The 2021 Replacement-Level Killers: Introduction & First Base
In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing subpar production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have presented it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.
When it comes to defining replacement level play, we needn’t be slaves to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — might be considered fair game. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a team may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor due to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it.
For this series, I’ll go around the diamond, pointing out the most egregious examples of potential Killers at each position among contenders, which I’ll define as teams who are above .500 or have playoff odds of at least 10.0%. That definition covers 17 teams (sorry Braves, Cubs, Cardinals, and Nationals, but you’ll have to do this without my help). If one of the aforementioned fringe teams gets their record or odds above the threshold this week, I’ll do an additional Very Special installment at the end. And while I may mention potential trade targets, I’m less focused on these teams’ solutions than I am the problems, because hey, human nature.
This first installment will cover first basemen. All statistics within this piece are through Saturday, July 17.
| Team | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ | Bat | BsR | Fld | WAR | ROS WAR | Tot WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Red Sox | .215 | .261 | .385 | 71 | -12.4 | -0.6 | -2.6 | -1.1 | 0.2 | -0.9 |
| Cleveland | .184 | .264 | .345 | 65 | -14.0 | -1.7 | 0.5 | -1.1 | 0.5 | -0.6 |
| Yankees | .202 | .289 | .331 | 73 | -12.6 | -0.4 | 3.4 | -0.3 | 1.2 | 0.9 |
| Brewers | .211 | .311 | .365 | 87 | -6.5 | -1.1 | 0.3 | -0.2 | 0.4 | 0.2 |
| Mariners | .216 | .285 | .345 | 78 | -10.0 | 0.7 | 4.1 | 0.0 | 0.4 | 0.4 |
| Padres | .280 | .336 | .403 | 105 | 2.7 | -2.7 | -5.6 | 0.0 | 0.4 | 0.4 |
Red Sox
For all of the things that have gone right for the Red Sox in the wake of last year’s debacle, first base is not one of them. Bobby Dalbec, who hit .263/.359/.600 with eight homers in 92 PA over the final month of last season, has been the regular since Opening Day but has hit just .219/.262/.405 (76 wRC+) with 10 homers and -0.6 WAR. While he’s produced a 16.6% barrel rate and a 91.0 mph average exit velocity, he’s struggled to hit four-seam fastballs (.163 AVG, .313 SLG) to the point that his -8 runs against the pitch places him in the fourth percentile. Both his 4.6% walk rate and 36.9% strikeout rate are similarly extreme and call to mind Eric Longenhagen’s caution from Dalbec’s prospect report: “Short of guys with elite power like Miguel Sanó and Joey Gallo, there’s virtually no precedent for any corner bat to strike out as much as Dalbec does and still have sustained success as an everyday big leaguer.”
Neither Michael Chavis nor utilitymen Marwin Gonzalez and Danny Santana — both of whom are currently on the Injured List — have been much better in their limited chances at first. On Sunday night, an experiment with Christian Arroyo playing the position for the first time led to a left hamstring strain after just three innings. Ouch! Gallo is approaching a crossroads in Texas — he has one more year of club control remaining, but his value is at a high coming off a first half that landed him on the All-Star team — and makes sense as a trade target. He has some experience at first base and would help to balance a righty-heavy lineup that features only two lefty-swinging regulars (Rafael Devers and Alex Verdugo). But even bringing back Mitch Moreland (now in Oakland) might be preferable to watching Dalbec flail around.
Cleveland
For as bad as the ranking is, this situation might already be fixed. Through the first two months of the season, lefty-swinging Jake Bauers took starts against righties, and Josh Naylor and Yu Chang started against lefties. Bauers hit just .190/.277/.280 before being dealt to the Mariners on June 10; Bobby Bradley has taken over more or less full-time since then, hitting .225/.323/.541 (131 wRC+) with 10 homers in 127 PA. As Chet Gutwein noted recently, after struggling mightily in his first taste of major league action in 2019, the now–25-year-old Bradley has substantially cut down his chase rate against all pitches and has particularly shored up his results against sliders. He still has a ton of swing-and-miss in his game; his 18.3% swinging-strike rate places him in the third percentile among batters with at least 120 PA, just below Dalbec’s 18.5%. So long as he provides walks and power, Cleveland has other issues to consider.
