Last week I advised early season patience, but we cannot sit on our hands and do nothing while our waiver wires are churned by our competitors, can we? Ideally, we can sit tight and watch the team we drafted carry us to victory. That’s unlikely (if not impossible), and we do have to act.
I spoke about putting dropped players onto our watch lists. In my TGFBI Week 1 FAAB transactions, I saw Ian Happ, Luis Urias, Jeremy Jeffress, Chance Sisco, Greg Allen and Kyle Seager dropped. These were guys who were worth drafting. Each week, you should be taking note of these players for each of your leagues. It may be time-consuming, but it helps prevent players from falling through the cracks.
I separate all drops into the following categories: Short-term Injuries, Long-term Injuries, Brief Minors Demotion, Long-term Minors Demotion, Service-time Manipulation, Loss of Role, Loss of Skill and Bounce-back Candidate. I will put each dropped player into one or more of these categories as well as an estimate on their potential return. This way I can monitor their results, research their team’s situation and get an idea on when they will regain fantasy relevance.
Why spend so much time and effort on unwanted players? Firstly, these are players who we know and players that during draft season had buzz, helium, skill or role: in other words, fantasy relevant. These are guys who may have a track record or a base skill that we can project. These are guys who had a dollar value that are now free for the taking. It is also easy to forget about these players. In my mind, I might think that since they were drafted, they must still be owned, and it is easy to miss out on potential value when they are ready to return to their role.
Already we have seen Luis Urias’s recall. After he was dropped in my league, I listed him in the “Brief Minors Demotion” category. I put his return date at 3-4 weeks or injury. While I wasn’t right about his timetable, I was right about the injury. Franchy Cordero’s elbow has forced him to the IL, and Urias was called up on April 8. In 18 at bats at Triple A El Paso, he hit .400 with a solo HR, a SB, and four runs and joined the Padres at the top of the order. He should provide a bit of speed and a solid batting average while contributing some runs. It doesn’t help me now as this week’s FAAB has already run, and if he has a good week, his price, if early season FAAB results are any indication, will be high. He could have been won a few days ago for a minimal bid if you needed his skill-set and position.
Ian Happ, on the other hand, remains on my watch-list. At AAA Iowa, he is 7 for 31 with 4 R, 8 RBI, 0 HR and 1 SB in seven games. He may return to the Cubs if a need arises, but his 10 strikeouts and just two walks show that he hasn’t addressed his plate-discipline and the main issue for his demotion. He remains on my long-term demotion list until he can show significant improvement to his eye at the plate. It is easy to monitor with a brief glimpse at his total strikeouts and his walks. When I see a decrease in Ks and/or an increase in BB, I will move him to my “short term-demotion” category or prepare a cheap FAAB bid when I think his return is imminent.
While I am monitoring these drops, I also must closely monitor what is happening with current players on MLB teams with regular roles. It is here that we monitor the bottom of the leaderboard. What do we think about Chris Davis? He is likely unowned in your league, and I am not recommending that you pick him up, but how likely is it that someone replaces him on the Orioles roster? While his results have been horrendous and his contract is oppressive, how long do we see him remaining in the lineup? We may see him heading to the minors “to get right” and get a look at Austin Hays, Chance Sisco, or Anthony Santander. Before any Davis announcement, it would be prudent to spec on a roster replacement. How long until even the rebuilding Orioles are forced to address this?
If you have been lucky enough to avoid the IL on your team, I don’t want you to misinterpret last week’s article and become complacent. Though I did counsel patience, there is never a time when we shouldn’t be looking to improve our teams. I am not going to find a player better than my Travis Shaw in the free-agent pool, but I might find someone better than the Nick Ahmed I have on my bench. Our weekly lineup improvements don’t all have to be 455-foot oppo-tacos. Replacing a bench piece on the cheap can help our team further down the road. That can be with a more highly skilled player that emerges, a player with an increased playing time outlook, or a player of similar skill and situation who simply has more flexible eligibility. While these are the overlooked transactions, they should be working to make your team better; even though we hope that the player never sees our active roster!
It should be noted, that if you are playing in a league with IL spots, then be sure that these spots are always full. If you are in the fortunate position to not have any injuries and have additional IL spots, put low FAAB claims on players who are in the free agent pool but have injuries. This will reduce their cost when they return from the IL, and if you run into injury problems of your own, you can always make a drop if faced with a roster crunch.
The free agent pool can be a choppy one and we must move quickly. We don’t have the luxury of leaving an interesting player in the free agent pool and waiting to see if they perform. We bid, sometimes aggressively, and then put them onto our bench, and then we monitor performance. We know that Alex Verdugo struggles to find playing time in a deep Dodgers lineup. We can dream on his skills and hope that he works his way into an everyday role, but if we don’t grab him, someone else will.
Early season patience isn’t not making moves, it’s not getting over-excited about small sample sizes. If your situation allows it, you may have to get Alex Verdugo if you want him but remember that his playing time hasn’t changed from our preseason outlook. We cannot value him above a player who has an everyday role. ATC projected him for 303 plate appearance, and that seems reasonable until the Dodgers’ team-context changes. Preseason, I had Verdugo as a -$6.72 player in one of my leagues. In that same league, I had Daniel Vogelbach as a -$9.38 player, because ATC projected him for just 145 plate appearances. Obviously, I have made a change to Vogelbach’s playing time expectations and he now has much more value. So much value that if he is still available, he will have to be a very expensive FAAB bid this week. If we can catch players with solid skills getting with increases in playing time as soon as they happen, we can grab players with smaller bids. These are the aggressive actions that need to be taken early in season.
Patience is vital early in season. Blowing through 35% of your FAAB budget on the quick-starting Kolten Wong and Hunter Strickland in Week 1 is dangerous. Even now, though, the season is coming into better focus. Playing-time has solidified, manager’s tendencies have been revealed, and we have a better idea who is hitting the ball hard and who is attempting steals. These clues shape the fantasy season. We have to take the same care managing in-season as we did prepping for it. It’s a much different kind of work, but one that has the same goal: create a strong team.
Patience is not inaction. You should be working to improve all aspects of your team. Too often we think of this as finding an ignored and undrafted player who becomes next year’s third rounder. These can be league winners. The more likely scenario is that we move our slumping starter Xander Bogaerts to the bench and send our late-round backup, Dansby Swanson, into our active lineup. At the same time, we improve our bench by adding Ryon Healy who has gained third base eligibility and move Kyle Seager to the IL. While it won’t make headlines, all these moves make your team stronger and does not take on risk. We retain most of our FAAB dollars for later in the season, which gives us room to continue to make improvements to our team. These tiny, inexpensive moves can also be league winners.
The fantasy baseball picture that I am creating here will come into complete focus in my next article. Last week I advised early-season patience. This week, I have given a glimpse behind-the-scenes to advise the many actions that managers should take that may not show up in your league’s transaction history, or message board. When looked at together, we see the salient point that I will discuss next week: your draft doesn’t really matter.
