How to deal with the DL

This is my weekly article from ESPN Insider.

On average, fantasy owners had about five players on the disabled list at any one time during the 2017 season. For some particularly snake-bitten clubs, it was not unusual to have as many as 10 on the shelf. And thanks to the new 10-day DL, the turnover is often so frequent that there is not enough time to assess the performance of your replacement before the incumbent returns.

These days, you can expect that half of your roster to turn over during the course of a season. This churn puts incredible stress on our ability to manage our teams. As positive as we may be when we come out of our drafts, it has become inevitable that injuries will provide the greatest challenge to success.

Is there anything we can do about it? Maybe.

Injuries are a fact of life, and always have been. As much as you may try to draft healthy players, it takes just one errant pitch or dirt bike accident to set your season off on the wrong path.

To some extent, each player’s ability to stay healthy is a skill, no more or less than hitting home runs or stealing bases. Attention to conditioning and dedication to training are both vital, and vary by player. Without that skill, there are no home runs or stolen bases. Still, injuries are somewhat random (like wins and saves, perhaps). However, players who have demonstrated some propensity to get hurt are identifiable, and history shows some correlation with future DL stays.

If we believe that past injuries are predictive of future injuries, here are four things you can do:

1. Avoid players who spent at least 50 days on the disabled list last year.

2. Avoid players who spent at least 30 days on the DL in each of the past two seasons.

3. Avoid players who had off-season surgery unless they look vintage in camp this month.

4. Avoid players who are nursing injuries this month, even if the noise out of camp has a positive spin.

Admittedly, this casts a wide net and captures many players who are highly ranked. This also does not discriminate between types of injuries, so Madison Bumgarner’s dirt bike accident is being treated no differently from Clayton Kershaw’s persistent back problems.

But approaching the problem in this way has merit. If you had avoided all these types of players a year ago, you would have improved your odds of rostering a healthy player by 20 percent.

Twenty percent is significant, but the context is important. About 65 percent of the players you would have avoided ended up going on the DL at some point last year. The remaining players – those you would have drafted – still ended up DLed at a rate of 45 percent. So there is an edge, but it’s no panacea.

All in all, that’s a lot of bad news.

However, there is a way to flip your perspective and view this problem as a potential opportunity. Yes, injuries can be good news!

What if we go into the season fully expecting players to get hurt? For every player who goes on the DL, that opens up some playing time for another player. These create opportunities for bench players, prospects and previously unrostered players to grab jobs.

In fact, we might consider the phrase “no path to playing time” as obsolete. Given the abundance of DL stays, it seems that there is almost always a path somewhere.

Consider a year ago, when Michael Conforto (pictured) was going for under $5 in mixed league auctions because there was no path to playing time in the Mets outfield. Or, how many fantasy owners avoided Cody Bellinger because he was blocked by Adrian Gonzalez and the Dodgers’ stable outfield corps?

So, we should use this reality as an opportunity to speculate more on players who don’t neatly fit into Major League depth charts this spring, but who clearly are worthy of playing time.

For instance, when the Rockies resigned Carlos Gonzalez, that created a logjam in the outfield and potentially at first base. Rookie Ryan McMahon is now going to be pushed for playing time by Ian Desmond, and the only outfielder who could be counted on for 550 AB is Charlie Blackmon. David Dahl, Gerardo Parra, Raimel Tapia and Gonzalez now all have to battle for at-bats.

But Dahl is coming off of an injury that kept him sidelined all of 2017. Desmond spent 72 days on the DL last year. Parra has spent 83 days on the DL over the past two years. And while Gonzalez’s shoulder injury only shelved him for 11 days in 2017, his performance sure looked like it was affected for much longer.

So when bidding stalls on McMahon and Tapia, go an extra buck. If it’s late in drafts and both are still available, jump in. Take the discount. Odds are a path to playing time will open up, at least big enough to justify the discounted cost they’ll have on draft day.

Similar situations exist all through the player pool. Here are a few examples:

The prices for Brewers Eric Thames and Domingo Santana have been sliding, and Keon Broxton and Jesus Aguilar have become ADP bricks in a pond. Something’s gotta give.

The never-fully-healthy Dodgers rotation is blocking hot prospect Walker Buehler, whose ADP is currently 351.

The acquisition of Neil Walker has effectively blocked the path to Yankee Stadium for Gleyber Torres. But Walker has missed 71 games over the past two years.

Brad Peacock may have fallen down the Houston rotation depth chart, but Lance McCullers (152 games lost, last two years) and Collin McHugh (114 games lost last year) are the ones blocking him from a rotation spot.

(I wrote the following this past Friday. I’m keeping it in, just because…) Jason Vargas’ presence could push one of Zack Wheeler or Steve Matz to the Mets’ bullpen. Vargas is not necessarily an injury risk, though he did miss 297 days in 2015-2016, His 6.66 ERA in the second half last year might be warning enough.

So, the next time you hear an analyst say “but he’s got no path to playing time,” that’s your cue to jump in.