Week 9: What is Replacement level?

Keith and Paul got together to talk about Keith’s big trade and to pay off their lunch bet from their matchup that Paul won

Year to Date Power Ranks through this week
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Michael	3.21	1	Dean	2.00	1	Brian/Josh	1.50		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
2	Paul	3.57	2	Paul	3.13	2	Michael	2.83		Arthur	PURE DOMINATION
3	Dean	4.50	3	Michael	3.50	3	Dave	3.00		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
4	Cory	5.00	4	Arthur	5.25	4	Cory	4.17		Brian/Josh	Smoak That Ish
5	Dave	5.00	5	Cory	5.63	5	Paul	4.17		Paul	CWS champion Gators
6	Brian/Josh	5.07	6	Matt	5.88	6	Arthur	5.17		Dean	First Future father
7	Arthur	5.21	7	Dave	6.50	7	Keith	7.67		Matt	615 for the win
8	Matt	7.14	8	Keith	6.88	8	Dean	7.83		Max	Don't Demote  Me
9	Keith	7.21	9	Brian/Josh	7.75	9	Max	8.50		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
10	Max	8.21	10	Max	8.00	10	Matt	8.83		Michael	The Flooded Farm

In this blog, at the draft, and in casual conversations throughout the year, you may hear me or fantasy analysts throw out the term replacement level. What does this mean? Conceptually it’s a simple idea, it’s the level of player at which you can find a new one readily available on the waiver wire. Easy enough. But what is that level? That’s the question.

Let’s talk specifically about our league and focus on starting pitchers today, the concepts will carry over to the other positions as well. In our league we have room for endless starting pitchers (SPs), but based on our league rules it is advantageous to try to minimize your innings pitched as long as you get over 30 innings for the week. This means that generally you need three to five starts per week. So we’ll average it out and say that every team needs four starters and we’ll even throw in one bench-and-evaluate guy that you’re hoping will be good someday. This puts the starting pitching pool of rostered SPs between 40 and 50. Right now there are 54 SPs owned in the league, including 11 that are on the DL. This puts a baseline of replacement level at 54 SPs because, well, everyone else is literally available, but what does the data say?

I pulled the projected ERAs and FIPs from the preseason of all SPs that were projected to get over 100 Innings Pitched this year, here is what that ERA and FIP distrubution look like across the 170 players sorted from lowest ERA and FIP to highest ERA and FIP.

What you see here is three to four distinct tiers, for the sake of the argument I’ve shown 4 trendlines here. You can see about 10 to 15 SPs that are a cut above the field in terms of what their ERAs are projected to be. After that there is either a large tier of about 115 players who’s ERAs and FIPs range from 3.5 to 5.0 or two tiers: 30 players from 3.5 to 4.25 and 85 players from 4.25 to 5.00. Logiccally, want the guys that are far above the large grouping to be on our team, if the rest are all about as good as each other, then that makes them replaceable. Let’s keep digging.

Here is how things have played out so far this year. These are all the SPs who have made at least one start.

I have placed the trendline on the FIP because it is a smoother curve. Three distinct teiers show up here. SPs 1 to 20, 20 to 150, and 150+. For arguments sake the numbers look the same if the level for qualification is five starts, instead of one. At 10 starts the player pool significantly shrinks but the top tier is between 15 and 20.

There is more to SPs than ERA alone, the other most controllable trait for pitchers is strikeouts. How do these same 170 pitchers’ Strikeout Rates per 9 innings (k rate) break down? I compared their projected k rates coming into the year, and then how they’ve fared year to date.

Look at this, three tiers again, albeit less distinct than before. Thanks to our Industrial Systems Engineer in the league, Dean, he told me this is called a cumulative normal distribution. This shows us that if you can find a pitcher with a K rate above 9.5 projected or 11 year to date or so, he is adding value to your team. Between 9.5 (or 11) and 6 you will likely be running with the pack, below 6 and you’re losing ground on the field.

