MLB: The All-Average Lineup

What would a lineup comprised of average MLB players look like?

Sometimes in baseball, it’s okay to be average.

Wins Above Replacement looks at the value an MLB player brings to a team above what one might receive from a player signed as a free agent or brought up from AAA. Both Baseball Reference (bWAR) and Fangraphs (fWAR) calibrate their WAR calculations around the assumption that a team of such replacement-level players would play out a full season with a record of 48-114. For context, the 2003 Detroit Tigers had a record of 43-119.

An average player does not have a WAR of 0, because often an average player is not a career minor leaguer or a free agent in the middle of the season. An average player over a full season (approximately 600 plate appearances or 180 innings pitched) would accumulate in the neighborhood of 1.8 WAR. Let’s take a look at the math.

A truly average team would finish 81-81, or 33 wins above replacement level. The 30 major league teams averaged about 6,150 plate appearances and about 1,450 innings pitched. 6,150 plate appearances is about 10.25 full hitter seasons and 1,450 innings pitched is about eight full pitcher seasons. That’s 18.25 full seasons for 33 wins above replacement, which works out to 1.8 WAR per season.

A team full of average players – nine starting position players (including a DH for the American League), four or five bench players, five starting pitchers, and six or seven relief pitchers – would give you a record of 81-81. But what would such a team actually look like? Here is a batting lineup with a player at each position who had a more or less average season (according to WAR) in 2016.