Replacement Level

[civvver]

I use the term replacement level a lot when discussing things with my friends in reference to quality. It comes from baseball metrics where replacement level is if you subbed in an average freely available player. So replacement level is actually like below average quality, but widely available to sub in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_over_replacement_player

So by that definition I apply it, mostly to food items, as stuff I consider widely available and to be acceptable quality but not great. Like subway. Subway will always be replacement level sandwiches to me- widely available, not expensive, very average tasting. Like everything about subway just screams average sandwich. Not awful, not something I'd pick if I were choosing a lunch place, but I can definitely eat it in a pinch.

It's kind of a fun game for me to think of replacement level stuff. I don't know why, I just like making lists of stuff and measuring things. So here's a few of my replacement level ideas and you can add your own.

Fast food: Mcdonald's. Just like subway everything about mcdonald's screams slightly below average taste, works in a pinch, widely available.

Car: Honda Civic. Very basic small car, not super nice, very functional. You could go Accord or Ford Fusion or Chevy Malibu but the high end trims on those are actually pretty nice (and not cheap!).

PC Game: Civilization 5. Just a very average game to me. This one may be controversial.

Candy bar: Snickers. Basic, not bad, probably not anyone's favorite.

Cereal: Corn flakes. Again it's like the most basic of cereals, nobody hates it but not anyone's favorite. Rice krispies a strong contender here as well or wheaties.

Beer: Miller lite (which I consider the best of American mass produced light beers like coors, bud light, bush). Some people probably hate this beer and would consider it way worse than replacement level but I think it works, if you ran out of beer and just needed something it works in a pinch. Cheap but not the cheapest, drinkable socially.

Soft drink: Pepsi. It's worse than coke, widely available, very drinkable but like boring.

Funny Movie: Happy Gilmore. It's funny, I'll watch it if it comes on/very watchable, but ultimately it's not one worth going out of your way to see.

Actor: Tom Cruise. Never won an oscar (nominated three times), all his movies are watchable at least, some are actually really good, he never does a bad job, but I've never watched one and said like wow, Tom Cruise, what an actor. He's been in tons too so widely available to watch.

 

[Perfection]

Meta-jokes are replacement level one-liners.

 

[Lexicus]

PC Game: Civilization 5. Just a very average game to me. This one may be controversial.

Yeah, it's controversial because that game sucks, it's not average

(I'm only kidding, I used to play it quite a bit)

but I've never watched one and said like wow, Tom Cruise, what an actor. He's been in tons too so widely available to watch.

Watch Tropic Thunder. His best performance, hands down.


Replacement level presidential candidate: Hillary Clinton

 

[Hygro]

This is an awesome category

 

[JollyRoger]

This is a replacement level thread

 

[onejayhawk]

This is a replacement level thread

and a replacement level...

meh. Too easy. We might as well number the replacement level comments to save time and storage space.

J

 

[Zkribbler]

I've never watched one and said like wow, Tom Cruise, what an actor.

I recommend you watch "Collateral" and "Knight and Day." --Tom Cruise, what an actor! [Oh yeah, and "Tropic Thunder."]

True fact: Corn flakes were invented for the specific purpose of quelling sexual desires.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

This thread could be a market researcher's dream.

 

[civvver]

I recommend you watch "Collateral" and "Knight and Day." --Tom Cruise, what an actor! [Oh yeah, and "Tropic Thunder."]

True fact: Corn flakes were invented for the specific purpose of quelling sexual desires.

Oh yes I forgot about collateral but always thought Jamie Fox kind of carried that while Tom Cruise was generic bad guy anyone could play.

 

[sophie]

I don't know if you did a particularly good job defining what replacement level means. An easier way to think about it for me, is that when, say, your third baseman is out sick for the day and you need to bring in a player to fill in, your team calls up what is essentially a faceless, nameless player from the AAA roster who will in all likelihood be forgotten as soon as the starter comes back. That's a replacement player. The absolute bare minimum of talent required to justify occupying a spot on a Major League roster.

A replacement-level player sits precisely on that dotted line.

So a replacement-level cereal wouldn't be an average cereal. It would be the absolute minimum below which you could no longer justify dignifying it with the term "cereal". Remember that a team of replacement players would win about 47-50 games in a year. The worst teams in baseball this year each managed 64 wins, to give you an idea of just how bad a replacement player is relative to average or league average, or even to the level of an everyday starter.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Backing up a step, I've always understood "replacement level" to be about how easy the thing is to acquire. That is, a replacement level baseball player would be someone that the club can just reach out and get "for free" (that is, without giving up anything important, trading a good prospect or signing a free agent to a long contract). If the commodity you're trying to get isn't better than whatever you could get "for free", then it's below replacement level. And "for free" isn't necessarily just about money. In the context of baseball, a team may have a replacement-level player in the minors, so they're already paying him; or they may be able to acquire such a player from another team by trading a similar-quality player they won't miss (e.g. trading a "replacement level" 3rd baseman for a "replacement level" center fielder is a wash, and later they can get a replacement level 3rd-baseman if they need one, just as easily).

