Major League Baseball released the schedule for the shortened 60-game 2020 season, and there is a lot to dissect in terms of winners and losers. The aim here is to break down the biggest winners from a fantasy perspective, with a corresponding column on the biggest fantasy losers to follow.
First, here are a few broader points about the schedule that you need to understand if you want to get your head around how imbalanced it will be this year:
- Prior to this season, MLB teams played slightly less than half of their games against teams in their own division (76 games out of 162). This year, intra-division games will make up two-thirds of the schedule (40 games out of 60). Teams will play each division opponent 10 times.
- MLB teams will once again play 20 interleague games this year, but they will constitute a much larger share of the overall schedule (20 out of 60 vs. 20 out of 162). Additionally, in order to reduce travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s interleague matchups will all be geographically aligned (AL East vs. NL East, etc.).
- The so-called “natural interleague rival” will take on added importance this year. Teams will play six games against their designated “rival” from the other league, whereas they will only play three or four games against each of the other teams in that division. In past seasons, these rivalry games accounted for just four of each team’s 162 games (2.5 percent). This year, they will account for six of each team’s 60 games (10 percent).
If your head is already spinning about what this means for fantasy baseball, I get it, and I am here to help! Let’s start with pitchers, since the impact of an imbalanced schedule is more direct and obvious on that side.
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I’ve already expressed my love for Rich Hill’s outlook this season, and you can add Jose Berrios, Kenta Maeda, Jake Odorizzi, Mike Clevinger, Shane Bieber, and Carlos Carrasco to the list of pitchers who get a nice bump from the high share of divisional games. Even more marginal arms like the Twins’ Homer Bailey and Cleveland’s Adam Plutko could emerge as sneaky streaming options when they’re facing Detroit or Kansas City.
Likewise, the high number of games within the division is good news for pitchers in the NL Central, who get to completely avoid the four best NL offenses (Dodgers, Nationals, Braves, and Rockies) from last season. While none of the Brewers, Cubs, Cardinals, or Reds present a particularly soft matchup for opposing pitchers, they aren’t must-avoid matchups either. And it further helps that each of those squads will get to play 10 games against the lowly Pirates. In particular, the division-heavy schedule makes me even more bullish on Brandon Woodruff, and a bit less worried about drafting Jack Flaherty, Luis Castillo, or Yu Darvish at their current price points.
Given that the AL and NL Central present the best matchups for pitchers, the same pitchers that benefit from the division-heavy schedule also stand to benefit from the outsized share of interleague play. The biggest winner of all looks to be Twins pitchers, who will not face a single opponent all season that finished in the top-nine of runs scored last year.
Then there’s the unusual quirk of the “natural interleague rival.” Over the course of a typical 162-game slate, these designated pairings are too sporadic to have much impact, but it’s a different story this year. With these “rivalry” games suddenly constituting a full 10 percent of each team’s schedule, Cardinals pitchers emerge as a winner. While all NL Central teams should benefit from more divisional and interleague games, St. Louis gets to play six games against the weak-hitting Royals, whereas the Brewers, Reds, and Cubs are matched up with the Twins, Indians, and White Sox, respectively.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of Cardinals pitchers beyond Flaherty who interest me much in standard mixed leagues. But if you’re a believer in Miles Mikolas or Dakota Hudson, this can serve as your excuse to draft them. We’re ultimately only talking about an extra start or two against the Royals, so I wouldn’t go overboard.
Tigers and Pirates pitchers also get a boost for matching up against each other as so-called “rivals.” There aren’t a lot of pitchers on those two teams that I’d be excited to roster right now in mixed leagues, but this does further my belief that Matthew Boyd can take a big step forward in 2020.
The regional schedule is a little more difficult to suss out in terms of hitters, but there are a few takeaways. Judging by ballpark factors from 2019, hitters in the AL and NL East look like winners in 2020. Six of the 12 most hitter-friendly ballparks (Washington, Baltimore, Miami, Boston, and Philadelphia) in baseball last season were in one of those two divisions. Meanwhile, Yankee Stadium surprisingly suppressed offense last year, but was the sixth-most friendly hitter park the previous year. Citi Field (Mets) and Tropicana Field (Rays) are the only two ballparks in those divisions that could reasonably be labeled as pitchers’ parks.
That said, another factor to consider is the quality of starting pitcher these hitters will face. Many of the best starters in baseball reside in either the AL or NL East (Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Blake Snell, Charlie Morton, Patrick Corbin, Tyler Glasnow, and James Paxton, to name a few). The ballpark isn’t going to matter if you’re striking out. So perhaps the best strategy is to target hitters from the Yankees, Rays, and Nationals. They’ll get to play more games in a hitter-friendly environment than they would in a typical season, They’ll get plenty of matchups against highly questionable pitching staffs like Baltimore, Boston, and Miami, and they won’t have to face the aces on their own teams.
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Andrew Seifter is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Andrew, check out his archive and follow him @andrew_seifter.