Winning in the DFS game. Getting the hot gal at the end of the bar on a Saturday night to go home with you. Finding strong performances off the waiver-wire. People think it’s easy to accomplish all three of those tasks, but I’m here to tell you it isn’t. Since I’m not going to comment on anyone’s drunken pickup techniques, I’m too old to worry about that at this point, and since we have a whole website on how to win in DFS, I’ll focus on the third part of that triangle, using the recent knee injury to Giancarlo Stanton as the springboard for the discussion.
WHAT PROMPTED THIS PIECE?
Giancarlo Stanton is always hurt.
Every year I warn about his propensity to end up on the sidelines, and every year folks ignore my impassioned commentary on the whole situation. Some facts, before moving on.
Stanton is always hurt. This season, he’s missed games with four injuries (shoulder, biceps, calf and knee)… and the season is just at the midpoint.
When he hurt his knee, he was going to be fine. Then he was likely to miss a few days. Then maybe an IL stint was coming. Then he was placed on the IL. Then we learned he could miss all of July. In 36 hours, he went from being day-to-day to being out more than a month with his PCL injury. Typical.
As of this writing… Stanton has appeared in 1,053 of a potential 1,375 games since the start of the 2011 season. He’s appeared in 75.6 percent of the games. That means, in more than eight years, he’s averaged 122 games a season (and the number will obviously go down as he continues to miss time this season).
So, yet again, Stanton was drafted as a top-25 player, and yet again he will fail to match expectations.
So, I’m tweeting out the whole situation about Stanton, and I’m shocked, like dumbfounded, that some folks continue to persist in the belief that it’s worth it to draft Stanton in the first couple of rounds.
Let’s be VERY clear about this.
Stanton will end this season, for the third time in five seasons, with less than 28 homers.
Stanton will end this season, for the third time in five seasons, with less than 75 RBI.
Stanton will end this season, for the third time in five seasons, with less than 60 runs scored.
Some superstar hitter.
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SO WHY DO FOLKS STILL DRAFT STANTON?
Yet you still want to build a team around Stanton?
Why?
Here’s a response that I got that I think drives right to the heart of the disconnect that so many in the fantasy universe seem unable to move beyond.
I asked if you would still draft Stanton as a top-25 player in 2020. The vast majority of you answered no, but here’s a comment from Jeff F. who is still in Stanton’s corner.
Only in a shallow league where Stanton + replacement level guy could still provide 40+ HRs. Always hurt but has averaged 34HRs.
Jeff is right that over the course of his career an average season from Stanton is 30+ homers. At the same time, he will have failed to hit 28 in 3-of-5 seasons when this year is over, so the 34-homer thing is actually off base if you ask me.
However, it’s the second part of this that I want to focus more directly on.
I have to admit I have no idea what a “shallow league” means. Is that 10-team? Is that a league that uses only three starting outfielders? No matter what the actual configuration, I get the main point, which is this: unless you’re in a very deep league, like a 15 teamer that starts five outfielders, there are plenty of guys on the waiver-wire that can be added to fill in the blankness that an injured Stanton offers when he’s hurt.
Is this true?
1 – You have to be in a league that has IL spots, or this entire argument is useless. You cannot afford to carry injury prone players on your team if you don’t have places to stash them when they are hurt. Further, some leagues only have one or two IL spots, so that also makes it difficult to stash guys that are missing lengthy periods of time since it would take a minor miracle for your team to only have two injured players on it.
2 – If you have IL spots, you can add players off waivers. However, the further into the season we get, the fewer worthwhile players you have the option to turn to if your league does use IL spots. Look at the teams in your league. Does anyone have fewer than three players hurt? Maybe five? Seven? So, what happens if your team has five DL spots, and the league is 12 teams. That could be 60 players on the shelf at any one time, which means 60 players have been added off waivers to cover those roster spots. That’s 60 fewer worthwhile players on waivers for your to add to your squad. What if you’re in a league with unlimited IL spots? There’s could be 75, 85 players on the IL with that same amount added out of the free agent pool. In such an instance, is it easy to find a viable option off waivers? Maybe not as much as so many seem to think.
