Rotoman:
Julio Urias is missing. He seems to be the most significant NL omission from this year’s Fantasy Baseball Guide.
I’m in an NL-only league
Who gets into the Guide, and who doesn’t, is a laborious process.
Most all players who played the preceding year get in, though there are some exceptions. For instance, older relief pitchers who had only a few innings, aren’t on the 40-man roster and have little chance for a significant role, are often chopped. Same thing with hitters dropped from the 40-man roster, though these feel like tougher calls. The goal is to get everyone in the magazine we can anticipate contributing in the majors in some way.
I then go through all the guys we didn’t put in the previous year’s Guide to see if their injuries are better, or they’re returning from Japan or Korea. This is unbelievably tedious, but thanks to RotoWire and RotoWorld it isn’t usually hard. Just tedious, and sometimes rewarding. Some of the best stories in any year’s Guide are there because of reading so many accounts of lost years.
A player like Urias, who pitched 23.3 innings last year, making five weak starts before going down in May, could go either way. Urias was a top prospect as a 19 year old and made his major league debut months before his 20th birthday, but he didn’t have Tommy John surgery until late June last year.
While the timeline for TJ recovery for starters is roughly a year, many do not make it back in a year, and many more are not effective their first bit after coming back. Because of this, it was my guess that Urias, if he does make it back this coming summer, is going to mostly pitch in Triple-A, strengthening his arm, and getting healthy for the 2019 campaign.
So, I gave Urias the boot. He’s not in the Guide. I’m okay with that decision, but since you asked I’ve come up with one reason I should have included him:
Let’s say you play in a keeper league in which Urias is a free agent. You don’t expect much from him this year, but if you add him for cheap you’ll get to reserve him this year and have him for cheap in 2019. There are too many questions about recovery, and his stamina, to assume a full return to his 2016 standard in 2019, but if he’s cheap he’s certainly worth a shot.
Don’t forget about him.