All right, people. Time for a pep talk.
I see you out there. I hear you, too. Your comments about how hard this season has been to keep up with as a player, how frustrating it has been to try to play amid the postponements and positive tests, and your resignation in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm not gonna lie ... they get to me. They make me feel like Fantasy Baseball is less the diversion we all sorely need right now and more just another grievance for the aggrieved.
But why is that? Maybe it's as simple as this one tweeter put it: Trying to keep up with all of these schedule changes is obnoxious. The possibility of a team having to shut down for a week or more because of an outbreak (as we've seen with the Marlins, Phillies and now maybe the Cardinals), not to mention the necessarily rejiggering of the schedule thereafter, makes it difficult to set lineups with any real confidence.
I suspect there's more to it than that, though. These sentiments were commonplace even before we saw the ways the schedule could be contorted. No, for most people, the pessimism and dissatisfaction comes from a place of general unease. How can you feel content or comfortable with anything right now? We're living through a global pandemic, and every glimpse of an empty stadium or a masked-up manager is a reminder that things aren't right.
It goes beyond just the world of sports, of course. Those of us who aren't directly impacted by the virus probably know someone who is — or at least know someone who knows someone — and that part weighs heavily on us. It's sad. It might even make us feel like we're not supposed to enjoy anything. Our cultural climate right now is defined by sort of a gloomy sensitivity, and how is anyone supposed to enjoy sports that way?
Might as well not even try.
Thing is, though, not everyone is in that emotional place. One offshoot of a pandemic is that it forces us to reckon with some primal concepts that we may have buried down deep for our own peace of mind — concepts like life, death and what it means to be safe. We're all privately contemplating what we're willing to risk for convenience, fraternity and provision, and given that we're individuals with our own unique experiences and beliefs, we're landing in different places with it.
Then the politics come in, torpedoing any chance for reconciliation of those ideas by sorting us according to our prior virtues, and a necessary emotional journey is once again reduced to the black-and-whites of public policy. It's all very toxic.
And amid it all, baseball (as well as Fantasy Baseball) arrives offering a touch of normalcy — but only a touch and not exactly the way you remember it. Just as the reminders are there whenever you strap on a mask to enter your favorite store, so they are whenever you go to set your lineup for the upcoming scoring period. The version we have now is different, yes, but ... it's far better than it could be. And it's the best we're going to do for quite some time.
I keep hearing from people that they'll check in again in 2021. Well, there's no guaranteeing 2021 will be any different. Unburdening ourselves from this pandemic isn't as straightforward as holing up and waiting for the storm to pass (even though we'd sure like it to be).
Look, I'm not here to tell you that you need to be playing Fantasy Baseball if you're just not there emotionally. It's understandable for you to be in that spot and definitely not my place to comment. I'm just telling you it's OK to enjoy Fantasy Baseball in 2020. It's different and weird, but it doesn't change the fact that something you normally enjoy is here for your enjoyment at a time when you probably need something to enjoy. So enjoy.
Here are some tips to help you with that — ones that I'm still struggling to adopt myself, I'll admit.
Avoid the knee-jerk reaction of presuming it's all over whenever someone tests positive.
The baseball commentariat, particularly on Twitter, is constantly doing this, first with the couple dozen positive tests upon intake in early July, then with the Marlins' outbreak and again with this latest situation with the Cardinals. The reaction has been the same.
"Why are we doing this? Shut it down! Not worth it."
I'm not here to argue it is worth it. The commentariat may have a point. Shoot, it may get its way in the long run. But by now, we should recognize that this sort of outcry isn't having much sway on the sport at large. The league came into this re-opening with its eyes open, recognizing that players would test positive and new challenges would present themselves. It has shown a willingness to adjust for the specifics it couldn't envision (re-arranging schedules, negotiating seven-inning doubleheaders, etc.), and judging from commissioner Rob Manfred's comments over the weekend, that's going to continue.
Comissioner Rob Manfred tells me “We are playing. The players need to be better, but I am not a quitter in general and there is no reason to quit now. We have had to be fluid, but it is manageable.”
— Karl Ravech (@karlravechespn) August 1, 2020
Starting up the sport again was a massive undertaking, so as long as the majority of players, coaches and personnel have decided it's worth it, I suspect that's all it will take to keep it going.
There will be more players who test positive, of course. Hopefully no more outbreaks as players learn from others' mistakes, but we're averaging one a week so far. It's doubtful, then, we've heard the last of the calls to shut it all down, but until they come from someone with the power to do it, recognize that it's mostly just noise.
Remember that not everything that goes wrong is because of the pandemic.
I've seen a lot of this. Justin Verlander comes down with a strained forearm. Mike Soroka tears his Achilles. Some closer doesn't look right. The response? "Oh, this season is just the worst!"
