The Long Game: The Landscape Is Changing

My apologies for the delay since the last column. May got chewed up with work on RotoWire's football magazine, and then poof, I looked up and it was the middle of June. Oh well, I'm sure nothing much of importance has happened in keeper and dynasty formats since the first month of the season ...

Oh. Oops.

Just in case, like me, you've been in relative hibernation the last six weeks or so, the hot topic throughout the world of baseball has been the massive influx of elite prospects onto major league rosters. In previous years, a couple of the minor's most talented members might have won jobs right out of spring training, and then another couple might get called up due to injury-related needs at or around the Super Two deadline in early June. If you had an elite, upper-minors prospect on your fantasy minor league, there was a small but realistic chance that they might make a contribution for you in the current season.

This season, that script has been completely flipped. Starting with Kris Bryant's rapid promotion in April, top prospects have started getting the call up to the Show with shocking frequency. In fact, if you have an elite, upper-minors prospect in your system who isn't in the majors yet, you probably have a good reason to feel hard done-by. (Everybody with Corey Seager shares just nodded their heads and gritted their teeth.)

In case it's snuck up on you just how bare major league teams have been stripping their minor league cupboards, let's take a look at Baseball Prospectus' preseason Top 101 Prospects list. Of their preseason 101:

• the entire top five is already in the majors (Byron Buxton, Addison Russell, Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, and Bryant)

• six of the top 10 are in the majors (Noah Syndergaard clocked in at No. 9)

• and 11 of the top 20 have been in a major league uniform this season (the above being joined by Archie Bradley, Joey Gallo, Blake Swihart, Joc Pederson and Jorge Soler)

The numbers keep adding up as you go through the list, capping off with No. 96 prospect Maikel Franco making his debut last month (or, if you prefer to go chronologically, with No. 77 prospect Kyle Schwarber's promotion to take on interleague DH duties this week). In total, 29 of BP's top 101 have already accrued major league service time in 2015, with more on the way with names like Miguel Sano, Steven Matz and Matt Wisler being tossed around for callups in the near future.

So what gives? What's changed so radically this year that starting (or continuing) a player's service clock is no longer seen as a big deal? Well, a couple of factors are at play. As I wrote about last year, the Super Two deadline is no longer a big consideration for major league clubs, as the league-wide trend is to sign young stars to contracts that buy out their arbitration years and even the first year or two of free agency. That lack of financial incentive in delaying a promotion has combined with standings parity and multiple wild-card spots to produce an environment where teams are now driven to maximize the immediate value they can get out of their prospects. When, at the All-Star Break, pretty much every club still feels like it can make the postseason, the pressure is on to get kids to the majors as soon as it seems like they might be able to handle it.

With major league teams so dramatically altering their philosophies and strategies, that new approach is bound to have an impact on fantasy leagues as well. Certainly the days of waiting until June for your top prospect to start accumulating at-bats could very well be going the way of waiting to read the tiny type in your weekend newspaper to find out how your fantasy team is actually doing, but the changes may be a lot more seismic than that. Here are some of the ways the roto landscape may shift.

The Elite Get Eliter

Elite prospects are always going to be highly sought-after commodities in keeper and dynasty leagues, but their value may be about to go through the roof in certain formats. While every league is likely to have slightly different rules, there are essentially two main ways they handle a minor leaguer once they've been called up to the majors. In some leagues, a player's "fantasy" service clock begins ticking once they lose their rookie eligibility or get added to a fantasy team's active roster; in others, their service clock begins ticking the season after they lose their eligibility. If you play in a league with the latter setup, elite prospects suddenly have incredible value.

Consider our own RotoWire Staff Keeper League. Prospects were already treated like gold due to a rule set that assigned them an initial salary of only $3 after their real-life promotion. However, the league's rules state that, even if you "call them up" from your fantasy team's 10-man minor league system midseason, that $3 salary doesn't apply until the following year. So, for the remainder of the campaign after they lose their rookie eligibility, they can be activated and used on your roster while having a salary of $0! I have Dilson Herrera in this very situation, and other teams have players like Franco stashed as well. Herrera's still taking up one of my 10 minor league slots, but at any time I can activate him, plug him into my active roster, and have a $0 player making a contribution for me. In a league with a hard salary cap, getting useful or even excellent stats from a $0 player can give you a huge edge, even above and beyond the raw stats the player adds to your ledger, as it frees up cap room to upgrade other positions.

Veteran Job Insecurity

Dillon Gee is not a bad pitcher, as junkballing righties go. He has a career ERA of about 4.00, and while his numbers this season have been bad, he's also been somewhat unlucky, and his 4.49 FIP is just a hair worse than his career 4.26 FIP.

So how come, in a league where there are always teams that need pitching, the Mets can't find any takers for Gee? Because those same teams are looking in their minor league systems and asking themselves why they should give up something useful to trade for Gee, and pay him whatever pro-rated portion is left of his $5.3 million contract, when they can just call up a kid to plug into their rotation for the league minimum salary.

All across pro sports, this is a pattern that has played out for years now. Older players who, while competent, aren't needle-moving talents have found it harder and harder to keep their roster spots, as teams would rather pay young players a fraction of what they pay the veteran to do basically the same job. Major League Baseball, not having a salary cap, has been the last sport to truly embrace this trend, but it's definitely taking hold now.

What that means for fantasy owners is the strategy of picking "solid," "undervalued" veterans at your draft or auction table while everyone else chases after sexy younger names is suddenly a lot riskier. Right now, the undertow is just pulling down fringe fantasy assets like Gee. But it may not be long before teams like the Red Sox stop bothering to bring in veterans like Ryan Hanigan as a nominal starter when they have a Swihart at Triple-A, or even a Jed Lowrie when they have a Correa. Now, in both those cases this year the prospects got their promotions because of an injury to the veteran, but as the new status quo takes hold, those veterans will be increasingly seen as little more than pricey insurance policies by major league front offices. Unless you're the lucky person who has the 2017 equivalent of Correa stashed, assuming that the 2017 equivalent of Lowrie will be a safe fallback option if you miss on your main targets could become a very flawed assumption, and fantasy teams that whiff too many times at the auction table have a very hard time staying competitive.

Maintaining Your Pipeline

It's not just elite prospects whose value is spiking. Any prospect who's close to the majors, even one with a limited ceiling like Chi Chi Gonzalez, is likely to get called up sooner and carry more short-term value than in seasons past. As the value of all prospects in aggregate increases, so too does the value of the draft picks used to acquire them. In many leagues, draft picks are seen as something of an afterthought. In a traditional rotisserie Ultra format, for instance, reserve picks are used both to pick up prospects and pick up major league players for your bench, and some fantasy players will focus more on the latter than the former.

With the value of prospects in flux, though, now is the time to strike and try to accumulate as many high picks as you can in an effort to get ahead of the curve. Target league-mates who typically undervalue their draft picks, the ones who use their first-round picks on the best remaining major league (or even unsigned free agent) talent or who have a history of being willing to toss a draft pick upgrade in every deal just to get it done, and try to get their picks before the reality of the changes under way in the majors have really set in.

A good set of trades this season, and a good stockpile of picks that nets you a significant share of the next wave of prospects, can help establish the foundation for a multiple-year run atop your league.