Position Scarcity: FAAB Edition

Brett writes:

I remember hearing once the theory that OF is the best position to spend your money because they are most easily replaced, and it's more likely that good OF will come up from the minors or start getting real playing time because there are more of them to get hurt. Contrast that to a position like SS where if your guy gets hurt, your likely replacement is going to be awful offensively - so you're better off skimping there.

I don't know, what do you think? Think the data would play out this way?

I ran back through the 2007 LABR and Tout Wars auctions, selected players who weren't purchased in one or both leagues, and came up with the following data.

2007 A.L. Free Agents: $3+ Earnings

Pos.	#	Total $	Avg. $	Best FA
C	4	$15	$3.75	Kurt Suzuki ($5)
1B	8	$51	$6.38	Matt Stairs ($17)
2B	4	$27	$6.75	Brendan Harris ($14)
SS	5	$33	$6.60	Brendan Harris ($14)
3B	6	$33	$5.50	Josh Fields ($13)
OF	22	$199	$9.05	Reggie Willits ($17)
DH	3	$17	$5.67	Billy Butler ($10)
Totals	43	$304	$7.07

2007 N.L. Free Agents: $3+ Earnings

Pos.	#	Total $	Avg. $	Best FA
C	6	$25	$4.17	Ryan Doumit ($7)
1B	9	$75	$8.33	Dmitri Young ($19)
2B	9	$63	$7.00	Yunel Escobar ($12)
SS	6	$47	$7.83	Yunel Escobar ($12)
3B	5	$50	$10.00	Mark Reynolds ($14)
OF	29	$231	$7.97	Hunter Pence ($25)
DH
Totals	57	$434	$7.61

First off, the # and Total $ columns don’t add up. Players with multi-positional eligibility like Brendan Harris and Yunel Escobar are totaled at all positions where they are eligible, since I didn’t want to arbitrarily assign players to a position to concoct any misleading conclusions.

However, there are even more problems with these tables. For one, players like Dmitri Young and Billy Butler were most definitely frozen in leagues that auction in late March or early April. For another, players like Hunter Pence were most likely tooling around in someone's farm system in April and weren't sitting in the free agent pool waiting to be claimed. For yet another, this chart only takes position eligibility at the end of 2007 into account.

Forgetting these caveats, what do we see?

We see what we would expect to see if we've played Roto for long enough. Outfield is where it's at in terms of free agent replacements. A total of eight outfield replacement crack the $10 barrier in the American League, and five of these guys were legit free agents in my American League available to FAAB. Brendan Harris is the only non-OF on this list who wasn't frozen or kept as a farm player and cracked the $10 barrier.

(Which, once again, highlights the problem with this exercise. Carlos Pena was a free agent in my league. Damn.)

The next highest FA non-OF in the A.L. is Chris Gomez at $5.

It's a somewhat different story in the National League. It starts out similarly, with six of the Top 10 free agents manning OF only - with Dmitri Young, Mark Teixeira ($15), Mark Reynolds ($14), and Yunel Escobar ($12) making this group. However, there is definitely a more even distribution of players on the rest of the list. There are a surprising number of first basemen and middle infielders here who put up $6 or $7 of earnings. Third base has some strong players but is shallow. Catcher is thin and weak, just like in the A.L.

So I'd say that outfield is indeed where it's at in the free agent pool.

If you're interested in the raw data, I'll post it; it's a lot to look at.

Returning to your theory:

I remember hearing once the theory that OF is the best position to spend your money because they are most easily replaced, and it's more likely that good OF will come up from the minors or start getting real playing time because there are more of them to get hurt. Contrast that to a position like SS where if your guy gets hurt, your likely replacement is going to be awful offensively - so you're better off skimping there.

I would think the opposite would hold. Better OF replacements would mean that a $1 scrub OF would be someone that you could shuffle off your roster when Reggie Willits or Marlon Byrd came along, whereas you're more likely to be married to a $1 middle infielder, and you're pretty much stuck with a $1 catcher - or his equally unappealing replacement - all year long.

In keeper leagues, you're also going to have a somewhat easier time finding a non-contender who has stronger outfielders to deal into your non-productive OF slots than you are a non-contender who has a hotshot middle infielder or catcher to send your way. In a dump-moderate or dump-heavy league, having 14 everyday players down the stretch who will produce every day is huge. Getting stuck with a $1 scrub at catcher or middle infield isn't an automatic loser, but it doesn't help your cause.