VORPed Minds Think Alike

An interesting baseball stat is Value Over Replacement Player, or VORP. Essentially, what this stat does is give you a picture of what would happen if a team did not have this player, but instead some random guy up from the minors. Now, in the majors, the conceptual definition VORP is sort of subjective based on what each franchise has in the minors. In fantasy baseball, the notion of a replacement player is much easier to define objectively, since everyone has the same pool of replacement players. Additionally, in fantasy, you don't have to worry about defense. So the evaluation is a bit easier.

This perspective also takes into account positional scarcity, since the replacement players for different positions will give you an indication of the scarcity that's in play.

So what's the easy way to do this sort of evaluation? Just look at each position, and note the difference in performance is. For example, look at these season-to-date lines:

Player	G	AB	R	HR	RBI	SB	OBP	SLG
Chase Utley	55	210	42.0	17.0	46.0	5.0	0.394	0.638
Orlando Hudson	45	166	24.0	4.0	26.0	2.0	0.380	0.488
Utley Proj	162	618.5	123.7	50.1	135.5	14.7	0.394	0.638
Hudson Proj	162	597.6	86.4	14.4	93.6	7.2	0.380	0.488
Utley VORP	-	-	37.3	35.7	41.9	7.5	0.014	0.150

What I'm doing is projecting out Utley and Hudson's stats to 162 games. And then, illustrating the difference over 162 games. Of course, you can tweak what numbers you use in the projected values. Maybe you take some weighted average of this year's stats and prior year's stats, or whatever. Or for younger players, you use numbers based on the career arc. I'm also assuming that Hudson is the next best available 2B. This may not bet the case, particularly if you sort stats by the most recent month. But you can use a similar method for evaluation, only projecting out stats based on the most recent month's performance. That may not be the most accurate method, but if you want to try to ride out hot streaks, it could be what you're looking for.

In any case, you can start to see some other things to do. First, if you have a working understanding of what the replacement player levels are, you will have a better picture of the value of players. In fact, looking at these stats, some of these players belong on rosters.

Player	G	AB	R	HR	RBI	SB	OBP	SLG
C - Olivio	30	106	12	6	22	2	0.333	0.594
C Proj	162	572.4	64.8	32.4	118.8	10.8	0.333	0.594
1B/3B - Cantu	50	198	28	7	24	2	0.332	0.532
1B/3B Proj	162	641.5	90.7	22.7	77.8	6.5	0.332	0.532
SS - Crosby	53	208	27	3	26	4	0.325	0.389
SS Proj	162	635.8	82.5	9.2	79.5	12.2	0.325	0.389
OF - Bradley	48	171	30	8	31	0	0.435	0.561
OF Proj	162	577.1	101.3	27.0	104.6	0.0	0.435	0.561

So what does this get us? First of all, Milton Bradley and Miguel Olivio belong on a UPL roster. But really, you see the difference in what's available. 2B and SS have little value. 3B and 1B are a little better, and both run deeper. There are a lot of talented OF. What's misleading is C. After Olivio, you don't have much.

To get a true picture of each position, you should probably go deeper, maybe average out the top 3 replacement players. Additionally, you also have to account for the number of AB that each player will actually have. But, this is a nice little way of seeing what's available, as well as giving you a consistent metric for evaluating trades and other transactions. Also, I'm projecting stats based on 162 games. Maybe using AB is a better way of doing your projections for some players, since you could account for players who are coming off injury and have been used in pinch hitting roles or players who platoon.

So the notion of scarcity is a very real thing. This approach also helps illustrate what I was talking about in the previous post about injuries.

Player	G	AB	R	HR	RBI	SB	OBP	SLG
SS Proj	162	635.8	82.53	9.17	79.47	12.23	0.325	0.389
21 SS Games	21	82.4	10.7	1.2	10.3	1.6	0.325	0.389
C Proj	162	572.4	64.8	32.4	118.8	10.8	0.333	0.594
14 C Games	14	49.5	5.6	2.8	10.3	0.9	0.333	0.594
Total Stats	35	131.9	16.3	3.989	20.57	2.518	0.328	0.466

I've lost out on 21 games of Rafael Furcal and 14 games of Ryan Doumit. Here's what I missed out on, with replacement players, prorated for the games missed (this is the upper bound - in actuality, you probably don't get all of those games: likely only 19 games from SS and maybe 10 games from C). See some interesting results? It looks like I missed out on about 16R, 4HR, 21 RBI, 3SB, but would have only had a .328 OBP and a .466 SLG during that time from those 2 positions. And more importantly, my roster flexibility would have been lost. Even if the OBP and SLG weren't a concern for my team (and really, this year, they're not), what this data shows is that my roster flexibility was worth about 16 R, 4 HR, 21 RBI, and 3SB, roughly what I guessed in my last post.

This also helps you evaluate trades. For a little while, Ryan Garko was being shopped around in our league. The problem was that his value wasn't any better than players who were available in free agency at the time. Additionally, since Garko was a 1B, you likely were going to play him at UTIL, so your VORP there has to be based on all positions. It's not like he was a 2B or SS whose stats weren't great, but still better than whatever was available. Those players still have some value, if you can find the right place for them. But at a position where most teams are already set? That's a tough sell.

In any case, VORP isn't a magical stat that's just better than anything else out there, but it's a nice way of looking at players, and matching up values when you need to try to compare apples to apples.

-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)