Professionals who have been writing (and playing) fantasy baseball much longer than I have agree there has never been a season like 2020. A 60-game schedule, COVID cases, players opting out and injuries galore has made team management like trying to navigate your boat in the midst of a storm on the open sea.
The season is hardly two weeks old, and I have already made two trades and 43 waiver wire acquisitions on one of my teams. Okay, a caveat is that the this particular team was drafted on January 30th, so I’ve been messing with it for longer than three weeks. But consider the moves I’ve made just since 5 p.m. Friday.
On the above-mentioned team, I added Colin Moran on Friday evening, Donovan Solono on Sunday and J.P. Crawford this morning. On another team, I added Kwang-Hyun Kim this morning after Roberto Osuna hit the IL and then dropped Kim and picked up Jairo Diaz after more news on the Cardinals’ COVID outbreak.
In another league, I added Ryan Pressley and Hyun-Jin Ryu this morning. Pressley should replace Osuna as the Astros closer, but he wasn’t available in the league where Osuna was my closer. Just FYI, I am currently managing only three teams, and a personal rule is that I won’t own more than a share of any one player.
The morale of this story is that you need to move quickly as major league baseball news breaks if you want to win your league(s). The 2020 season is only 37 percent as long as a regular season, so you simply don’t have the time to wait on players who are off to a slow start, or listed as day-to-day with nagging injuries.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The waiver wire is your key to success, and you’ve got to work it like your life depends on it. None of the above-mentioned players I acquired had an ownership percentage above 50 percent when I acquired them except Ryu, who was surprisingly dropped by an owner.
Doubting Thomas' Fantasy Sports 