Luke Harker's Resume

WAR. It seems to be the most used statistic in baseball media, but why? WAR stands for wins above replacement and it compiles specific offensive and defensive metrics. It defines a player by a single number relative to the output of that year. Players are valued by how many more wins they are worth than a replacement player at their position. Below is a table showing how WAR is generally graded.

WAR	Description
< 0	Less than replacement level
0 – 1	Replacement player
1 – 2	Utility / Bench player
2 – 3	Average starter
3 – 4	Above average starter
4 – 5	All-Star player
5 – 6	Superstar player
6 +	MVP caliber player

Now what exactly is a replacement player? To the definition according to MLB, a replacement player is a minor leaguer or a free agent. In theory, this makes sense because they are a player who will join a major league club and simply do their job. Though with the increase in analytics and player development it gets harder to define a replacement player. It is starting to be a figment of our imagination since a minor league player can come up from what seems to be any level of the minor leagues and develop WAR.

Michael Harris II started the 2022 season in AA at the age of 21. He was elevated to the Braves major league roster on May 28th that same year. Harris went on to post a 5.3 bWAR in 114 games and winning the NL Rookie of the year award. Harris is just one of many player in the 2022 season who came out of the minors and put the team on his back. Below is a table of other rookies who played above their means in 2022.

Name	bWAR	Age
Julio Rodriguez	6.2	21
Steven Kwan	5.5	25
Adley Rutschman	5.2	24
Jeremy Peña	4.8	25

Bobby Witt Jr. started the 22 season at the major league level as a 21 year old. He was the #3 prospect in the MLB according to Baseball America. Over 150 games played, he collected a grand total of .8 WAR. It is something that makes you scratch your head, because you would expect a highly ranked prospect who was near elite in 2021 at AAA with a .933 OPS to certainly not have an OPS of .722. He is a prospect, he is a minor leaguer, so would he be the definition of a replacement player? When you ask that, then what do you make of the other 5 rookies that I listed earlier?

It seems that MiLB players just get better as well as younger more than ever before. If we look at the OPS of players in all levels of the minor leagues(R-AAA) from 2012, it is .721. The OPS from the same range in 2022 was .731. The .01 increase may seem small to the average eye, but if we go back to 2002 the average OPS was .716. This .15 difference is drastic. Obviously OPS isn’t the be all end all of stats, especially for the minor leagues. The minor leagues are created to have players develop their abilities so they might rely less on the ones they have already mastered. One thing that is also a major difference is age. According to Baseball America, The average age for a minor league batter in 2022 was 23.5, in 2012 it was 23.9 and in 2002 it was 23.9. The minor league players in baseball are not only getting better, but they are getting better at a younger age.

We are moving into an era where teams are doing whatever they can to get that next cheap and young top prospect. They want to bet on the idea of them being more than a replacement player. A prospect who can produce at the major league level is great for a ball club because of the years of control a player is under. This is a whole different topic of baseball in itself.

If not a minor league player then what about a free agent? It is rare to see a mid-season acquisition of a free agent who comes to a team and produces. Could this be the definition of a replacement level player? They will be able to join a team and simply get the job done off the bench.

The truth is a replacement player is something that analysts have made up just to be able to correctly use the stat we call WAR. A replacement player could be a star who is dealing with an injury and isn’t playing well, a top minor league prospect that can’t hit in the big leagues, or just a simple free agent signing. A replacement level player is anyone who hovers around a 0 to 1 WAR, and it can really only be classified over that players career in the major leagues. If we look at a player like Phil Gosselin who has played a total of 497 MLB games over 10 seasons. Over his span in the MLB he accumulated a total of -.3 bWAR and over a total of 162 games his average is -.1 bWAR. Based on the amount of data we have on Gosselin, we can classify him as a replacement level player. In conclusion, only time and data are the real factors in how we can define a true replacement level player.