Yankees
Luke Voit led the majors with 22 homers last year and put up a stellar 152 wRC+, but he hasn’t been right for long this season. After tearing the medial meniscus in his left knee and undergoing surgery in late March, he didn’t debut until May 11 and played just 12 games before straining his oblique, sidelining him for another four weeks. He homered in two of his first three games back, but just before the Yankees returned to action in the second half, he returned to the IL with a bone bruise in his left knee. Between that and his limp .241/.328/.370 showing, it’s not clear that the team can count on much from him; I’m taking the under on our projection for Voit to produce 1.0 WAR over the remainder of the season.
Not only have the Yankees gotten sub-replacement work from fill-ins Mike Ford (now a Ray) and Chris Gittens, but DJ LeMahieu also hasn’t been able to recapture his 2020–21 magic, hitting just .270/.350/.365 and even worse than that during his 27 starts at first. The Yankees would be better off returning him to second base or a multi-position role and finding a first baseman who can outhit Rougned Odor, which shouldn’t be too hard. If not Gallo — who makes all kinds of sense for New York given its numerous needs and righty-heaviness, as he could play first or any outfield spot — then an Anthony Rizzo rental could help; for that matter, so could Kris Bryant, who’s played 12 games at first this year.
Brewers
Since hitting .303/.368/.570 in 84 games as a rookie in 2019, Keston Hiura has been downright dreadful, managing just a 75 wRC+ in 432 PA and striking out 36.3% of the time. He’s been adequate defensively since moving to first at the start of this season — a huge plus given his subpar work at the keystone and the superior play of newcomer Kolten Wong. But Hiura has the majors’ highest swinging-strike rate (23.9%) and lowest zone contact rate (60.8%) of any player with at least 150 PA, and it’s not particularly close; he’s about 10 points ahead of any other player in the latter category, and his 38.7% strikeout rate is the majors’ third-highest among that group. Two stints at Triple-A Nashville, where he’s hit .403/.506/.722, have failed to translate to the majors, and his .167/.261/.309 (58 wRC+ line) is nowhere close to cutting it for a cellar-dwelling team, let alone a first-place one.
While Daniel Vogelbach has provided better production at first base than Hiura (.224/.330/.414, 103 wRC+ in that capacity), his lack of defensive ability has canceled out his value there, and he’s out until at least early August due to a hamstring strain anyway. Rowdy Tellez, whom the team recently acquired from the Blue Jays, is hitting just .203/.272/.324, and he’s no threat to win a Gold Glove, either. Manager Craig Counsell has begun experimenting with Jace Peterson at the spot, as he’s hit a respectable .263/.390/.432, but neither his track record nor his Statcast numbers suggest that’s sustainable. Jesús Aguilar, who played for the Brewers from 2017 to mid-’19 and has since fared well with the Marlins thanks to improved plate discipline, would be a sensible pursuit.
Mariners
Evan White hit an unfathomable .144/.202/.237 before being sidelined by a left hip flexor issue injury, and after two months of rehab, he and the team decided that he needed season-ending surgery to repair a torn labrum. After giving José Marmolejos and Jacob Nottingham brief opportunities, manager Scott Servais has turned to Ty France, who’s hit a respectable .268/.350/.414 and seen the bulk of the duty over the past seven weeks. Primarily a third baseman in the minors, France has added second and first to his repertoire in the majors. That could come in handy if the Mariners want to fortify their roster and aggressively pursue a Wild Card spot, as they’ve gotten replacement-level work from Dylan Moore and their other second base options. That’s a story for another day, but it gives the team two paths toward upgrading the right side of the infield, which leaves only [checks notes] three other positions that need fixes.
