What happens when your fantasy team becomes a nightmare?
Last week, I told you that no one wins a championship on draft day – even in a 15-team league. Your level of success on the waiver wire during the next six months will make or break you. The great managers, like Phil Dussault, Toby Guevin, Jeff Zimmerman and Todd Zola, are great at making the right moves during the season to solidify their teams.
The amount of time you spent in in-season management of your fantasy baseball teams will show up in the standings. Too many managers invest a hundred hours preparing for the draft but spend only a few minutes every week managing their teams. This leads to errors of omission and commission during the all-important in-season management period.
It’s also true that in-season management becomes increasingly difficult as a manager’s team sinks in the standings based on bad luck, or bad decisions. Frankly, I can relate to the manager who is already sick of looking over his pathetic team. If you’re like me, you sick of looking at your team at the standings. But what you do next matters the most.
After finishing 44th overall in The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational last year, I was excited to start a new season and dreamed of contending for a title. But as the regular season opened last week, I had lost my third- and fourth-round draft picks to devastating injuries – Devin Williams and Matt McLain. Days later, Paul Sewald also went down with an injury.
For those of you that don’t know, there are no IL spots in TGFBI. That’s true of other NFBC competitions. With only seven bench spots, you can’t afford to carry many players with long-term injuries. Williams and McLain are expected to miss up to half of the season. Many prognosticators expect McLain, who had shoulder surgery, to miss all of 2024.
With my team off to a bad start in the first four days, I felt like I was at an important inflection point with this team on Sunday night. I had picked up Michael Kopech last week, speculating that he would be the White Sox closer. When Sewald’s Grade 2 oblique strain was announced the next day, I realized I was going to have to pursue another relief pitcher.
It wasn’t difficult to identify who I would bid on Sunday night. Kevin Ginkle is expected to step into the ninth-inning role while Sewald is out, and he was a natural choice. As Sewald’s bullpen buddy, he was basically an insurance policy for the Diamondbacks closer. The backup bid would be made on Detroit’s Jason Foley, who picked up two saves in the first three games.
Identifying my waiver wire targets was the easy part. The hard part was deciding who I was going to drop. I have five pitchers on my bench, and four were on the IL. I certainly regret now having drafted Kodai Senga and Walker Buehler at a steep discount because of their delayed start dates. I couldn’t drop Sewald, and I didn’t want to drop any healthy pitcher.
That left only you, Mr. Williams. Oh, the places we could have gone, together. The saves we could have shared together. My dream of dominance in the saves category is gone. Goodbye, Devin. I hardly knew you. Solomon sums up my thoughts on this. “Anyone who is among the living has hope – even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!” (Ecclesiastes 9:4).
Then, fate intervened. Someone in my league paid an absurd $176 for Foley, the prospective closer for a mediocre Detroit team. The second-best bid was $111, and my bid of $33 wasn’t even in shouting distance. Then, someone else paid $105 for Ginkel, the prospective temporary closer for Arizona. This time, my bid of $41 was a distant second best.
Prospective closers are a hot commodity. Elite closers are priceless, and so I’m rethinking my decision to drop Williams. At least, for another week. The manager who paid up for Foley dropped Alex Lange, who had been the presumptive closer, had 26 saves last year for the Tigers. If he gets some ninth-inning work, I might be inclined to bid on him.
Unfortunately, a closer wasn’t the only thing I needed for this beleaguered team. I also needed a hitter who could contribute – ideally in all five categories. But that also meant I needed to drop someone. Referring back to the live dog and dead lion quote from wise Solomon, I decided to drop my other dead lion – McLain. Here’s how I made the decision.
Assuming McLain would miss half of the season, I cut McLain’s projections in half. Looking at Steamer’s revised projections, I found other options. I made a bid on Oakland third baseman J.D. Davis, but it fell short. However, I was able to pick up Cleveland’s rookie shortstop Brayan Rocchio for $7. His projections are 602 PA, 9 HR, 77 R, 65 RBI, 14 SB with a .249 BA.
So, McLain is now on the waiver wire, and he will surely become a hot commodity by the early summer – if he returns at that time. I don’t want to minimize the importance of cutting players like McLain and Williams. These decisions are difficult because of the draft capital used by the manager. And they aren’t the only ones that are in injury list limbo now.
If you were unfortunate enough to draft Royce Lewis, you got some bad news over the weekend. Lewis was diagnosed with what is being called a “severe quad strain.” He won’t be re-evaluated again for a month. He’s currently on the 10-day IL, but a two-month absence seems like a reasonable expectation. He’s likely to be back before McLain, but who knows?
For me, Lewis is the toughest drop call of the week. I am skeptical about him being back before June, and there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to play the remaining four months without suffering yet another injury. This is a shame because when healthy he’s a real difference-maker. Teams that don’t already have other injured players stashed might be inclined to hold Lewis.
There are some tough drop calls to be made on injured pitchers, too. Any fantasy manager who’s been doing this awhile knows that good starting pitching is a scarce commodity, but the seven bench spots in NFBC leagues also are precious. While Justin Steele is likely to be out at least one month due to a hamstring strain, he’s got enough upside to be held in all formats.
Another starting pitcher worth hanging on to is Eduardo Rodriguez. He’s not as valuable as Steele, but Rodriguez is trending toward an April return from his lat injury. Holding or cutting Senga and Kyle Bradish are tougher calls. Both seem to be trending well, but they likely will miss significant time, and injuries to elbows and shoulders are scary.
Thomas L. Seltzer, AKA Doubting Thomas, writes about baseball and football for CreativeSports. Be sure to follow Thomas on Twitter@ThomasLSeltzer1.
