2020 Hindsight? What This Season Can Teach Fantasy Owners

July 31, 2020

In this week's edition of The Friday Meta, Kyle Bishop considers potential lessons from a chaotic 2020 fantasy baseball season amid the COVID pandemic, opt-outs, injuries, and shortened games.

What will this baseball season mean?

Questions abound with regard to the extraordinary circumstances in which we find ourselves, not least of which is whether or not MLB can even manage to complete its planned 60-game season. Coronavirus rages on without an end in sight, and the league's apparent inability or unwillingness to develop and enforce effective protocols does not inspire much hope.

Let's suppose, for the sake of both argument and the premise of this article, that we do get through the next two months. Is there anything of value to be gleaned from the chaos by fantasy owners?

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What Is This? I Don't Even...

To be blunt, you're not going to get a whole lot of useful or actionable data this year. 60 games is barely a third of a normal campaign, and it's difficult enough to draw meaningful conclusions from a full season. That would be true even if games were being played in normal circumstances, which they are decidedly not. Players may be impacted by the lack of fans in attendance, concern about their health or that of their loved ones, their routines being blown to smithereens, or a thousand other factors that are impossible to quantify.

Judging by how the first week of action has gone, a bunch of players are going to contract the virus, while many others suffer injuries that are likely at least partly attributable to the unusual schedule caused by the pandemic. All that aside, slumps are inevitable for the vast majority of players, and even a brief lull could have a concerted impact on overall production. Analysis will have to be on a case-by-case basis as always, but it's gonna be tough to ding anyone too much for lackluster results.

Conversely, and perversely, it'll be hard to give a guy too much credit for success. We've seen any number of players put together a great couple of weeks or months that proved little, other than the fact that even the worst player in MLB is a world-class athlete capable of staggering feats. Nobody is going to crack 300 plate appearances or 100 innings this year. Those aren't exactly large enough samples to confidently proclaim that a breakout has occurred. We miss often enough on those in normal times.

So what can you learn from whatever rough approximation of a season we receive in 2020?

Lessons to Learn

The importance of diligence: At various points in my years writing about this game, I've underlined how crucial it is to stay on top of in-season management. Knowing your league settings inside and out, checking your lineups closely, and regularly reviewing the waiver wire are winning habits anytime, but even more so in the current environment. With such a short runway, you can't afford to leave at-bats or innings on the bench or to miss out on a waiver wire add.

The value of ruthlessness: Patience is usually a virtue, but even in a 162-game slate, sitting on your hands for too long can cost you dearly. With a 60-game schedule, almost every player's leash gets shorter. You're obviously not cutting Mike Trout after a couple of hitless games in a row, but the guys at the end of the roster might be a different story. Honestly, this will be a personal struggle, as I tend toward a stoic management style, but these are simply different times that require a different approach.

The merits of flexibility: In addition to being thorough and unsentimental, the ability to adapt is going to be pivotal in a season where seemingly anything could happen and everything could change from one day to the next. Being rigid in your thinking simply won't serve you well.

The fun of risk-taking: If ever there were a season to just cut loose and throw crap at the wall to see what sticks, it's this one. That wild or off-the-wall strategy you've toyed with for years but never had the guts to implement? Now's the time, because really...

The freedom of nihilism: ...if you have a bad season, who cares? Assuming you weren't crazy enough to put a bunch of money on the wacky game show that is the 2020 season, anyway. In the end, as he so often has, Carl Brutananadilewski said it best.

The Friday Meta is Kyle Bishop's attempt to go beyond the fantasy box score or simple strategic pointers and get at the philosophical and/or behavioral side of the game. It is hopefully not as absurd, pretentious, or absurdly pretentious as that sounds.

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