Opening Day is right around the corner. We’ve waited a long time for baseball to return, and here we are. We’ve hit the final weekend of no baseball for the next few months. With so much changing on a daily basis, putting off your drafts until this final weekend was probably the smart move. So, I’ve dusted off and updated my personal (5×5 Roto) rankings one last time. A few things I kept in mind while doing this:

• Volatile players go down a notch, while safer players with higher floors get a slight boost for me. With so much possible variance in a short season, I like taking the ones I can count on to deliver.
• Steals are at a premium. We can’t really count on the guys that chip in 10-12 steals a year, because we just don’t know how much they will run in 60 games. And the players that can normally give us 20+ steals are the ones that will separate themselves from the pack. Thus, Trea Turner becomes a top-six pick for me.
• When it comes to pitching, players that can go deeper into games get a boost. Every inning counts. And I’m lowering pitchers that have high walk rates. It’s all about mitigating risk. When every pitcher is going to make 11-12 starts at the most, it’s going to be difficult to come back from a bad outing. And pitchers that walk a lot of batters are at a higher risk of having those blowups. As much as I like Luis Castillo, he’s a good example of this. Give me Kershaw and Greinke over him for the short season. Had this been a 162 game season, things would be different.

Here is the link to the google sheet. It is set up to be able to print as well if you’d like a hard copy.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rdW-g7FL2TEPjnyK4Orv5cXIvQGa0uKI/view?usp=sharing

And here’s a direct download to an excel file for offline use.

Feel free to leave your comments below and I’m always available on Twitter @Roto_Nino