A baseball player’s WAR is one of those new-style stats that irritates old-time fans. “What the hell do all these new numbers mean, anyway?” they say. This isn’t a piece to educate or even persuade you, if you’re one of those. You might want to look here or here.
Replacement-level players are considered to be those who are readily available anytime — they’re minor league free agents, players who get non-roster invites to spring training, players who may get to the majors but don’t stick, etc. They are not “average players” in the majors, because the average is significantly above replacement.
Sports Reference sets replacement level at .294 winning percentage or a "record" of 48-114.
As of the conclusion of June 23’s games, the White Sox
have a record as follows:
Wins: 21
Losses: 58
Pct: .266
So the White Sox are actually doing worse than a team of all replacements would be expected to do. No other major league team is below replacement level.
Financials
According to this website, the White Sox’s “adjusted payroll” is $136,406,488. There are 26 players on the 2024 Active Roster Payroll. The major league minimum salary is $740,000. Therefore, doing the math, a replacement team would have a payroll of $19,240,000.
Those 26 players are under contract, of course, so it’s not possible to just fire them all and replace them with 26 guys off the minor league free agent list. Furthermore, most of them probably are much better than replacements; that’s how they got to the majors in the first place. In a different year or on a different team, many would have a WAR of 2.0 or better.
Nonetheless: if you believe in WAR, the White Sox are wasting $117,166,488.