3 – What makes you think that the player you add off waivers will be good? There’s no guarantee that anyone, who wasn’t drafted or picked up by anyone else off waivers, will be good when you need them, despite what folks seem to think.
Let’s be real here. Players on waivers are, in the majority of instances, there because they aren’t very good or they have playing time concerns. No one else drafted them, or if they were drafted, they were let go for poor performance. When other players have been hurt, the guy you end up grabbing off waivers was passed on by everyone else who hit waivers before you did. Does that really mean you will get a good player when you eventually make your move? Perhaps you did a good job and grabbed a hot guy off waivers. You add him to your team and he hits .213 with three homers over 31 games as his game slows down as he returns to what he should be. His overall numbers might look good, but the level of production that you picked up for your team stunk. Sometimes you get lucky and the add goes off. Sometimes you get lucky and the guy you added all of a sudden becomes a full-time player because someone else is hurt. Sometimes you get lucky and grab that young player right as he’s called up, but in the majority of instances the truth is this – the guy you add off waivers isn’t very good, has no shot at replicating the production you lost with your injured player, and all you’re really hoping to accomplish is to end up with some passable production from your fill-in.
4 – When we talk about picking up a player off waivers, there’s a cost. If you’re in a FAAB league you have to spend $ to add that player. If you’re in a waiver-priority league, you have to blow your spot in order to add the guy. In each instance it’s not free to add a player, you have to pay some price.
5 – Let’s go back to the Stanton example, and talk risk.
Stanton has appeared in an average of 122 games a season since 2011. That means, on draft day, you have to expect that he will miss 40 games, or a quarter of the season. So why are you spending a second or third round pick on a player that you know will miss a quarter of the season? This is the part I really don’t understand. It’s one thing to take a player like that in the 18th round, but the second or third? Folks remember Stanton’s huge 2017 effort and his impressive 2018, but they totally discounted his 2015-16 when his overall numbers said he was a 5th outfielder in a mixed league. They also discount the fact that he’s continually injured. The facts are clear – he misses a ton of games. Period. So why are you taking the risk of rostering him in the 2/3 round?
So if you drafted Stanton, you should have planned for him to miss a quarter of the season, so you’re going to have to backfill 40 games with him on your roster on draft day. But it’s not that simple.
What happens when Stanton is hurt, but not on the IL? You can’t “replace” him with someone off waivers if he’s still on the active roster.
What happens if Stanton is placed on the IL on Tuesday, but your league only runs waivers once a week on Sunday? Sure, you could move a player into his open spot off your bench, if you have someone, but you won’t be able to replace him until days after he’s been put on the shelf.
What happens if Stanton is activated from the IL on Thursday. Can you activate him Friday or does your league only allow you to make roster moves for the week on Monday?
The point is, that even if Stanton actually plays 122 games, maybe he’s only in your active lineup for 114 of those outings. So, you might end up needing even more backfill games that the injured players game total would suggest.
You get my point?
Everyone thinks it’s easy to add guys off waivers, it’s not.
People remember their great waiver-wire adds when they nab Trey Mancini, Tommy La Stella or Daniel Vogelbach. They quickly forget when they purchased Freddy Galvis, Daniel Descalso, Touki Tousssaint, Carter Kieboom, Luis Urias or Chris Martin.
Be real with yourself, and with the players you draft. Realize that you can win by drafting an injury prone player like Giancarlo Stanton, but also take note of the fact that you are making your job needlessly difficult and creating a path that is fraught with danger.
Ray Flowers can be heard Monday-Friday, 8-10 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). Follow Ray’s work on Twitter (@baseballguys) and be sure to listen to his podcast work too.
