Rules Review: Shohei Ohtani’s Elbow and the DL

Shohei Ohtani’s arrival in Major League baseball caused chaos for fantasy league service providers. With his ability to both hit and pitch, every service and individual league needed to determine how to handle his stats and position eligibility. Unfortunately, not every site or league adopted the same rules, which means that some league may find themselves in stick situations they did not foresee. Such a situation just arose in one of my leagues that I would like to share with you in exchange for your insightful feedback and suggestions.

I joined an AL-Only keeper league this season and was immediately involved in a vote for how to handle Ohtani’s position eligibility. Seemingly the best solution was to make him eligible as both a hitter and pitcher, with the owner determining each week or day which slot to make activate him in. When starting as a hitter, only his hitting stats would accrue, while starting him as a pitcher would earn his team pitching stats. Simple. But some leagues (my AL-Only Tout Wars league is one of them) decided to split him up into two entities — Ohtani the pitcher and Ohtani the hitter. That allowed for the hilarious possibility of Ohtani being traded for himself.

My keeper league decided to choose that very option, with two Ohtanis being available at the auction. Why? Well there’s one important wrinkle of this league that essentially made this option our only choice — we have no bench! Your roster is composed of your active players, anyone on the disabled list, and a collection of minor leaguers. I have never played in a league with no reserve list.

With no reserve list, it was impossible to give Ohtani double eligibility. If I started him one week as a pitcher, who would start in the hitting slot this week that he would occupy if I made him active there the following week? So, two Ohtanis it had to be.

I was the fortunate winner of Shohei Ohtani, pitcher, at the auction, and because of his poor spring training performance, acquired him at a price that would have made for an excellent keeper. While he was dominant during his first nine Major League starts, sadly in early June he suffered a UCL strain, aka an elbow injury that often leads to Tommy John surgery. He was then placed on the DL, but returned last week after missing a little less than a month.

The problem now is that he may not pitch the rest of the season. He is expected to be examined in a couple of weeks to determine the likelihood we’ll see him on the mound again this year, but even if the odds are good, he probably won’t be back for a while.

Obviously, Ohtani was occupying a DL slot on my keeper league roster, so with him being activated off the DL, even as just a hitter, I would need to do make one of several possible transactions by next week’s lineup deadline. Based on the current rules, my choices are as follows:

1) Trade him to a team who doesn’t plan to contend this year for a player who would help me. Problem: Now this basement dwelling team would be forced to take zeroes from one of his nine pitching slots if and until Ohtani gets back on the mound. A blank pitching slot has the potential to seriously affect the standings. For the integrity of the league, do we really want that?

2) Drop him and let another team win him with FAAB in the hopes he returns as a pitcher at some point. Problem: Same as above, with the additional downside of getting nothing in return. His FAAB price could potentially be significantly higher than his auction salary, reducing his keeper-worthiness dramatically for whichever team takes the gamble.

3) Activate him and take the zeroes, as hey, in an AL-Only league, avoiding ERA and WHIP damage may actually be more desirable than the extra wins and strikeouts from a healthy, but poor, pitcher! Problem: We have an in-season salary cap and I literally couldn’t even afford to activate him without making another significant move. Plus, I’m not going to take zeroes when I could just use a solid middle reliever in the slot.

So as you could see, our options based on the constitution are not appealing in the slightest. Every choice would result in major ramifications for the rest of the league and could drastically alter the final standings. We don’t want that.

In addition to the options I outlined above, our commish has suggested potentially enacting this rule:

Allow him to remain on the DL or special reserve. (Must be kept in that special DL/Reserve spot rest of season).

Obviously, the key here is keeping him on the DL or special reserve slot for the rest of season. What if he returns at the beginning of September, en route to four starts? Would I be forced to keep him in this special slot, even if he’s actually pitching? And if we decide I’m not forced to and could activate him when I please, what event must take place to signal that I now need to either activate him or drop/trade him? When the Angels announce he’s scheduled to start? Something else?

So intelligent RotoGraphs readers, how should we handle Ohtani in my keeper league?