Padres
The Padres have done a lot of things right in recent years, but signing Eric Hosmer to an eight-year, $144 million deal was not one of them. Through his first four seasons, Hosmer has managed just a 97 wRC+ and 0.1 WAR, and only last year was he above replacement level. This year, he’s hitting a meager .272/.330/.384 (99 wRC+) and has been particularly subpar defensively (-5 UZR, -5, DRS) en route to -0.4 WAR. As Dan Szymborski noted a few weeks ago, according to ZiPS, San Diego’s first base situation is the weakest of any position among the three NL West contending teams.
I mentioned the Padres’ multi-year pursuit of Gallo last week, but he’s just one player who could help. Rizzo, who reached the majors with San Diego in 2011, would be an upgrade, too; the Padres and Cubs have been frequent trade partners in recent years, making five deals since the start of 2017, with the Yu Darvish trade the largest of them. Szymborski raised Trey Mancini as a potential target, but like Gallo, he has another year of club control remaining and won’t come cheap. Still, the position is an ongoing problem, and a solution that lasts longer than two months is in order.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
Hey Yankees: Garrett Cooper is available. Bring him home.
(He got injured again though yesterday, unfortunately. Somebody needs to give this dude every day playing time though)
“He got injured again though yesterday”
He’d fit right in.
I would assume CJ Cron is going somewhere else before the deadline. I also wouldn’t be completely shocked if Miguel Sano gets traded, though he’s less likely than the other names mentioned thus far.
It’s a shame JD Martinez can’t play 1B as trading for Nelson Cruz and pushing Martinez to 1B would solve a ton of problems. But Martinez hasn’t played 1B since a couple games in the low minors back in 2009.
The Padres are in a similar position as the Mariners, as they could move Cronenworth to 1B (where he is gold glove quality) and pursue a second baseman instead (or roll the dice with Kim/Profar/Nola and upgrade the bench).
Even this overstates the issue as Hosmer’s wRC+ vs RHP has been 99, 160, 102 and 142 in his four seasons with the Padres implying he is not a replacement killer the majority of the time. If the Padres got aggressive with pinch hitting and defensive replacements, they could mitigate his sub-replacement level playing time enough to free up resources to upgrade their Darvish and pray for rain rotation.
They could acquire a RF and move Myers into a platoon with Hosmer. Still the true solution involves trading away Hosmer, who doesn’t even feel his game needs changing.
Hosmer’s splits aren’t only horrible, they are visible. You can actually see how uncomfortable he feels in the box facing lefties. He basically starts the at bat with an 0-2 approach and defensively hacks at anything close, just hoping for some BABIP luck.
I feel like the commenters at Fangraphs have been screaming this since…2017? 2018? They have more than enough right-handed bats to make this work. Just give him 400+ PAs a year and let him smash right handed pitching and then give him a vacation against Kershaw / Urias / Bumgarner / Gomber.
You don’t even need advanced analytics to figure this out. You could just ask yourself “what would Earl Weaver do?” and that would get you there.
It’s not just the commenters here at Fangraphs: former Managing Editor Dave Cameron was screaming this as well. In his “2018 Free Agent Landmines” piece he made Hosmer his #1 landmine, writing
And then the Padres hired Dave Cameron. And right after that, they signed Hosmer.
Now, I realize the long-time readers here know all of this (sadtrombone shows up in the comment thread for that article and the Jeff Sullivan article about the Hosmer signing, for example). By now the Padres know it too. Hosmer himself might even know it, but is seemingly unable to do anything about it. The only question is when the team can stomach the sunk cost of playing him less (in a platoon, or just spending more time on the bench). But for a team with World Series aspirations sharing a division with the juggernauts like the Dodgers and (somewhat incredibly) the Giants, every day they don’t make some kind of a move is a day they may regret later. And who knows, losing some playing time might even spur him to experiment with a swing change again.
To be fair, I think the idea was that he needed to be platooned, not that they shouldn’t sign him. Although the contract was something everyone, especially the writers at Fangraphs, went on quite a bit about.
Also, that Cameron article is a trip down memory lane. Shoutout to carter who absolutely got hammered for saying that Lance Lynn was a solid free agent buy.
This article reminded me to look up another article written around that time. Travis Sawchik, who historically was very friendly to the notion that you should spend more money on players, wrote “The Curious Bidding War for Eric Hosmer” basically slamming the idea.
