MLB Postpones Season: Fantasy Baseball Adjustments To Make
With the 2020 MLB season on hold, fantasy baseball fans need to dramatically rethink how they will approach their upcoming drafts.
Over a dizzyingly sobering twenty-four hours, collegiate and professional sports ground to a halt Thursday afternoon as a consequence of the coronavirus.
In the case of MLB, fans can currently expect a two-week delay. Hopefully, it goes without saying that health and safety are of paramount importance right now. Everyone’s lives are going to need to adjust for the next little bit, and when things like the economy and education are shuttering, it is only right and proper for our games to take a backseat.
That being said though, if you have still made your way to this neck of the interwebs, you are probably looking for a little distraction. Which means you have probably gotten around to asking yourself a question that is pretty significant for millions of baseball fans around the world:
How is this going to impact my fantasy baseball draft?
That’s where my mind went the moment the NBA announced their decision on Wednesday, as it was clear that all active leagues would be following suit in short order at that point. Weeks of rankings analysis, podcast binging, pouring over tiers….all of it now needing to be looked at in an entirely new light. My mind started churning through repositionings, raising some names, dropping others.
Now while I’m sure many of you might also have made the jump to worrying about this could impact pennant races and competition windows…I’m a Miami Marlins fan. Three straight trips to the league championship, with two wins, has gotten me through a lot of hometeam despair these past few years.
Fantasy baseball is my baseball season. And I’m sure it is for you as well.
So with that, let’s get to some quick changes fantasy baseball players can make. Many of you are likely drafting this weekend after all. What follows are the four biggest questions/reactions players should be making over the next week of drafts.
Housekeeping Draft Changes
Before diving into rankings adjustments, some housekeeping matters for fantasy baseball leagues need to be brought up. First off, is your draft going to proceed as scheduled? It seems pretty unlikely that fans will be put in a situation where baseball just happens again on short notice. Savvy drafters know to wait as late into spring training as possible, and now spring training is being abruptly paused and then restarted. There will be side effects of this.
It might be worth taking a league vote on whether or not to postpone until MLB sets an official start date.
Secondly, if you’ve already drafted, do you commit to those rosters or redraft? Arguments can be made either way in that case. Again though, worth taking the pulse of your leaguemates.
Finally, if you haven’t drafted yet, make sure you don’t draft in person. Last time coronavirus will come up in this article, but safety first. Nothing wrong with an online draftroom and the myriad number of messaging and video apps at our fingertips. That last point does not need to be a league vote by the way. Commissioners just need to make that settings change now.
Draft settings all set? Great- let’s get to the rankings reactions.
Don’t Sweat The Injuries
First off, every injury prognosis now gets thrown out the window. No magic wand has been waved healing Justin Verlander and Aaron Judge. But, barring setbacks, they will now be missing less baseball than they were projected to do so at the start of the week. That’s a gamechanger.
Now if the reason you dropped some of these players to begin with was less because of this injury than that they were injured again, maybe you’re not adjusting too much. For example, Giancarlo Stanton gets a bump for me, but still is going to be outside my Top 60. Verlander, on the other hand, might go right back to where I had him before the injury.
Mike Clevinger looks like the name most in need of revisiting, as he could potentially miss zero time now. He’s a Top 10 starting pitcher again, and certainly can’t be counted on as that fourth to fifth round steal he was being ranked at.
One caveat, and this was alluded to earlier. Throwing off the ramping up of spring training like this will likely result in some new injuries. It’s also perfectly fair to wonder how rehabbing efforts might be thrown off by this delay.
Ultimately though, it seems safe to say that every injured player needs to be bumped back up to some degree.
Top H2H Third Base Options. light. Related Story
Promote Those Prospects
Second change to make? Push aside those Chris Paddack fears when it comes to those young pitching prospects.
It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that the length of the season is going to be different in 2020 now. If the delay exceeds two weeks, I’d call it a certainty.
Which means no innings limits! Were you pushing a young pitcher down in the ranks because they weren’t going to get to 180IP or pile up the strikeouts?
At this point, I’m not even counting on Gerrit Cole to hit 180 IP.
So if you have a good feeling about a young, unproven arm, move him up a couple of rounds with confidence.
Trust Past Performance
Lastly, fantasy baseball drafters need to prepare for an absence of new information.
Obviously, spring training stats will be nonexistent for the next two weeks at a minimum. That takes care of getting a read on who might have changed up their swing or pitching mechanics. No more looking at lineups and seeing who has moved up or down the batting order.
The other noted absence will be injury reports. Expect wide variance in how rehabilitation updates are reported during the delay, if indeed they are reported at all.
All of this adding up to fantasy baseball players needing to prepare to make decisions based on less recent information than they’d otherwise feel comfortable with.
Sure, setting too much store in spring stats is a no-no anyway. But it’s not like we’re talking NFL preseason games either. There are trends to track in spring training, and perhaps more than any other sport, that ramping up really does matter. Baseball players are well-oiled machines on the field. Slight changes significantly impact performance.
In light of this, the smartest approach here might be to slightly overvalue veteran producers. Veterans who fantasy players can count on still finding ways to workout, stay sharp and in shape. Of not being thrown off too much by changes in routine. Consistency often wins leagues, and I know I’ll be drafting a few more proven track records over potential risks as a result.
Well, that’s it fantasy baseball fans! Best of luck in your drafts.
Next. Fantasy sleepers per position. dark
And stay safe.