Buckle up. This will be a season like no other. You know that already, I’m sure. But seriously. You need to prepare yourself for the task at hand.
There were times when the first 10 minutes of Seinfeld didn’t work for me. Or when an hour through a Christopher Nolan movie I still couldn’t tell what was happening. But I always felt confident that once the end credits rolled, my expectations would be met.
That’s how I usually feel with a fantasy baseball season. Maybe the first several weeks or two months don’t go as expected. But, for the most part, I trust my preseason evaluations and that over a full season the players I drafted will usually perform as anticipated.
That’s all out the window now. With a 60-game season, you’re in the first hour of a Christopher Nolan movie and that’s all you’re getting. You can’t take for granted that you’re going to get to the superb endings of Memento or The Prestige. You have to fight for every inch of it.
You are almost certainly going to have players placed on the injured list because of COVID-19. You are going to have players who get off to slow starts. You are going to have players whose performance suffers because they are trying to fight through injuries.
How you handle these situations is going to determine your season. There’s no way to know whether you’re overreacting to a development, underreacting, or just… reacting.
That said, one thing is for certain: the trade market will be buzzing. With such a truncated schedule, and with only a few weeks until the trade deadline in most leagues, every one of your league-mates will be looking to improve their teams, and fast.
If you use My Playbook, you can check out both the trade analyzer, which will help you evaluate any trade, and the trade finder, which will offer suggestions for trades within your own leagues to give you a detailed analysis.
In addition, however, consult our trade value chart below. Based off 12-team, 5×5 rotisserie formats, the trade chart will help you evaluate whether any proposed trade is fair.
As always, remember, the trade chart is just a guideline, and it’s based on information that, admittedly, is constantly changing. Minor injuries may turn out to be nothing, or they could impact a quarter of the season. These are the values based on the information known at the time of this writing.
And remember, whether a trade fits your team depends on plenty of factors. But, use it in conjunction with the tools mentioned above, and earn that ending to your own Christopher Nolan movie.
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If you want to dive deeper into fantasy baseball, be sure to check out our award-winning slate of Fantasy Baseball Tools as you navigate your season. From our Lineup Assistant – which provides your optimal lineup, based on accurate consensus projections – to our Waiver Wire Assistant – that allows you to quickly see which available players will improve your team, and by how much – we’ve got you covered this fantasy baseball season.
Dan Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of FantasyPros. For more from Dan, check out his archive or follow him on Twitter @danharris80.
