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Ben Rosener looks at the fantasy baseball impact of injuries to Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Oneil Cruz and Boston Red Sox outfielder Adam Duvall.
The MLB offseason and Spring training are officially over. The regular season is here, and with it comes the daily influx of baseball news that fantasy managers missed in the winter months. Lineup news, actual games happening, constant waiver wire moves, pitching assignments, and bullpen usage.
Baseball is back, and so too is fantasy baseball, with the draft season having just wrapped up, or otherwise being very close to being wrapped up. This column aims to cover any and all fantasy baseball news, big or small, and how it pertains to your fantasy team. Spring training or the regular season, it's covered here.
Has a player who's usually been hitting in the middle of a lineup suddenly batting eighth or ninth for an extended period? The fantasy implications will be covered here. The same goes for injuries and injured placements and whether or not you should consider picking up a player who was recently called up. Basically, any kernel of fantasy news and its relevance to fantasy managers could be covered here. Today, the news of the day is the fantasy impact of injuries to Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Oneil Cruz and Boston Red Sox center fielder Adam Duvall.
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Fantasy Baseball Impact Of Oneil Cruz's Ankle Injury
Cruz suffered a reported fractured ankle, per a tweet from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s Jason Mackey on April 11. Mackey was conveying an update from the Pirates' director of sports medicine, Todd Tomczyk.
Per a tweet from the Pirates on April 10, Cruz is expected to be out for four months.
Pittsburgh placed Cruz on the 10-day injured list on Monday, according to a tweet from the team’s official Twitter account.
On Tuesday, per a tweet from the Pirates, the club transferred Cruz to the 60-day injured list in order to create space on the 40-man roster for right-handed reliever Eli Villalobos. He joined the organization via a waiver claim from the Miami Marlins.
The 24-year-old was hitting .250 with a .375 on-base percentage, a home run, and three stolen bases in 40 plate appearances this season. This comes after batting .233 with a .294 on-base percentage, 17 home runs, and 10 stolen bases in 361 plate appearances for the Pirates during the 2022 campaign.
Rodolfo Castro would appear to be next in line for starts at shortstop. The infielder has started both games at the position since Cruz’s injury. That being said, he’s probably not a fantasy option outside of deeper leagues at the moment.
Castro entered play Tuesday hitting .222 with a .364 on-base percentage in 22 plate appearances for the Pirates this season. Last year, he batted .233 with a .299 on-base percentage, 11 home runs, and five stolen bases in 278 plate appearances in the majors. However, he didn’t register much hard contact, with just a 6.7% barrel rate, a .344 xwOBAcon, and a 35% hard-hit rate.
Fantasy Baseball Impact Of Adam Duvall's Injury
Per a tweet from MLB.com’s Ian Browne, Duvall reportedly “has a distal radius fracture in his left wrist.”
The outfielder was in the midst of a strong start to the season at the plate, hitting .455 with a .514 on-base percentage and four home runs in 37 plate appearances. He was providing an instant impact at the plate in his first season in Boston with the Red Sox.
Entering play on Wednesday, Duvall was in the top 10 in the league in wRC+ (318, first), home runs (four, tied for second), barrels (seven, tied for fourth), and xwOBA (.527, eighth) among all qualified hitters.
As of now, it looks like Rob Refsnyder is a candidate to see significant time in center field in the interim. Of course, that’s entirely speculative, but Refsnyder has started in center field in Boston’s two games since Duvall was injured.
The 32-year-old is hitting .200 with a .368 on-base percentage in 19 plate appearances this year. If he can repeat his batted ball data from 2022, he’ll be a quality fantasy option for managers in leagues with 12 or more teams.
Refsnyder hit .307 with a .384 on-base percentage, six home runs, and a stolen base in 177 plate appearances during the 2022 season. And while his .307 average may have been propped up slightly by a .394 BABIP, the 32-year-old made plenty of loud contact.
He registered a 10.9% barrel rate to go along with a .469 xwOBAcon and a 44.5% hard-hit rate. Perhaps most crucially, there wasn’t all that much of a gap or difference between his wOBA (.381) and his actual xwOBA (.374).
Switching back to this season, Refsnyder has batted fifth in each of the last two games he’s started in place of Duvall, hitting behind Enrique Hernandez, Rafael Devers, Justin Turner, and Masataka Yoshida.
While Hernandez and Turner have gotten off to slow starts so far, hitting behind that quartet should be a decidedly fantasy-friendly situation over time, especially where potential RBI opportunities are concerned.
Yoshida owns a .366 on-base percentage and a .345 xwOBA in his first 41 plate appearances in the majors while Devers and Turner both checked in with on-base percentages north of the .350 mark last season.
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