I scrolled down to the first chart, knew I’d see the Padres, and immediately remembered all the people convinced by 45 days of hot hitting to start 2020 that the Padres had Fixed Eric Hosmer.
lol
The Hosmer deal is so bad and will continue to be bad. At least after next season, his salary drops to $13MM. One of the few prominent front-loaded deals in recent memory.
I think people were less “convinced” and more hoping and praying. He also had talked about fixing his swing path to get the ball in the air more and the positive stats weren’t lucky, they were a result of him actually getting the ball up consistently. All of that to say that there was reason to hope, but ultimately he regressed to his previous profile.
Maybe this is hindsight bias but I don’t remember that anyone was actually convinced by that except the author of that piece.
Which post was that? I’m assuming from last summer, but I can’t find it.
I found it–it’s “Eric Hosmer Achieves Lift-Off”.
The moral of that story, and almost every other swing change story is that changing your swing that much is very hard and has a lot of unintended consequences. I feel pretty good about being skeptical that this was going to stick at the time.
The Hosmer deal, on a larger scale, reminds me of the four-year deal the Phillies signed with David Bell in 2003. It didn’t go well on the field; he was better than replacement only one season, but his signing signaled the end of a rebuilding phase and the intention to compete, and helped the convince free agent Jim Thome to sign there as well. (Bell’s presence also later caused a logjam that led to Chase Utley staying in the minors until he was 26.)
By the numbers, Hosmer’s signing was an bigger mistake, but it did announce the Pads’ arrival as a contender, even if he’s not helping put them over the hump. So maybe Preller should note that the Phillies started their run of playoff appearances as soon as they got Bell off the books.
As a Padres fan, my hope is that next year is the last year of Hosmer as a serious hindrance on this team. His contract is odd because it is frontloaded with big money through the first 5 years, then has an opt-out, but if Hosmer doesn’t exercise the opt-out, the money drops significantly for the last 3.
With the big money he’s being paid, his name and reputation, the fact that he was the first “splash” towards contention, and the problem that he’s untradeable, I understand the human factors that make the Padres continue to run him out there every day. My hope, however, is that after next season, with the impetus of the opt-out and 5 years of stats, they make it clear to him that he either chooses to opt-out or starts riding the bench. If he’s smart, he’ll stay and take the money anyway, but then at least he won’t play often and definitely ONLY against righties.
Mitch Moreland would look very nice back in a Red Sox uniform. I can’t imagine that he would cost any more than a bag of used balls and a 35 prospect from the DSL.
Would love to see the Red Sox go after Gallo. He’d wrap about 100 homers around the Pesky Pole in the 2nd half of the season. Or maybe he’d strikeout a thousand million times and while power-walking the the wrong side of the Mendoza Line over all his remaining games. But at least he’d walk.
Ty France has been a breath of fresh air at 1B. Seattle has finally put a hitter there.
I still don’t know where his long-term home is going to be, but in this case it is a nice problem for a team to have. Long-term, they can probably just put him wherever they can’t find a good infielder.
Gallo is a Gold Glove outfielder who last played 1B three years ago.
It would be a mistake to plug him in at 1B just because your 1B is bad.
Now, if your team has a good hitter/bad outfielder ready to transition to 1B,
it might make more sense, but if that is the case, you might want to move him regardless of whether you get Gallo or not.
Your last sentence would best describe a Gallo/Hosmer based swap….Gallo takes over in RF for the Padres, and Myers goes over to 1B.
I’d love to see these two teams get really bold and make a Hosmer & Abrams for Gallo deal. Texas has the $ to suck up Hosmer’s contract, and SD has middle infield depth that may necessitate Abrams moving to the OF.
These are the kind of deals that win championships. Abrams has as much chance of playing on the left side of the Padres infield as you do tz. CF is also locked up and Abrams may not have enough power for a corner outfield spot so go for it.
It’s worth noting that the Marlins have not one, but two first basemen who could probably play every day. Cooper and Aguilar were also both Milwaukee Brewers, and both got traded for someone who got DFA’d almost immediately.
