Meet Eugenio Velez, Replacement Level Player:

I don’t really care for Eugenio Velez as a player. In fact in my book is kind of like the meatless vegetarian products at the grocery store, I don’t really like them, I don’t want them in my cart, but I understand that there may be a place for them in the store.

So in this story my cart is the major league ball club. I don’t really see the reason that baring injury to a number of players that he should be at this level. I do understand that he does provide something to the organization (the reason he is on the shelf in the grocery store). He is a nice guy to have in AAA in case the store misses the delivery of hamburger or chicken (the team bus gets in an accident and 3 outfielders need to go the hospital, or there was tainted food in the after game spread that gives half the team food poising) he is a contingency plan in my book.

Velez is as close of a definition of a replacement level player as there gets and for his career he has performed like one racking up a value of 0.5 wins above replacement over 213 career games. He has some tools but looks completely lost trying to use them.

He is a fast guy but speed isn’t really one of his weapons. He doesn’t beat out a lot of infield hits, only about 11.3% of hits in his career are the infield verity; compare this to Pablo Sandoval who is not exactly fleet of foot how has a 10.9% career number.