Not helpful. Not keeping circumstances in their proper perspective either. Bad things happen to good players all the time, and rest assured, even in a pandemic-free season that began on time, we would have seen our share of catastrophes already. Just think back to everything that went wrong in spring training. MIke Clevinger messed up his knee. Aaron Judge had a cracked rib. Chris Sale, Noah Syndergaard and Luis Severino all succumbed to Tommy John. Verlander needed surgery for a different injury.
This has always been a frustration in Fantasy Baseball, and to lump it in with the oddities of this particular season is unnecessarily dispiriting at a time when we should be trying to keep each other's spirits up. Even if there is some early evidence that the hurried buildup may be contributing to some of the pitcher injuries we've seen, they're the sort of injuries we should be used to navigating nonetheless.
Think of your roster as a living organism in need of constant care.
Remember Tamagotchi? Come on now, you have to admit maintaining a Fantasy Baseball team is more fun than that.
But it'll take some intention on your part. This isn't the year to set it and forget it. Frankly, no year is, and those who normally take a hands-off approach to team management will come out of this experience all the better for it.
You're going to lose more players than ever — sometimes for weeks, sometimes just days, often suddenly and perhaps just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We've seen players sidelined for contact tracing. We've seen entire teams shut down for it, basically. And, of course, opting out remains a possibility for every single player.
It will afflict every Fantasy Baseballer's roster at some point, and those who navigate it best will separate themselves in the standings. It means always having a sense of who you can afford to ditch, should the need arise, and of course making shrewd waiver claims, working the wire on a near-daily basis to beat your opponents to the next big thing. There's always a next big thing. The more of them you get, the more losses you'll be able to overcome.
And if the constant turnover of players seems overwhelming to you, remember that this season is just two-month sprint (less than that now). You won't have to sustain any of this for long.
Keep quality reserves at the ready in case games are suddenly canceled.
There may be players who drop out with cold-like symptoms (possibly related to COVID-19) for a day but are quickly cleared to return, as we recently saw with Joey Votto. Likewise, the absences for contact tracing, at least on an individual level, have been brief. Players have always gotten days off, so losing one for just a game here and there shouldn't be a big deal.
It's when a whole team has to shut it down that the overall outlook changes, and if the Marlins' case is now the established baseline, you should anticipate such a shutdown lasting as long as a week and a half. The Cardinals have already committed to a week of no games, and it could wind up being a week and a half if their weekend series against the Cubs is canceled.
These cancellations impact not just the teams suffering the outbreak but the ones they're scheduled to face, too, as we've seen most notably with the Phillies but also the Blue Jays, Nationals, Brewers and Tigers. The Phillies' absence was especially lengthy because the Marlins played a game against them even amid the breakout. Hopefully, future breakouts will be caught early enough that the opposing team will lose just that one series.
But yeah, having an entire team scrubbed from the schedule for any length of time means you'll need replacements on hand. Multi-eligible players are of particular value, and you shouldn't pass over an interesting pickup just because you already have the position filled. It's also fair to say that this isn't the year when you should be looking to trade away your excess.
Beware of streaming pitchers, especially those of the two-start variety.
Roughly half the pitching matchups for Week 3 (Aug. 3-9) changed just in the weekend leading up to it, as you can see in this photo, which goes to show that you shouldn't presume anything regarding pitching matchups a full week in advance. Whenever a game is canceled or a start is skipped or a scheduled starter is asked to bail out another starter in the third inning, it impacts not just the pitcher in question but the entire sequence of starters, making it especially risky to presume anyone will remain in line for two starts.
Streaming two-start pitchers is a strategy as old as Fantasy Baseball itself, but the only reason those pitchers are worth considering is because they're making that second start. If they don't, you'll wish you had gone with the reliable one-start pitcher instead.
Maybe this change is for the best. Generally, I'd prefer to see Fantasy Baseballers start their best players, and now at least with their pitchers, there's more incentive for them to do so.
Recognize that the innings won't be there for certain pitchers.
Boy, we've seen a lot of starting pitchers go only 2-3 innings here in the early going.
For the most part, they're not the good ones The pitchers expected to anchor a staff are contributing their usual workload, except in obvious cases of a delayed buildup like Blake Snell and Walker Buehler.
With the back-end starters, though, managers are approaching it much like they would in the postseason, unwilling to give away any of the 60 games on the schedule. When the going gets tough, the unreliable get out of there, often replaced by multi-inning relievers.
These early hooks for the back-end starting pitchers further condenses the position, leaving fewer options on the fringes for those needing a quick fill-in. In Rotisserie and Head-to-Head categories leagues, it means you're using more middle relievers, who should at least bolster your ERA and WHIP (and probably strikeouts, at least relative to a starting pitcher who lasts only three innings). But in all formats, you should be looking to stockpile any starting pitchers who can reliably give you some length, whether via the trade market or through free agency.
