MLB Barometer: Risers & Fallers

Talk about how and when to reopen the MLB season continues to pick up. Here's what we know about the league's latest plans, per a report from ESPN's Jeff Passan:

• Teams aim to return to their facilities in mid-June and intend to play at least a handful of exhibition games
• The league hopes to schedule Opening Day for early July
• Secondary rosters will expand to 50, with the size of game-day rosters still undetermined
• Players will be encouraged to keep their distance from each other, from umpires, and from coaches, taking steps such as not sitting in the dugout during games
• Players will have their temperature tested multiple times per day and will be tested for COVID-19 multiple times per week
• Additional safety measures such as switching out baseballs more quickly, prohibiting players from showering at stadiums and prohibiting them from taking taxis and rideshares will be implemented
• Players who test positive will be quarantined for at least seven days and won't be able to return until they test negative twice
• Players with risk factors that make COVID-19 extra dangerous for them can opt out of playing (though there's been no word on if players without such risk factors may opt out)
• Players will wear masks when not on the field

Unless you play in a league which gives bonus points for high fives, most of these details won't have much of a fantasy impact. The increased roster size seems relevant, however, as does the fact that early July continues to be mentioned as a target date. While everything is still very much up in the air, it looks as though those involved are increasingly confident about starting around that time -- assuming, of course, that the owners' attempts to renege on an agreement they previously made with players regarding their prorated salaries doesn't derail the whole thing.

There are pieces of this proposal which will undoubtedly affect the upcoming fantasy season, though it's quite hard to predict in advance what the impacts will be. There isn't a database of players who have underlying risk factors that would lead to them electing to sit the season out (nor should there be, for obvious privacy reasons), but one or two players will almost definitely be forced to make that difficult choice. It's also obviously impossible to say in advance which players are most likely to test positive for COVID-19, but it may be overly optimistic to assume that none will if the league attempts to re-open mid-pandemic.

Ultimately, those factors aren't significantly harder to navigate for fantasy owners than a normal level of injury risk already is. We know that a large handful of players will get injured each season, even if they've never come across as injury-prone in the past. There's no way to predict who might opt out of playing and no way to predict who could test positive for the virus, but uncertainty is nothing new in fantasy baseball. We might simply be forced to treat every single player as slightly more risky than usual, given that it's more or less impossible to accurately compare risk factors.

Perhaps the primary takeaway from all this is that the 2020 MLB season, assuming it does indeed go forward, will be one in which randomness is a bigger factor than ever. That's inevitable for a season that's unlikely to last much longer than 80 games, as a player's 20-game hot or cold streak suddenly lasts for a full quarter of the campaign. But in addition to the randomness that comes from shrinking all samples in half, we also now have additional injury-like risk for all players. We may also have additional actual injury risk, as players seeing their rhythms disrupted across the board seems unlikely to have a positive effect on their health.

That disruption could have impacts that extend beyond injury risk and lead to general weirdness in what will inevitably be the strangest season in living memory. The psychological strain of playing during a pandemic can't be understated. While it takes a certain level of mental toughness to be a high-level professional athlete, baseball players are still human (with the possible exception of Mike Trout). We're bound to see some incredibly odd stat lines due not just to small sample sizes but due to the fact that players are more stressed out than ever and more out of rhythm than ever.

So what can we do to gain an advantage in a season in which we know randomness will be more rampant than ever, but where we can't predict who will be most impacted? A few things things stand out:

1. Emphasize quantity over quality more than normal. If variance is higher across the board, the more shots you have for something to break right, the better. For example, the conventional wisdom in fantasy is that whoever gets the best player in a 2-for-1 deal typically won the deal. This season, consider shifting that paradigm and giving more weight to the side that gets the additional player than you normally would.
2. Be less afraid of players who are already considered quite risky. The additional risk that comes with this unusual season seems as though it should add a similar level of uncertainty across the board, rather than taking every player's existing risk and doubling it or tripling it. To put it another way: if one player has a 30 percent bust rate and another has a 10 percent bust rate, the former player is three times as risky as the latter. But if the strangeness of this season adds a 10 percent bust rate to everyone, the players suddenly have a 40 percent and 20 percent bust rate, respectively, meaning the risky player is now only twice as risky as the safer one.
3. Prioritize streaky players. This is important both for the point in the paragraph above, as we're going to have to accept increased volatility across the league, and due to the shorter schedule. Sure, a streaky player is at an increased risk of a total collapse in a short season, but winning a fantasy league requires not merely avoiding the worst-case scenarios for your players but also getting some best-case outcomes. For guys whose highs are high and whose lows are low, the chances of them staying high for the majority of the season are increased with a shorter schedule.

This week's column will take a look at players who should see their stocks change based on the presumed changes to this season, as well as those who have seen their stocks change based on recent news.

RISERS

Jose Ramirez, 3B, Indians: Perhaps no player embodies streakiness better than Jose Ramirez. Check out his wRC+ over the last four half-seasons: 170, 110, 68, 176. There's really no way of knowing which version you'll get in 2020, a season which is likely to only be about 80 games long. You need several things to break right to win a fantasy league, though, and when things break right for Ramirez, they break very right. Yes, drafting him involves taking the risk that you're getting the 2019 first-half version, but risk was already baked into Ramirez's price. Now that everyone is risky, players for whom you were ready to tolerate a fair amount of risk already like Ramirez should see their stocks rise.