The old saying "Never pay more than a dollar for a bookmark" is about replacement level. (Because you can just use the dollar bill itself as a bookmark.)

A replacement level dinner, for me, is pasta with tomato sauce out of a jar and whatever vegetables are in the fridge or freezer. I like it fine, it's always there in my kitchen, and the effort to make it is literally boiling water. So I have to be more excited about getting, preparing, and eating a potential dinner than I would be about pasta and vegetables, or I'll just have the pasta and vegetables. The actual quality of a "better than replacement level" dinner - a dinner that would bump pasta & veggies off the menu - goes up and down: Some nights I really want pasta and vegetables, and other nights I think I'd rather chew an unlit cigarette than eat pasta and vegetables again, and the effort required to get something else can vary as well (pasta & veggies isn't the only thing I keep in my kitchen, but it's often the last thing before I have to go shopping).

 

[civvver]

I was more thinking in line with what EgonSpengler said. Your post Owen is accurate for MLB stats, but I was borrowing the term and adapting to every day. That's why stuff like mcdonalds is perfect. On the one hand many people consider it barely food, on the other sometimes it's really good if you're in the mood, but no one can argue against it's ubiquitous availability.

 

[Zkribbler]

Oh yes I forgot about collateral but always thought Jamie Fox kind of carried that while Tom Cruise was generic bad guy anyone could play.

Ironically. I found just the opposite to be true. IMHO, Cruise's performance was bone chilling while I had expected much more out of Foxx, who was just coming off his Oscar-winning performance in Ray.

 

[JollyRoger]

Manafort is a replacement level indictment

 

[Gori the Grey]

Pence may turn out to be a replacement-level president.

 

[sophie]

Pence may turn out to be a replacement-level president.

Dude was in charge of Trump's transition team. Anybody in Trump's administration who gets caught is going to ultimately come back to Pence: either Pence didn't do his due diligence in finding out that x member of the administration was dirty (and so is an incompetent), or he knew and appointed them anyway. Either way, assuming this Papadopoulos development turns into some serious indictments of members of the administration, I don't see Pence surviving this thing.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Ok, so Ryan, then?

 

[Hygro]

Read bottom up, I was in charge of the "battle orders" skill that run. We're used to it level 27+, mine is 21.

 

[onejayhawk]

I don't know if you did a particularly good job defining what replacement level means. An easier way to think about it for me, is that when, say, your third baseman is out sick for the day and you need to bring in a player to fill in, your team calls up what is essentially a faceless, nameless player from the AAA roster who will in all likelihood be forgotten as soon as the starter comes back. That's a replacement player. The absolute bare minimum of talent required to justify occupying a spot on a Major League roster.

A replacement-level player sits precisely on that dotted line.

So a replacement-level cereal wouldn't be an average cereal. It would be the absolute minimum below which you could no longer justify dignifying it with the term "cereal". Remember that a team of replacement players would win about 47-50 games in a year. The worst teams in baseball this year each managed 64 wins, to give you an idea of just how bad a replacement player is relative to average or league average, or even to the level of an everyday starter.

You were doing well until the last paragraph. Replacement level players would not be expected to win 40+ games. It would be more like 15. This is because elite players take up a disproportionate amount of the playing time. They would win games occasionally. Their pitcher might have a good game when the opposing pitcher has a stinker. However, it will take multiple atypical things coinciding to produce a win. The one exception would be a dominant pitching performance. Even then, the replacement team would have to score.

Manafort is a replacement level indictment

More rookie league. May be low A ball.

J

 

[sophie]

You were doing well until the last paragraph. Replacement level players would not be expected to win 40+ games. It would be more like 15. This is because elite players take up a disproportionate amount of the playing time. They would win games occasionally. Their pitcher might have a good game when the opposing pitcher has a stinker. However, it will take multiple atypical things coinciding to produce a win. The one exception would be a dominant pitching performance. Even then, the replacement team would have to score.


More rookie league. May be low A ball.

J

No, my number is correct. You can look at fangraphs' article on replacement level if you don't believe me.

This is going to require a touch of math, but the mechanics are easy enough. Based on the quality of those freely available players, we believe that a team making the MLB minimum would win about 29.7% of its games in a give year, or roughly 47-48 per team. Multiple that by 30 and you have something between 1,430 and 1,440, leaving about 1,000 games up for grabs out of the 2,430. Those 1,000 available wins are the “wins above replacement.” Those get divided up with 57% going to position players and 43% going to pitchers based the role we believe each plays.

What this means for position players is that there are 570 WAR to go around per season, so if the season isn’t over you simply need to prorate that. Let’s say the season is over, so the full 570 is up for grabs. Our player had 600 PA, and we want to find out what an average PA was worth that year. So we need:

570*RunsPerWin*PA/lgPA

If you let the numbers cancel out so that we’re left with that players share of the runs, you have the difference between a replacement level player and an average one over the course of those 600 PA. It would equal roughly 17 runs, and if you add that to the 21 runs we determined our player was above average, we wind up with 38 runs above replacement, which reduces to about 4.1 WAR.