So, what are our takeaways here? Replacement level is only 20 starting pitchers deep. Either with respect to their ability to control Earned Runs or generate strikeouts, if a pitcher isn’t top 20 or you hope he can become top 20, he is taking up a bench spot on your team that you could be taking a chance on a hitter or closer with. The aggressive strategy here would be to stream any pitchers outsie of these top 20 to get you to 30 innings pitched every week, but I understand that not everyone wants to put that amount of work into it.

But Michael, there is an ERA or FIP gap of about 2.0 runs in that middle tier (from 3.0 to 5.0), aren’t some of them better than others? Yes, however not distinctly so from one pitcher to the next. This is why you want to find pitchers towards the top  end of the middle tier of players and hope they can move into the next tier…but until the get there: THEY ARE REPLACEABLE!

The high profile matchup of the week contained the first and third power ranked teams. Paul just edged out Dean with some slick pitching pickups and a powerful offense that put up 16 home runs. Dean’s inability to get any saves held him back here as Paul won the category with 3 saves. Dean has been trying to trade for saves for a bit now but just can’t find anyone at a price he’s willing to pay.

Michael and BJ both had big weeks last week, but the real entertainment in this matchup came down to Sunday on the pitching side. Michael was up 1 win, ER was tied, BJ led ERA by 0.01 and WHIP by 0.06. Michael and BJ both had a pitcher going on Sunday but Michael’s pticher was going later in the day than BJ’s. The logical thing for BJ to do here is bench the starting pitcher (and probably all their pitchers), punt the half point in wins that their guy might earn them to save the half point in ER and two full points in ERA and WHIP. But….that’s not what they did. When asked later as to why they didn’t bench their guy, Josh replied, ‘cuz I’m drunk and it sounded good.’ Their guy Michael Wacha went on to take a no-hitter into the 9^th and BJ had pulled off the most ridiculous, luckiest, dumbest, most fantastic SP starts of all time….until their Wade Davis comes in and melts down for 3 ER in a late game. All the gains were lost. Not to be outdone Michael has a closer give up a run in the second to last game of the day and lose the ERA category after all. Fantasy is not for the faint of heart.

Taking a scond to recover, ok let’s go.

Dave edged out Matt with 14 home runs and a huge pitching week with a 1.44 ERA over 50 innings, very impressive. Matt found a way to get 258 At Bats with a DL guy in his lineup all week. Imagine what he could do with a full roster. Davea, AKA the king of replacement level pitchers this year, had it all working this week on the pitching side, but he’ll be without Kershaw for awhile longer it looks like.

Cory beat Keith into last week but this one was more about Keith. He just couldn’t put much together with 5 home runs, a .257 average and a 5.17 ERA. Cory is firmly in the middle class of the league right now, but has shown the flashes to compete with the best. Hm, sounds a lot like his Phillies.

Arthur edged out Max late on Sunday in a very tight matchup. Neither team will be writing home to brag aobut this one, but Arthur got 6 wins compared to Max’s 2 wins in a similar number of innings to edge Max out. Max is holding a number of Starting Pitchers as well trying to make something stick, it may be time to change that strategy. Arthur was part of one of the more surprising trades I can remember in this league, trading away his boy Bryce Harper and a very good closer for a slumping Jose Altuve and a starting pitcher.

Monster of the Week: nothing particulary caught my eye. Michael had a pretty big week but it wasn’t to the standard of ‘Monster’

Max of the Week: this one had some competition. Matt was running with 4 guys on the Disabled List on his active roster for awhile now, and at least one of them in his active LINEUP for 10 days until one league member pointed it out. This was cute when Max used to do this back in the day, but we have a more competitive and engaged league now, step it up, Matt. ALSO, that little pitching move by Josh above was definitely Max worthy, not knowing how to play the matchup should have cost team BJ 3 points, instead Wacha saved their ass.