Drops & Disasters: Fantasy Baseball Roster Moves (4/13)

As another week recedes into the rearview mirror, fantasy baseball managers should not lose sight of the fact that we have yet to reach the middle of April. There is so much of the baseball season remaining. Managers should be working to improve their teams and start to address clear categorical weaknesses, but they should refrain from panicking, making moves for the sake of making moves, and overreacting to sample sizes that remain quite small.

For instance, managers are cautioned against dropping players they highly regarded a short time ago due solely to a rough few weeks of baseball. Additionally, if contemplating dropping a player whose health and role remain intact, take the time to evaluate that player under the hood, as opposed to giving up on him due to poor surface stats. For instance, coming into Sunday, Andrew Vaughn is hitting .102 with only one home run. On the other hand, his BABIP is a very unlucky .118 despite a hard hit rate (per Fangraphs) of over 54%. Vaughn’s BABIP should regress positively toward his career mark of .287, bringing better fantasy stats to managers.

In evaluating potential drops, it is also important to take health information released by team or player with a huge grain of salt. For example, while managers presumably (and hopefully) have no plans to drop Matt McLain while on the IL with a minor hamstring injury, my recent experience navigating him in and out of lineups served as a good reminder as to why a healthy dose of skepticism is needed. April 4, McLain was in Cincinnati’s lineup but then was scratched shortly before gametime. The team indicated that the scratch was due to left hamstring tightness but offered no information regarding the severity of the injury. His managers, however, were relieved to see McLain pinch hit late in the game and almost hit a home run. McLain then was listed as a starter April 5 but once again was scratched shortly before first pitch. Referring to the following day’s game, manager Terry Francona said: “We might not play him (Sunday) just to be probably a little bit of a worry wart.” Based on McLain’s pinch hit appearance and Francona’s statement, there was ample reason to believe that McLain would be available this past week. Of course, that did not happen. April 6 and 7, McLain did not start, but the team indicated he was available off the bench. Francona explained April 7 that “We’re just … trying to get some more information before we let him play.” April 8, the Reds placed McLain on the IL, with Francona declaring: “Well, he’s got a minor hamstring issue. So rather than try to milk it through … he can come back next Tuesday, and the hope is that he can come back and be himself. There’s just so much baseball left to play that just didn’t seem like it made a lot of sense to try to push through this right now.”

Whether Cincinnati purposely played it coy with McLain’s injury, misjudged its severity, or simply changed the way it wanted to manage his treatment, it really does not matter to us fantasy managers. What does matter is that every statement by a player, team representative and reporter is best viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. If my McLain example is not strong enough here, think back to Kyle Tucker last season. June 3, Tucker fouled a ball off his right shin, and the Astros maintained, for many weeks, that the injury was a deep bone bruise or contusion. Sept. 2, however, Chandler Rome broke a story in The Athletic that, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the injury, Tucker in fact suffered a bone fracture on the play in question. Had such information been available publicly, fewer managers would have held onto Tucker through June, July and August wondering how long the player would be sidelined due to a bone bruise. In terms of player injuries and recovery times, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst (including ensuring that you are not forced to start an injured player with the risk of zeroes for an entire scoring period).

Some of the players who should at least be considered as potential drops this week are set forth below in the following two tables – the first includes hitters and the second pitchers. In addition to the player’s name, team and position, the tables include the player’s roster percentage in the premier 15- and 12-team contests: the NFBC’s Main Event and Online Championship, respectively. Finally, the tables list my rankings as to how strongly – or not – I feel each particular player should be dropped in those 15-team and 12-team formats, respectively. The key to these rankings, from 0-4, is as follows:

• 0 = Do not drop
• 1 = Team context dependent; probably should not be dropped on most teams
• 2 = Team context dependent; compelling arguments to drop and not drop
• 3 = Team context dependent; probably should be dropped on most teams
• 4 = Drop