Fernando Tatis Jr., SS, Padres: With the exception of Ramirez, there may not be a hitter taken in the first two rounds who has a broader range of possible outcomes than Tatis. That's not because he has a track record of streakiness at the big-league level like Ramirez, but instead because he barely has any big-league track record at all. He's played just 84 games at the highest level, but his 22 homers, 16 steals and .317/.379/.590 slash line in those games were all outstanding. The problem, however, is that line came with an unrepeatable .410 BABIP. Tatis has been a high-BABIP guy his whole professional career, as he hits the ball hard and has great speed, but no one is a true-talent .410-BABIP guy. There's risk in just how repeatable his rookie performance is and some injury risk as well, as he's averaged just 87 games over the last two seasons. If you're looking to increase volatility over a strange and short season, though, Tatis is your guy.

Joey Gallo, OF, Rangers: High-power, high-strikeout hitters like Gallo tend to be among the most volatile. Players who make a lot of contact get more of a chance for their BABIP luck to even out. Players with long swings, which lead to both lots of home runs and lots of strikeouts, are prone to everything being off for an extended period but are also able to go on some of the hottest hot streaks when they're truly locked in. You don't have to look any further than Gallo's results in 70 games last season to see what he could do in a similar time span this year. He hit 22 homers over that short stretch while posting a .253 batting average, a full 44 points higher than anything he'd managed in the past.

Jesus Luzardo, SP, Athletics: Luzardo showed what he could do in a very limited sample of just 12 innings last season, striking out 16 and walking three while allowing just five hits and two runs. The 22-year-old southpaw was expected to burst onto the scene over a larger sample this season, though just how large was the question that kept his stock in check. Shoulder and lat injuries limited him to just 58 innings last season (including three in the playoffs), and it always seemed likely that his workload would be limited this year, even if the Athletics claimed to not have him on any specific innings count. Cutting the season roughly in half should alleviate that worry, however, as he now should be able to open the year in the rotation and remain there for as long as he can stay healthy.

Rich Hill, SP, Twins: The Twins signed the veteran lefty for a very cheap $3 million deal (with an additional $6.5 million available in incentives) over the offseason. They were able to pay below market rate for a player of his talent due to the fact that October elbow surgery was expected to cost him roughly half the season. The delayed start to the campaign has bought him time, however. He's been able to keep throwing and is on track to hit his original mid-June return date, which now corresponds to Game 1 of the exhibition slate rather than Game 70 of the regular season. While he still comes with plenty of risk given his injury history (the last time he made more than 25 starts in a season was all the way back in 2007), he now can at least be drafted under the assumption that he'll be healthy on Opening Day, and, as repeated many time in this piece, risk is something we'll have to get comfortable with this season.

Nate Pearson, SP, Blue Jays: Pearson featured previously in this column as a faller, under the theory that the Blue Jays were unlikely to be competitive enough to rush him to the big leagues. The shortened season meant he was unlikely to have much time to make a significant impact without being rushed, as he's only made three Triple-A starts. There's still been no indication that the Blue Jays intend to rush him, but with plenty of skepticism about whether a minor-league season will take place, his odds of making his big-league debut appear to be going way up. With an extended taxi squad looking very likely, Pearson seems like a natural fit. The Blue Jays won't want their top pitching prospect losing an entire year of development, so he's likely to get the chance to show what he can do at some point.

FALLERS

Nolan Arenado, 3B, Rockies: Arenado is a fantastic player and a worthy first-round pick. He earns a mention as a faller here because he may be the player in the first two rounds whose value is most attributable to his safety, and if you buy the argument given in the introduction that this season will add risk across the board at a more or less flat rate, he no longer has as much of a benefit there. Arenado has been remarkably consistent over the last five years, batting between .287 and .315, hitting between 37 and 42 homers, scoring between 97 and 116 runs and driving in between 110 and 133. If we're assuming increased inconsistency across the board, though, we may want to drop Arenado just slightly in favor of players for whom we were already willing to tolerate a fair amount of risk, as even bastions of stability like Arenado could be somewhat risky this year.

Jacob deGrom, SP, Mets: The same argument for slightly downgrading Arenado could be made about deGrom, who seems to be the safest option among the top tier of starting pitchers. Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer come with age and injury risk, Gerrit Cole comes with moving-to-Yankee-Stadium risk (and can-he-handle-New-York-media risk, if you buy into that sort of thing) and Walker Buehler and Jack Flaherty come with a bit of risk in that their track records of dominance aren't quite as long as those of their more veteran counterparts. DeGrom seems to have the highest floor of the group, though his upside is just a hair below that of Cole, Verlander and Scherzer, at least. That trio has all eclipsed the 35 percent strikeout rate threshold, while deGrom's best mark in that category is 32.2 percent. If the inherent instability of the upcoming season means we're forced to stomach a fair amount of risk with each pick, we may want to nudge deGrom down the board by a pick or two.