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Friday, March 29, 2024

This is another area of roster management that can present fantasy owners with tough decisions.

We looked earlier at setting up minor league drafts to acquire your “Farm” players. But each league is different about how and when you can or have to activate them if they are called up to their major league team.

I strongly favor activation rules that give the fantasy owner a long enough time period to decide whether the player might have enough impact to help them this year, but I would not allow owners to keep the player as a minor leaguer if he is up most of the year.

In my AL keeper league, teams can activate called up minor leaguers as soon as possible (immediately if they have a natural opening – player on the DL or sent to the Minors even if that is a midweek move or on the next Monday when lineups are set for the week) or they can wait a reasonable period of time to make sure the minor leaguer is going to stick with the big club and not just sent down with the next set of roster moves.

We used to use 30 days of continuous major league service (before September) as the trigger for a required decision on activating the player to your active or reserve roster or releasing them to the free agent pool. Last year, we unanimously agreed to change the 30-day rule to the first half of the season, so if a Farm player was activated by his major league club after the All-Star break, our owners could still activate them if they wanted to but no longer had to activate the minor league for that season.

The danger if there is a quick activation rule is that the player may be sent back down to the minor leagues when you had to activate him. The following year, he would then be in his second year and have to be frozen as a minor leaguer whether he made the opening day roster or not. Our new rules offer teams the best balance.

In the NL keeper league in Los Angeles that I play in, the activation rule is more lenient. If a player is activated in April, the 30-day rule applies, but if activated after May 1, the team does not have to activate him for the rest of the year – but of course may do so if they choose. In that league, I have a good shot to finish in 5th place, which would be the first minor league draft pick next year. But if one of the top four teams were to have enough misfortune to fall, I could conceivably still cash. So this April, one of my minor league draft picks was San Diego RHP Jesse Hahn, who I had planned on drafting in the AL until Tampa Bay traded him to San Diego in the Logan Forsythe deal. With such a thin chance to cash, it doesn’t pay for me to activate Hahn to a strong pitching staff led by Jeff Samardzija, Hyun-Jin Ryu and my best buy of the auction, a $3 Josh Beckett.

But you never know when there are decisions to be made. Yesterday in the AL league, I had Houston outfielder Domingo Santana brought up from Triple-A Oklahoma City, where in 319 at-bats, he hit .304 with 13 home runs, 52 RBI and five stolen bases. The 21-year-old fly chaser from the Dominican Republic was originally signed by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008, but he came to the Astros in 2011 as part of the Hunter Pence trade. Santana does strike out a fair amount – 99 times this year with 40 walks – and as a result has been compared to fellow Astros rookie George Springer.

But if he looks like he will be even close to as productive as Springer and stay in left field in Houston, I will have an extra hitter for my attempt to be in the money this year. Actually, like my trade for Ellsbury, it may give me multiple options – simply replace Endy Chavez as my sixth outfielder/UT or allow me to trade Adam Jones, who has an expiring contract this year, for some pitching or middle infield help.

First, let’s see if he can stick with the Astros. {jcomments on}