The MLB season is two-plus weeks old with another 24 weeks to go, the proverbial marathon. Despite this, fantasy players seem to be sprinting out of the gate. You don’t need to be a long-distance runner to know how that ends.
How did you spend your baseball offseason? I spent the MLB playoffs thinking about my 2018 teams. What went right? What went wrong? How can I improve? By the time the Red Sox hoisted the trophy, my elation and lamentation for a season gone by were complete, and I was ready to get into draft prep. I read, listened, researched and created a strategy upon which my 2019 season would rely. Every season, I look to expand my research, expand my knowledge and expand my strategy. This year, that meant reading Jeff Zimmerman and Tanner Bell’s “The Process” and developing some spreadsheets that would use projections to plan for drafts. I spent some cash and hundreds of hours prepping for my seven drafts.
Why, then, after investing six months into research and analysis would I abandon it all less than three weeks into the MLB season? The answer: I didn’t.
My pre-season research was not error-free, but I did my best to make informed decisions. I put in the time and attacked my drafts and got the guys my numbers told me would be difference makers. Now that the season has begun, it’s not hard to see that my belief in Matt Strahm has been betrayed. Eduardo Rodriguez’s bounce back has not happened. David Robertson isn’t the lock-down pitcher I thought he would be.
What am I doing in this early season? Nothing. Not exactly. I’m doing quite a lot, but you wouldn’t know it from my league transaction reports. Here’s why.
One of my leagues this year is a TGFBI satellite league. The draft ended on March 13 and a lot has changed. Most importantly, playing time. A ton of players are hurt, in the minors, traded or have earned unexpected full-time jobs. All these actions (and others) have changed playing time. Understandably, it would make sense to pick up a player who gained a significant playing time bump. Adam Jones was unsigned for most of the draft, signed shortly after I drafted him as a bench bat, given a full-time role due to Steven Souza’s injury and then given a chance for a full season of at-bats near the top of the order. If he went undrafted in your league, these are all reasons why you should have picked him up at the first opportunity. Playing time changes are, for me, the only reason to make a move so soon.
Most competitive leagues will see transactions like this: players like Ian Happ, Luis Urias, Chance Sisco, Steven Souza Jr., Kyle Seager, Jeremy Jeffress and Greg Allen dropped because they lost significant playing time. All these players were immediately added to my watch list. We believed in them enough to draft them and, except for Souza, we expect them to be playing again this season. I hope that some of these players will be on my teams as the season continues. Am I grabbing them now? No, I don’t need to, but watching their results and their team’s needs will give me a glimpse into when their return is imminent. More on this in next week’s article.
Dropping a player because of a season-ending injury is understandable, and in a league without or with a limited IL, we are sometimes forced to drop players we may not want to. I drafted Luis Severino in the third round before his injury and will stash him, not because I won’t drop him, but because I don’t need to. All my other players are healthy, and I drafted decent alternatives as soon as I heard he was going to miss significant time (it was a very slow draft). The owner who dropped Jeremy Jeffress did so because they also have A.J. Minter, Dellin Betances and Andrew Heaney on their roster. Perhaps they believe that Jeffress may be significantly delayed in his return or may not return to a saves role. They had to make a move because they didn’t have the roster space.
The actions that we must take early in the season should only be those that address a roster need. We must fill in our roster gaps no matter what. If we have a full lineup of MLB starters, we do not need to overreact. With that said, we have a problem: If we don’t act quickly on players, we won’t get them. Jesus Aguilar was, for the most part, undrafted last year. Managers who picked him up early reaped huge rewards and likely won their leagues. That’s true, but don’t forget that managers who dropped Matt Carpenter early in the season did not fare as well. Let’s examine this situation with an example: Kolten Wong.
How do we respond to a player like Wong? On March 25, ATC projected him for 438 plate appearances with .262 average, 9 HR, 50 R, 45 RBI and 8 SB. After starting all seven games this season, Wong began batting .417 with 3 HR, 7 R, 6 RBI, and 2 SB. Is Wong a new player? Cheryl Ring did a nice breakdown on Rotographs and concluded that Wong is continuing his strong second half from last year, and there is potential here. I like him and am very interested, but it’s not actionable yet. Why? Because I am going to focus on my numbers and not let a sample size of less than 30 at-bats ruin my off-season’s hard work.
I will not ignore Wong, especially when I can see that his results are supported. The first thing I must do is readjust my projections. I do not believe that Wong will only see 438 plate appearances and should bump that number up. Let’s say that we only increase his at bats and don’t account for a change in his approach; we still need to boost Wong up.
I don’t have to change my expectations for Won’s production to see a significant boost based only on a playing time increase. His strong start to the season, coupled with his strong defense, will earn more playing time than I expected. This adjustment has increased his rank. Pre-season, I had Wong ranked as a $2.48 player, but accounting for an increase in playing time from 114 games to 144 games, he jumps to a $7.66 player. The increase in playing time more than triples his value and does not account for a significant power increase. (On a side note, I also need to explore why I may have undervalued Wong to investigate this offseason miss in order to prevent it next year. I don’t want this to happen again.)
Wong becomes an excellent FAAB target for me if I have had any significant injury this season. If I lost Miguel Andujar, Trea Turner, Francisco Lindor, Steven Sousa or Scooter Gennett and had some positional flexibility in my lineup, I would make Wong a target with one caveat: He becomes a target only when I believe that his value is significantly higher than that of another available player.
Even though Wong has significantly improved, I do not put FAAB money on him unless he is my best available option. Even at a $7.66 value, he still falls below Adam Frazier, DJ LeMahieu (who has now also seen a significant playing time increase) and Niko Goodrum in my rankings value. These guys may be available as free-agents and would cost significantly less FAAB than the red-hot Wong. Just below Wong, I have Yolmer Sanchez, Jeff McNeil, Ian Kinsler and Josh Harrison. If these guys are available and I see their playing time remaining the same as I projected pre-season, they would provide me a comparable value and would save me a lot of scarce FAAB.
I do not value my research work more than what I see in a small sample size. What Wong is doing now doesn’t spark me to spend FAAB, but it does mean that I re-evaluate my pre-season conclusions and do a deeper dive on him. After that further research, I make an adjustment. If I can see, within reason, that my new evaluation is an increase in Wong’s value, I make a move. I can value him appropriately and make a FAAB bid on him that I can feel happy about.
Is there a chance that Kolten Wong is a difference maker this year? Sure. I can’t say for sure that I am right or wrong about him, but the thing that I do know is that it is a mistake to take a small sample size and overreact (positively or negatively). If I have an urgent need, then I can make a move, if not, I stand pat. I can put in a FAAB bid for a player like Wong, but I do so with the same dependence on the numbers and projections that I used when I prepped for drafts…barely two weeks ago.
