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As the saying goes, availability is your greatest ability. This is certainly true in baseball, where an MLB player’s worth is directly related to the amount of time they spend on the field.
Case studies demonstrating the importance of availability are so common that it hardly needs mentioning. But for the record:
- Fernando Tatis Jr. never made an appearance in 2022. His extra win percentage was clearly zero.
- Jacob deGrom pitched just 64 innings in 11 starts. In his Mets he got 0.8 WPA.
- Bryce Harper has missed 63 games due to injury. His 2.2 WPA was one less than half of his preseason total.
- Former MVP Kris Bryant, who Colorado signed for $184 million over seven seasons, missed 120 games and had a -0.7 WPA in 2022.
- Mike Trout has had his playing time limited by injury for the second straight season. Trout has only generated his WPA of 5.6 total with the Angels since he finished fifth in the 2020 MVP voting. This was his annual average from 2012 to 2017.
Availability is one of the most important and least talked about aspects of talent evaluation. Who are the MLB players your team can expect to hit the field every year?
This is a fresh look at player value re-evaluated through the prism of availability. For each position, a player is rated based on his two common SABR metrics: WAR and OPS+. But here’s the catch: Players are only graded if they’ve made a minimum of 500 plate appearances in each of their last two seasons: That’s the availability part.
A total of 85 position players have met that availability criteria for both 2021 and 2022. The player who set the standard for availability with a total of 1,448 at-bats was Marcus Semien.
The number 1,448 indicates the plate appearance rate for the third ranking criterion, the 1,448 criterion.
By position, here are the most valuable players in the game when considering availability.
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