There are lots of things currently happening in our daily lives that we’re prioritizing over fantasy baseball. But if you’re reading this, you’re as invested as I am in our fake sport. As the days pass, every now and then I think of a new little thing as a side effect to the indefinite delay of baseball. So I’ve gathered a few of them here.
Win Now Dynasty Managers Are In A Tight Spot
As one selfishly does when thinking about the suspension of baseball, you think about the state of all your teams. If you’ve followed my work, you know my mantra is always to try and win now and almost never do a full rebuild. All my startup drafts are with this in mind.
But if baseball is gone for half a season, the margin of error just got really tight for those that have invested heavily into older players. I have a plethora of Edwin Encarnacion, Charlie Morton, and Justin Turner shares, among others. My thought process is
My older players are losing precious time in what’s likely their final or penultimate years in baseball
Some of these like Nelson Cruz and EE have no guaranteed 2021s in their future so whereas I expected one final swan song, their output may be severely diminished
Tankers and Rebuilders Are Still Fine
It’s pretty status quo for this group. Yeah, their prospects get a little older while lacking the reps but unlike the managers with aging assets, they don’t have to fret. In fact, this might be an enviable position right now. Ideally your core is in their mid-20s and you don’t have concern over 2021 viability.
Prospect ETAs are now all out of whack
MLB and the Player’s Union are still hashing out what a half year (or worse, a full lost year) means to a player’s service time, so there’s still plenty of possibilities in the air. If I did my math right, if baseball starts on or after August 13 (please no), then no rookie can exceed their 45 roster days of service time. However it is possible to accrue more than 130 at bats in seven weeks. For pitchers, it’s less likely they’ll exceed 50 innings in that time frame.
So I can see a scenario where pitching prospects are a little more likely to debut (Matt Manning, MacKenzie Gore) than a Jarred Kelenic. Given that 2020 is to be year one of the 26-man roster (and lack of 40-man expansion), we were due to see fewer prospects recalled later in the year as is.
But beyond 2020 debuts, overall ETAs are now in limbo. Players aren’t getting the necessary development time. Teams are less likely to push them now. Do Casey Mize, Cristian Pache or Spencer Howard debut if the season is half as long? What does Julio Rodriguez’s aggressive timeline look like? I think it’s prudent to conservative push back everyone six months and re-assess on a case by case basis.
Rookie Ball Evaluation Limbo
I’m not sure how teams handle the DSL players, extended spring training, GCL, AZL and the like. These leagues typically get started in June so there’s still some hope, but chances are it gets pushed back as well, giving us more limited looks than they already do. These leagues were always a gold mine for helium names that could be flipped in trades, but there’s a chance we see none of that.
Draftee Debut Bonus
By the same token, because college ball and amateur ball was cancelled, if the draft is held this year (check out our brand new MLB Mock Draft 2.0!) then we’re more likely to see pitchers and batters spend significant time in the minors playing. Traditionally, pitchers with big workloads get shut down after long college seasons. But every pitchers has a handful of starts and that’s it. They actually need the innings and batters need to the reps.
This means that we’re going to have much more data available to us for our FYPD next spring, which is nice.
Development Time
As mentioned before, reps just aren’t going to be there for minor leaguers this year. This is really unfortunate for some who need it because of injury (Estevan Florial, Hunter Greene, Michael Kopech) but for the older prospects who needed to catch up to their peers when it came to age at a level. Think Peyton Burdick, Brewer Hicklen, and Michael Busch.
We’re much less likely to see prospects make a meteoric rise through the ranks because of that.
Trading Goes Down
Because baseball was cancelled before it even began, lots of leagues have already drafted, and each one of those managers still thinks he has a shot at a title. I expect trading will be limited in leagues, unless someone is going really stir crazy in their self-isolation and has to make a trade to stay sane. This puts more pressure on your just completed drafts. Hope it went well!
H2H Leagues Are About To Be Wild
All my H2H are competitive, but I think things are about to get really wild. The already razor thin margins which usually see about 2-4 managers competing for the final couple of playoff spots might end up being about 75% of a league in the hunt all season long. Even just three months of baseball makes for a lot of luck variance that can’t be evened out over the traditional 23+ weeks. This goes hand in hand with less trading. Everyone might think they’re in it, so less chance of firesales in your league, which reverts back to my previous point about fewer trades.
2021 Player Analysis Is Going To Suck
Soooooo much prorating. Who was for real? Who was a fluke? If a player gets hurt and misses a month plus (which is looking like 1/3 of the season, potentially more), we have a lot more question marks than usual. But let’s worry about 2020 first, I guess!