As of writing, the league's target date for Opening Day is not yet clear. It's doubtful that it's particularly clear to the league, either, as it won't become obvious when we can resume our daily routines until we see how the pandemic unfolds. The league said Monday it is following the CDC guideline to refrain from events with more than 50 people for the next eight weeks. That would put the earliest possible return in mid-May, though there's been speculation that a start in early July is more realistic. It's hard to see the date being settled on any time soon.
The upcoming fantasy baseball season will be affected not just by the date of Opening Day but also by the length of the campaign. While the league hasn't officially abandoned plans for a full, 162-game schedule, it's hard to see that happening given the reasonable timeframes for play to resume.
We don't need an exact date for the start of the season or an exact schedule length to discuss the general categories of players who will be affected by the delayed season, however. The three groups of players whose values figure to be most affected are injured players, starting pitchers with innings questions and prospects. I'll go through each group in detail below.
Injured Players
A handful of players plummet down draft boards every spring due to injuries. For players who are expected back before mid-May, they suddenly project to return before Opening Day and should therefore return to
As of writing, the league's target date for Opening Day is not yet clear. It's doubtful that it's particularly clear to the league, either, as it won't become obvious when we can resume our daily routines until we see how the pandemic unfolds. The league said Monday it is following the CDC guideline to refrain from events with more than 50 people for the next eight weeks. That would put the earliest possible return in mid-May, though there's been speculation that a start in early July is more realistic. It's hard to see the date being settled on any time soon.
The upcoming fantasy baseball season will be affected not just by the date of Opening Day but also by the length of the campaign. While the league hasn't officially abandoned plans for a full, 162-game schedule, it's hard to see that happening given the reasonable timeframes for play to resume.
We don't need an exact date for the start of the season or an exact schedule length to discuss the general categories of players who will be affected by the delayed season, however. The three groups of players whose values figure to be most affected are injured players, starting pitchers with innings questions and prospects. I'll go through each group in detail below.
Injured Players
A handful of players plummet down draft boards every spring due to injuries. For players who are expected back before mid-May, they suddenly project to return before Opening Day and should therefore return to approximately their original draft position. Depending on the injury, you may still want to drop them slightly, as drafting an injured player is always a risk. In general, though, treat a player who was expected to return in April or May the same way you looked at someone like Adalberto Mondesi in January: some nerves, but not necessarily an expectation of lost at-bats.
Here are some notable players who should move back up draft boards because their injuries now seem unlikely to cause them to miss time:
Jorge Alfaro, Yordan Alvarez, Ryan Braun, Byron Buxton, Willie Calhoun, Carlos Carrasco, Mike Clevinger, Michael Conforto, Adam Eaton, Jakob Junis, Corey Knebel, Eric Lauer, Mike Leake, Matt Magill, Dustin May, Oscar Mercado, Andrew McCutchen, Miles Mikolas, Andrew Miller, Shohei Ohtani (as a pitcher), Brendan Rodgers, Brad Peacock, Joc Pederson, Stephen Piscotty, A.J. Puk, Max Scherzer, Nick Senzel, Giancarlo Stanton, Eugenio Suarez, Luis Urias, Alex Verdugo, Justin Verlander
Most of these players should see their stocks rise to near their pre-injury levels, though any expected discounts varies from player to player. Justin Verlander is one in particular I remain somewhat concerned about. While his six-week shutdown as he recovers from groin surgery should give him time to resume throwing in late April, he's still a 37-year-old pitcher who's already had two injuries this spring, including one (a lat strain) in his arm.
For players expected to return from injuries later in the season, their stocks should certainly be rising, but just how much is hard to say given the lack of clarity on when the season will actually begin. This is certainly an area where you could gain a competitive advantage over your peers by having a more accurate assessment of when the season will begin, though unless you're an epidemiologist, it's hard to do anything other than guess.
The following players are expected to miss at least the more optimistic projections for Opening Day (or have particularly uncertain return dates) but won't miss nearly as much of the season as it initially appeared:
Tyler Beede, Griffin Canning, Yoenis Cespedes, Emmanuel Clase, Michael Fulmer, Cole Hamels, Mitch Haniger, Aaron Hicks, Jordan Hicks, Rich Hill, Aaron Judge, Trey Mancini, Collin McHugh, James Paxton, Carlos Rodon
The exact amount by which these players' stocks should rise varies widely with their respective timelines. James Paxton and Aaron Judge, in particular, arguably belong in the previous category, while Trey Mancini's recovery timeline as he works his way back from testicular cancer surgery is difficult to predict.
The most interesting players for me, though, are Michael Fulmer and Carlos Rodon. Neither player was worth a stash when he was expected to spend more than half the season recovering from Tommy John surgery, but both are back in play in some formats now that there's a good chance they'll be available for a significant portion of the schedule.
