How Bad Was the 10-Day DL for Fantasy?
(via Keith Allison, SD Dirk, Ship1231, and Michelle Jay)
“The new 10-Day DL has wreaked havoc on fantasy teams.”
This was the mantra of the entire fantasy industry last year. It was the scapegoat of the 2017 season, but was it as bad as everyone made it out to be? I took an in-depth look at the raw numbers to see for myself. Thanks to Jeff Zimmerman of FanGraphs for not only providing me with the 2017 data, but also with data that went back through 2010.
The raw data is staggering.
| Year | Total DL Stints |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 689 |
| 2016 | 571 |
| 2015 | 507 |
| 2014 | 476 |
| 2013 | 521 |
| 2012 | 485 |
Over the course of the last four seasons we have seen a rise in disabled list visits in major league baseball, but in 2017 the lessening of the length of time that a player was forced to stay on the DL gave clubs the ability to sideline players with nagging day-to-day injuries if the club needed the roster space. In total in 2017, there were 179 disabled list stints of fewer than 15 days. That is a huge difference when compared to previous seasons in term of guys who had similarly short stays on the DL.
| Year | Total DL Stints less 15 Days or Less |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 196 |
| 2016 | 82 |
| 2015 | 58 |
| 2014 | 87 |
| 2013 | 79 |
| 2012 | 61 |
This is as far as most people in the fantasy industry went with the analysis. As I said before, the raw numbers are staggering. While it is apparent the DL was more used than ever before in 2017, I wasn’t as convinced it had the huge effect on fantasy teams as others were. So I decided to dig a bit deeper.
The first thing I did was eliminate players who were on the DL for 15 days or more. Obviously, if they were on the DL at least 15 days, then they did not have any different impact than any other previous year would. That left me with the 179 disabled list stints mentioned above. I then eliminated anyone who was on the DL for concussions, as they are placed on the Seven-Day DL. While there were more players in 2017 who hit the DL for concussions, it didn’t have a huge effect on the overall numbers.
| Year | Total DL Stints less 15 Days or Less for Concussion |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 17 |
| 2016 | 7 |
| 2015 | 12 |
| 2014 | 9 |
| 2013 | 10 |
| 2012 | 8 |
Next, I eliminated players who started the season on the DL because of spring training injuries. I did this because most of these disabled list stints were injuries that actually kept players out for longer than 15 days, if you include spring training and regular season time. 2017 was actually a pretty decent year for fantasy owners in terms of spring injuries carrying over into the season; of the 14 total DL stints of fewer than 15 days to start the season, only five affected fantasy-relevant players.
This left me with a total of 148 DL trips for players who spent fewer than 15 days on the DL in 2017.
In spite of what I would have thought prior to looking into these DL trips, less than half of them were pitchers.
| Team | Total | Pitchers | Hitters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dodgers | 17 | 13 | 4 |
| Rockies | 9 | 6 | 3 |
| Rangers | 8 | 5 | 3 |
| Blue Jays | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| Red Sox | 7 | 3 | 4 |
| Braves | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| Mets | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| Pirates | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| Reds | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| Tigers | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| White Sox | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| Astros | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| Cardinals | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| Nationals | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| Phillies | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| Rays | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| Angels | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Athletics | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Brewers | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Cubs | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Giants | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Marlins | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Orioles | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Padres | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Twins | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Mariners | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Yankees | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Diamondbacks | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Indians | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Royals | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 148 | 73 | 75 |
| Average | 4.93 | 2.43 | 2.50 |
It also illuminates the teams that were the most and least frequent users (or potential abusers) of the new system. The most popular theory is that teams abused the DL to get an extra player on their roster while skipping a start for a pitcher. The Orioles, Mariners, Indian, and Royals didn’t have a pitcher hit the DL for fewer than 15 days. The Royals didn’t have have a single player who qualified for this list.
The Dodgers unsurprisingly lead the rest of major league baseball in this area. Their rotation members alone had seven of these DL stints, which is more than 25 clubs had for their entire team. When you don’t include the Dodgers, no team put a starter on the DL for fewer than 15 days more than twice, and 10 teams did not do it at all. So in spite of speculation that teams abused the DL to game the system for their starters, it appears this is only applicable to the Dodgers, and was not rampant across baseball.
According to a piece by Zimmerman, there were actually fewer days lost to the disabled list in 2017 than in the previous year. The change of the DL from 15 to 10 days didn’t drastically change the amount of time players spent on the disabled list for. The stints just came in smaller, more numerous bursts.
The question becomes, how much did this really affect fantasy owners? Using the dollar values from the FanGraphs auction calculator for a standard 15-team league with seven man benches, I was able to eliminate 55 players who were not fantasy relevant for either the entire season or at the time of their injury. These were the Matt Garzas and Cole Taylors of the world. If you were rostering them, then you didn’t lose your fantasy league because of the 10-Day DL, you lost it because you should probably be playing Connect Four instead.
I now had 93 fantasy relevant disabled list stints that lasted under 15 days. While this list includes some lackluster players like Alex Meyer and Grant Dayton, it also includes fantasy superstars like Trea Turner and Max Scherzer.
Of these instances, 12 included players who had to return to the DL shortly after being activated due to re-injury, which means they might have actually benefited from a longer DL.
Then there are the benefits that fantasy owners weren’t talking about. Of these 93 players who hit the DL for less than 15 days, how many would have delivered subpar production while trying to play through the injuries? How many of those guys would have had the injuries linger for longer into the season, but instead got a short break from game action? How many still would have gone on the disabled list under the old 15-day time frame and were able to return to fantasy lineups sooner? While these are are questions that are difficult to quantify, they are rarely discussed within the fantasy industry.
It is quite possible that while there were moments during which the change in the length of disabled list stay affected fantasy owners, it likely didn’t have the drastic effect on most leagues that we heard being shouted from the rooftops. Given the increased number of DL stints, many leagues will likely add DL spots to fantasy teams to compensate for the the new 10-Day DL. Owners will get added flexibility when hit by a rash of injuries.
However, it isn’t necessary for all leagues. Of course there were teams that were ravaged by the DL, but they likely would still have been hurt by these injuries and not had the flexibility to place players on their fantasy DL and replace them had the length of disabled list stints remains unchanged. Mostly, this appears to be an easy scapegoat for why fantasy owners didn’t win their leagues. As if we needed another one of those.
References and Resources
- Jeff Zimmerman, FanGraphs, “2017 Disabled List Information”
- Jeff Zimmerman, Baseball Heat Maps,
- ProSportsTransactions.com