One of the best things about baseball is its rich history. There is so much statistical information at our fingertips, we can look at past seasons, go through the numbers, make calculations and feel like we have a pretty good handle on what to expect going forward.
It’s a ritual fantasy baseball managers go through every year as we emerge from our winter cocoons to prepare for our drafts.
Except that last season was unlike any we’ve ever experienced.
A full season was no longer 162 games, but 60. And those two-month statistical samples we might have dismissed in previous years now stand alone on the back of each player’s baseball card (or Baseball-Reference page).
How seriously can we take 60 games’ worth of numbers when applying them to our expectations over a full season?
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Even beyond the small samples, last season was completely different in many other ways. It started in late July. Rosters were expanded. The designated hitter was used in both leagues. Doubleheaders were shortened to seven innings. Travel was restricted so teams played games only against the other nine teams in their geographical region.
When it comes to preparing for this year’s drafts, business as usual just isn’t going to cut it.
The greatest challenge is figuring out how a one-of-a-kind 2020 has any relation whatsoever to what we think will happen in 2021.
Francisco Lindor is one of several big-name players to switch teams who didn’t play a regular-season game last year against a team in his new division. (Photo: New York Mets via AP)
Big names, new places
To add to the confusion, this offseason saw a number of star players change teams.
— The Mets traded for All-Star shortstop Francisco Lindor and pitcher Carlos Carrasco.
— The Cardinals acquired star third baseman Nolan Arenado.
— The Padres added starting pitchers Yu Darvish, Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove.
— The Blue Jays signed free agents George Springer, Marcus Semien and Kirby Yates.
— The White Sox traded for starting pitcher Lance Lynn and signed top closer Liam Hendriks.
— And the defending World Series champion Dodgers landed the biggest fish in the free agent market, reigning National League Cy Young award winner Trevor Bauer.
Guess what all those players have in common? Not a single one of them played a regular-season game last year against a team in his new division.
How are we supposed to evaluate how a player will perform when the composition of his opposition is so different from last season?
Bauer (5-4, 1.73 ERA) and Darvish (8-3, 2.01) finished first and second in the NL Cy Young balloting, compiling outstanding numbers against demonstrably weaker lineups in the American League and NL Central Divisions. In fact, 10 of the top 20 starting pitchers in this season’s National Fantasy Baseball Championship average draft position (ADP as of Feb. 21) played for and exclusively faced Central Division teams in 2020.
The Brewers' Christian Yelich struck out in a career-high 31% of his plate appearances in the shortened 2020 season. (Photo: Gene J. Puskar, AP)
Offensive anomalies
The shortened season also led to unexpected struggles for several of 2019’s top-tier hitters.
Christian Yelich, Cody Bellinger, Javier Baez, Alex Bregman and J.D. Martinez were all taken, on average, within the first three rounds of mixed-league drafts. And they were some of the biggest fantasy busts after failing to live up to those high expectations.
Looking closer, there are explanations for why each did poorly, from Yelich’s career-high 31% strikeout rate to Bellinger’s unexpected struggles versus fastballs to Baez’s 83-point drop in BABIP to Bregman’s sudden inability to hit righties to Martinez’s lack of access to in-game video.
Which of these things might have corrected themselves over a full season? If not, could the answers have been discovered this offseason? (Of interest to Yelich, Baez, Martinez and others, an agreement between MLB and the players union will allow personal video usage to return in 2021.) In cases like these, a player’s career track record is a much more effective barometer of what he’s likely to do this season than last year’s small sample.
Playoff stats normally don’t factor into our preseason draft preparations for the same reasons. How many October stars have been overvalued in drafts the following spring?
But this year those numbers can at least help provide context. With the expanded playoffs, some players had as many as 20 additional games last October. Normally playoff stats would be a tiny portion of a player’s production, but that wasn’t the case when the regular season was only 60 games.
Do we believe in the regular-season version of the Rays’ Brandon Lowe (.269/.362/.554, 14 HRs in 193 AB, 25/58 BB/K) or the playoff version (.118/.183/.276, 4 HRs in 76 AB, 6/28 BB/K)?
What about Joc Pederson, who struggled all season long (.190/.285/.397, 7 HRs, 16 RBI in 121 AB) but caught fire in the playoffs (.382/432/.559, 2 HRs, 8 RBI in 34 AB)?
Making sense of it all
On top of all that uncertainty, an MLB memo surfaced just before spring training camps opened that revealed game balls this season will be incrementally deadened and that five additional teams will be using humidors to store them (bringing the total to 10).
An independent study determined the new balls will travel 1 to 2 feet shorter when hit over 375 feet. Humidors also reduce the distance a ball flies. Remember just a couple of years ago when an ever-so-slight change in the drag coefficient of the baseball resulted in a major surge in home runs? This change could produce the opposite reaction … but to what degree?
If it isn’t apparent by now, there are no easy answers. We must also consider the possibility of COVID-19 infections greatly altering the 162-game schedule – one that’s 2.7 times longer than last year’s.
This season more than ever, be flexible and ready to make strategic changes once some of these unknown factors gain clarity. When it comes to projections, it’s only logical that this year’s results will show more variance than normal. The most effective strategy, then, might be simply to move in the opposite direction of conventional wisdom. If the market seems to be moving one way, strongly consider going against the grain.
Have an approach you’ve always wanted to try, but never have? Give it a shot.
Go full stars and scrubs. In Roto leagues, feel free to ignore a category like saves or steals. Wait on starting pitching. Target good players who had bad 2020 numbers.
If it sounds like the same strategy I advocated last season, it’s true. But guessing wrong last season left precious little time to fix those mistakes. This season, time (hopefully) is on our side.
Follow Gardner on Twitter @SteveAGardner
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