Positional Scarcity, August 7

SP is the scarcest position by elite edge (+333); 1B is the deepest (+65).

"Catcher is thin" gets repeated every season and almost never measured. Measured, the picture is different: the position where an elite player beats what you can pick up for free by the widest margin is SP, and the position where he barely beats it at all is 1B.

Scarcity by position

Replacement is the average of the first three players at a position who would NOT be started in a twelve-team league, the best of what is sitting on waivers. The edge is what an elite player at that position gives you over him, and it is the only one of these numbers that changes a roster decision.

What this actually means

A big edge means paying up is justified: the drop to what you would otherwise run out is steep. A small one means the position is deep and the premium is mostly reputation, at 1B the waiver player is worth 326 and the elite one 391, a difference of 65, which is not worth a high pick or a large trade.

The elite tier at each position

The players carrying those edges.

What this means

Matt Olson is the best first baseman on the board and he beats the guy you left on the waiver wire by 65 points. That is the whole story of the position, and it is the cleanest case of a market that has not caught up. Replacement level at first base sits at 326, higher than the elite catcher in this data. The median starting first baseman is 383. Olson is 391. You are paying a premium to move eight points off the middle of the position, and 65 points off a player you could add for nothing.

The mechanism is not that first basemen are bad. It is that the thing first basemen are drafted for, power and average from a bat-only profile, is the most common thing in the player pool. With 104 eligible, the position does not need to be deep in count to be deep in production, because the twelfth-best is doing roughly what the second-best is doing. Scarcity is about the gap, not the ceiling, and there is no gap here. Relievers show the same shape from the other end: 387 eligible, an elite edge of 68, and Louis Varland at 154 against a replacement of 86. Both positions punish you for spending early and refill themselves in June.

Where the gap actually lives is starting pitching. Cease at 458 against a replacement of 126 is an edge of 333, more than double any hitting position and five times what the best first baseman gives you. Even the median starting pitcher at 203 is 77 clear of replacement. That is the number I would build around: the middle of the position is already valuable, and the top of it is the single largest edge in the game. Outfield is the hitter version of the argument, +256 with Crow-Armstrong at 475, though the 219 replacement level means the fifth outfielder you stream is not costing you much.

Here is the strongest case against all of this. Replacement level is defined as the best player you did not start, which assumes you can always get him. In a 12-team league with 201 eligible starters, that is close to true for pitching. It is much less true for shortstop, where 84 players are eligible and the drop from a median starter at 360 to replacement at 238 is 122 points. The same logic applies at catcher: replacement is 148, the lowest of any hitting spot, and the median starter at 250 is a hundred points clear of it. So a reader could fairly say the interesting scarcity is not at the top of shortstop and catcher but at the bottom, and that the elite edge column understates both. I think that is half right. It argues for getting a real shortstop and a real catcher early enough, not for paying elite prices for Witt or Contreras.

What would change my mind on first base is a shift in that 326 replacement number. If injuries and platoons pull the readily available first baseman down toward the 235 to 241 range where third base and second base sit, Olson's edge roughly triples and the position becomes worth paying for. Watch the twelfth-best available first baseman, not the top one.

So: buy starting pitching until it feels excessive, take the outfield bat, and fill first base and closer last from whatever the pool coughs up. The cost of being wrong is real but small. If first base tightens up, you lose maybe 60 points at one slot. If you skip pitching, you lose 333 at the position that has them.

How to read this

Replacement level is what you can have for nothing. That is the correct baseline for a roster decision, a player is worth what he gives you over the alternative you would otherwise start, not what he produces in isolation.

Elite is the third-best player at the position rather than the first. The best player is usually unobtainable and using him would make every position look scarce; the third is someone a manager in a twelve-team league actually owns.

Players count at every position they qualify for, because that is how a roster uses them. Using only a primary position badly undercounts outfielders and depends on an ordering that carries no meaning.

The obvious version of this measure, how far value falls from the best player to the last startable one, mostly measures how good the best player is. Starting pitcher looks like the steepest cliff in baseball by that method, which says more about the top arm than about what you can stream.

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