Home MLBFantasy baseball Injuries and my fantasy team

Injuries and my fantasy team

by Matt Smith

Fantasy baseball has the ability to divide fans of the sport simply because it makes you look at the game in a completely different way. Injuries are a good case in point.

Many times I have read articles or posts about players who have suffered injuries and felt that the emphasis was misplaced. I realise some people take their fantasy teams extremely seriously, but I’m often left with an uneasy feeling when possibly season-ending injuries are discussed solely in relation to the effect it will have on fantasy teams. “What about the supporters of that player’s club?”, I say to myself. That might be their play-off hopes dashed. And what about the poor player? Suffering pain, months of tough rehab and inactivity. Surely it’s wrong to overlook these factors?

But, like everyone else, I’m a bit of a hypocrite. Certainly not a shameless hypocrite, as this confession post will testify, but a hypocrite nonetheless. When I woke up this morning and read that King Felix had left his start early due to tightness in his elbow, I didn’t consider the possible long-term ramifications for this wonderful young pitcher at first. My initial thought was “damn, not many points from that start then”. And when I logged on to MLB.com this evening and saw that Ryan Howard was missing the ongoing Phillies game through injury, I didn’t think about the effect this may have on Charlie Manuel and his slumping side. No, I was bemoaning my luck. “More points dropped”, I said to myself.

What hits me most about this feeling is that I’m not a die hard fantasy fan (and this isn’t a case of extreme denial!). I enjoy playing the Fantasy Baseball UK game and like anyone I would gladly accept a bit of success if it came my way, but I don’t fret over my selections too much and I’ve even been known to forget I had an injured player in my side for a week or two (I should explain for the uninitiated that there is no draft in this competition and you can replace as many players as you like every Sunday – i.e. you can replace an injured player rather than leave him scoring zeros day after day). Yet that competitive bug is hard to shift and I can see why some baseball fans steer clear of the fantasy side to the game.

Thankfully, my “despair” about the hobbled Felix and Howard passed quickly. After the initial “d’oh!” moment, the possible points I may have won were soon forgotten. The day I can’t laugh when virtually half my fantasy team is out injured is the day I quit.

For the record: I’m not about to quit and I’ve been laughing all day long.

You may also like

3 comments

Drood April 20, 2007 - 6:25 am

My fantasy team isn’t doing well… I’m 7th of 10 right now. Not great by any means. I’ve decided I’m not changing anything until the end of April. I think I’m probably waiting too long, but then panicking and immediately doing something is equally bad.

If you want a good game to watch from the archive, if you can avoid the score, I recommend SEA vs MIN from tonight. I had to stop at the 7th inning, and almost didn’t bother picking it up in the archive to finish it. Glad I did. Hell of a game.

Reply
Matt April 20, 2007 - 7:10 am

Hi Drood. Didn’t see your comment in time to avoid the score (it’s always the first thing I look at in the morning), but I will check out the game all the same.

Reply
Matt April 21, 2007 - 3:42 pm

I didn’t get much of a chance to look at the ‘net much yesterday, so I’ve been catching up with various sites today. Oddly enough, I came across a Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered post by Christina Kahrl that was published on the same day as this post and largely had the same take on things: i.e. the negative side of fantasy baseball. Worth taking a read:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=335

Reply

Leave a Reply to Matt Cancel Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.