I can’t rule out that there is a cosmic entity trying desperately trying to force reparations for the Yelich trade, where the Brewers are cursed to give away their first basemen, only for them to flourish in Miami. It’s gonna be a real slow process but this cosmic entity can wait a whole lot longer than the fans in Miami.
I also can’t rule out that the Marlins should be trying to trade for underperforming Brewers’ first basemen (which is all of them since Aguilar in 2018), sprinkle their fairy dust on them, and then flip them. Arbitrage, Marlins-style.
And on top of that, I can’t rule out that Brewers’ first basemen are cursed so that no one ever spends more than one year as the everyday guy, like the Defense Against the Dark Arts position in Harry Potter. The curse of Prince Fielder.
2012: Corey Hart (not the sunglasses at night guy, the baseball player)
2013: Juan Francisco (and, in perhaps the most messed up turn of events, Yuniesky Betancourt)
2014: Mark Reynolds
2015: Adam Lind
2016: Chris Carter
2017: Eric Thames
2018: Jesus Aguilar
2019: Eric Thames (this is probably what disproves this theory)
2020: Justin Smoak (who didn’t even last the full truncated season. They turned to Jedd Gyorko, who was actually decent but is now out of baseball)
I remember the Brew Crew platooning Yuni at first with fellow ex-SS Alex “I’m not THAT Alex Gonzalez” Gonzalez. Using those two guys as your best options for 1B was one major Clutterbuck of a decision-making process.
As someone pointed out on a Blue Jays site, it seems their strategy is to acquire former Jays 1B/DH, (Lind, Thames, Francisco, Vogelbach, Smoak, Alex Gonzalez apparently, and now Tellez)
Because the front office changed after Lind, I think that’s part but not all of the story. At least recently, they acquire former Jays’ *left-handed bats*. Fisher, McKinney, Granderson, Smoak, Vogelbach, and Tellez all were acquired under the Stearns front office and came there directly from Toronto. They even brought back Eric Sogard and Travis Shaw after they spent a year in Toronto. Every single one is a left-handed bat.
There is someone in the front office who has decided that left-handed bats will do much better in Milwaukee than in Toronto. If the Blue Jays ever give up on Cavan Biggio (which seems unlikely, but not impossible) Milwaukee will be the first in line.
I think LH bats can thrive in Milwaukee — as I know you do, bone — but what this year shows yet again is that the effect is not so extreme that scrap heapers are likely to benefit. After Smoak, Morrison, Holt and Sogard crapped out, this year’s additions of Shaw (past-prime variety), Vogel, JBJ have been similarly abysmal (and so far so bad for Tellez). When push comes to shove, patient hitters with some pop (Grandal, Wong, Narvaez, Yelich, prime Shaw, prime Thames) can tear up Miller/AmFam … which isn’t much different than how good hitters do in most parks.
In short, I’m doubting the potential advantage of the Crew building around lefties other than, at the moment, the division is overloaded with right-handed starters. Platoons are a smart tactic regardless, but I’d stop counting on the stadium to inflate below-average sticks.
Holy crap, I forgot about that “if Yuniesky Betancourt is the answer you are asking the wrong question” moment. In his early days as a SS straight off a harrowing boat ride from Cuba and unclear/difficult circumstances in Mexico, he looked fantastic. (An NYC writer saw him play with the Mariners in that first series in the Bronx and immediately wrote something about how Jeter’s reign of Gold Gloves at shortstop was over.) But whether it was getting unlimited access to a modern “western” diet or larger issues like anxiety about his family (and the thugs who had smuggled him out of Cuba) or whatever — I don’t know — it didn’t take long for him to get fat and slow and unplayable.
I get that Gallo makes sense for a lot of teams, and he can likely play 1st base in a pinch, but he literally just won a GG. Bringing him down the defensive spectrum this early in his career seems like the absolute worst use for him.
I liked Asdrubal as a cheap-ish pick-up for the Crew until he got hurt. As the wins pile up and contention more assured, they need to get more serious about investing in a major upgrade like Mancini. Come October, this lineup will desperately need at least one legit thumper, and that’s no longer likely to be Yelich.