A quick note on suspended players: MLB suspensions are measured in games, not percentages of the season. The relevant cases are Michael Pineda and Domingo German. Pineda has a little more than a month left on his PED suspension, which could potentially mean he misses nearly half the campaign rather than something closer to 20 percent of the season, dragging his value down considerably. German has 63 games left on his domestic violence suspension. He was potentially worth a stash when that would have left him with 99 games left on the schedule, but if 63 games winds up being more than half of the regular season, he probably won't be worth holding onto for that long, depending on your league's settings.
Pitchers with Workload Questions
Talented pitchers with workload issues — whether those pitchers are in their first season back from an injury or are still young and building up their innings — are likely those whose stocks should rise the highest based on the shutdown. The value of those arms in a typical season is tied closely to the quality of the replacement starting pitching options in your league. If you can cover for a player's 10-to-15 missed starts with a pretty good alternative (either because your league is shallow or because you believe you're particularly talented at finding undervalued pitchers on the waiver wire), you don't have to discount those players by all that much to begin with.
If 20 starts winds up being just two or three shy of the league leader, however, that discount should almost completely disappear, as it's generally safe to assume that any given pitcher will miss a couple starts each year. Using the timeframe estimates in the piece linked above, we should expect the league leaders in games started to make anywhere from 15 to 28 starts. That means the exact amount by which these players should rise up draft boards isn't clear, but it's undeniable that they should rise.
Here are some pitchers to keep in mind:
Nathan Eovaldi, Tyler Glasnow, Michael Kopech, Dinelson Lamet, Jesus Luzardo, Lance McCullers, A.J. Puk, Garrett Richards, Matt Shoemaker, Julio Urias, Taijuan Walker, Luke Weaver, Alex Wood
There are a number of exciting names on that list. It's quite possible that you'll be able to count on these players' typically strong ratios for a full season if the schedule winds up short enough. Of course, that doesn't invalidate the other concerns about these pitchers. Eovaldi, for example, still has plenty of performance-related risks, while Richards' well-earned reputation for injury proneness extends far beyond his most recent issues. The ceilings for this group are shooting up, as it's suddenly possible they'll be able to remain in the rotation all season, but they'll have to stay healthy to do so.
Prospects
The relative value of prospect stashes is also set to change considerably, though the exact effects are perhaps hardest to predict. The best framework for estimating how a prospect's 2020 value will be affected by a shortened season is to look at whether the idea of him still needing to prove something in the minors is legitimately true or whether that's an obvious lie to manipulate the player's service time. Exactly how service time will be affected in a shorter season has yet to be determined, but it's conceivable that players could be up on Opening Day rosters and still not accrue a full year of service time. That could open the floodgates for an unprecedented number of the top prospects to open the season in the big leagues.
Another factor to consider is that the shorter the regular season becomes, the larger the role of luck will be in the final standings. A direct consequence of that is that more teams will view themselves as having a legitimate shot at contention, and thus more teams will want their best 26 players on their roster as early as possible.
Here are some prospects (from the top 50 of James Anderson's top 400) who could wind up spending a larger than expected portion of the season in the majors:
Alec Bohm, Dylan Carlson, MacKenzie Gore, Ke'Bryan Hayes, Spencer Howard, Nick Madrigal, Matt Manning, Casey Mize, Nate Pearson, Sixto Sanchez
Dylan Carlson, Ke'Bryan Hayes and Nick Madrigal had success at Triple-A last season. Bohm hasn't played above Double-A but was very successful there and fills a position of need for a team that hopes to compete.
The pitchers in this group all topped out at Double-A, but pitchers can make the jump sooner as teams don't want to waste their innings in the minors. That's less true for pitchers on teams who have no realistic hope of competing this season, so it's possible Manning, Casey Mize and Sixto Sanchez don't belong in this group.
Here are some prospects from the top 50 of James' list who legitimately still need time to develop and thus might not play as many big-league games as previously expected:
Jo Adell, Joey Bart, Wander Franco, Jarred Kelenic, Alex Kirilloff, Cristian Pache, Julio Rodriguez, Andrew Vaughn, Drew Waters, Forrest Whitley
Jo Adell, Cristian Pache, Drew Waters and Forrest Whitley have reached the Triple-A level but haven't had success there, so it may take a larger portion of the season than previously expected for them to prove they're big-league ready.
The rest of the group are hitters who have yet to reach Triple-A. Most were players who fantasy owners were already expecting to stash for quite a while, but they now may need to be stashed for too long to make a pick worth it. Alex Kirilloff's situation isn't all that different to Bohm's, so he should perhaps be in the previous group, though he fills a less glaring need for his team.
Feel free to share how you're adapting your strategy due to the shutdown in the comments below. I hope you're all staying sane and healthy in this difficult time.
