couple picks ahead of Lorenzo Cain in the fifth round. Posey went ahead of Travis Shaw, Khris Davis, Gerrit Cole, and Ronald Acuna.
In short, the improvement from one of these guys over Lucroy was not worth the opportunity cost of skipping a star. We can’t assume 2019 will be this terrible. Nor can we be sure you’ll avoid other landmines like Yoenis Cespedes and Chris Archer. However, I think it’s pretty safe to shy away from the position. Get a free guy like Willians Astudillo.
First base
The real world replacement level at first base was exactly zero WAR. Neil Walker, John Hicks, Greg Bird, and Lucas Duda were the poster children. There weren’t enough catchers with 300 or more plate appearances to derive a replacement level. It was probably sub-zero WAR.
In shallow formats, fantasy replacement level at first base was in the area of David Freese, Jose Abreu, Justin Smoak, and Carlos Santana. Not bad. Deeper leagues were looking at Matt Adams, Matt Davidson, Jake Bauers, and Joe Mauer. In other words, one category guys. If you refer back to the middle infield lists, you’ll notice some freely available multi-category weapons.
Any argument towards a scarcity-driven approach to the draft should be built around first base. However, my personal approach is to bet on more breakout performers like Luke Voit.
Third Base
Actual replacement level at third base checked in similarly to the middle infield – ranging from half a win (Evan Longoria) to 1.2 WAR (Adrian Beltre). I honestly didn’t expect this. Multi-position players are partially to blame. Interestingly, first base had just as many utility guys on the list, underscore how much they underperformed as a group.
Shallow formats had a replacement level around Kris Bryant, Eduardo Escobar, and Brian Anderson. Deepen the league and you needed Maikel Franco, Christian Villanueva, and Jeimer Candelario. Regardless of league depth, you were using a pretty good player. Four of the top seven performers – Max Muncy, Matt Carpenter, Matt Chapman, and Justin Turner – were either free or cheaply available at one point in the season.
Much I advised caution before you overreact to poor performance of first basemen, I would be careful about counting on cheap third basemen.
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Every once in a while I stumble over some blind nut doing my draft prep. And then when RotoGraphs goes over it I’m like “no, no, no don’t tell the whole rest of the world this”. So, you know, you’ve gone over the replacement level value for middle infield, corner infield and catcher – please maybe not go any further.
I might be lazy enough to let this go…
I’m not sure, but I think you were just called a blind nut. Ha!
Wait is the nut blind? I thought it’s the squirrel that’s blind.
Good article. I think that it’s mostly driven by so many middle infielders hitting for (relative) power as well as stealing bases. It used to be that “double-digit threats” (i.e., 10+ HR and 10+ SB) were mostly outfielders, but now you’ve got quite a few MI who qualify. I’m talking about value in a 4×4 or 5×5.
Back when I started with fantasy baseball (early 1990s), it was just Barry Larkin who would project as a double-digit threat from the SS position in most years. Now you’ve got (in no particular order) Turner, Machado, Bregman, Mondesi, Baez, Lindor, Story, Anderson, Peraza, Segura, and probably a few others that I’m forgetting. I’ll look it up: hell even Marcus Semien, Niko Goodrum, and Dansby Swanson have places on the list.
Meanwhile, so many 1B are just one-dimensional. Desmond and Bellinger project as the only double-digit threats, both of whom moonlight as OFers and whose value is attenuated by low BA. Freeman barely made the list in 2018 with a career high in SB, while Goldschmidt barely missed with a local career low in SB (but probably not a threat to steal 10+ bases going forward) and the aforementioned Goodrum also qualified at 1B. If you don’t steal bases, then you have to hit a lot of HR to have value as a 1B, but most have HR totals not that much more impressive than their MI counterparts. Meanwhile there are relatively few high BA, low HR 1B these days (i.e., Mark Grace-types).
I looked at the 2018 Steamer projections of 12 middle infielders who were signed to minor league contracts last offseason. They averaged a projection of -0.14 WAR per 600 plate appearances. So not 1.
I don’t think that replacement level, in real baseball, can be determined simply by looking at the ~30th-best player at each position. Because those players may still have value, whereas a replacement player, by definition, does not. That a player would be signed to a minor league contract suggests that he has no real value, but is still desired by a team, presumably as a fill-in or “replacement.”
This is not to say that that middle infielders are still scarce in fantasy, or that any of your fantasy-related analysis is wrong. I just think you might be misinterpreting the real-baseball version of replacement level.
I fudged a lot so this is valid criticism. Since I left out everybody under 300 PA, I figured that would move replacement level up from around the 40th or 45th player at a position. Indeed, making this adjustment at SS for example, moves replacement level to about 0.2 WAR over ~100PA.
https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=ss&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&page=1_50
Another advantage of picking catchers off the waiver wire is that, on short schedule days like Mondays and Thursdays, you can simply drop your catcher to pick up a decent hitter. Or, on Sunday, pick up a nice streaming pitcher in a weekly league. Or “stream” a Rajai Davis type on a day he is starting.
In our weekly H2H points league last year, neither I nor my opponent even had a catcher for most of the 2 week finals – a good reliever like Knebel seemed a better buy.