The Spring Signal, February 10th
Fantasy baseball reactions to some injury news bombs
We’re rebranding The Offseason Monitor to be The Spring Signal. Hunter astutely recommended this and made a new graphic (okay, yeah, sure, he just prompted a chatbot for it, but that counts).
It’s not exactly the offseason anymore. Technically, I guess it still is. But we have teams congregating now and real news coming out. And today was a whirlwind.
Let’s examine!
REESE OLSON
In related news, the Tigers signed Justin Verlander to a one-year deal. Olson’s done for the year. What is there to say about that, really? Luckily for #me, I didn’t like him at all for this season because of his horrible fastball and history of getting hurt. He gets to join the list of most injury-prone starters in the league now. It’s been rough for the kid. My wife and I recently watched all of the seasons of Top Chef. The early seasons were so good, and my favorite contestant ever was in season two. This dude Michael. Super laid back guy, didn’t really care about being there, it was awesome. He lost pretty quick. But every time I see Reese Olson now, I see that guy.
So it sucks for me, because I won’t get to remember that season of Top Chef nearly as often this baseball season. Life is tough.
There are some fantasy baseball implications on the Tigers ’ rotation. Olson was a perceived lock before this, so there’s a spot open. It’s Skubal, Valdez, Flaherty, Verlander, and Mize for now. I don’t think there are any real questions about those being their starting five if things go according to plan. But both Troy Melton and Sawyer Gipson-Long are one slot closer to making some starts.
Verlander gets his farewell tour with the team that birthed him. They won a World Series together. This dude debuted with the Tigers in 2005! He’ll turn 43 this month. I start to wonder… if I were a professional baseball player and I could play until I was 43, would I? Or would I hang it up a lot closer to the top of my game. Who knows. But there are very, very few human beings who ever have to make that decision, and Verldaddy is one of them.
And the dude honestly can still hang. A 3.85 JA ERA, a 13% K-BB%! He’d easily be the Rockies ace!
So it’s a good story. He didn’t have the best seasons of his career with the Tigers, but he did have the most seasons of his career with them.
For fantasy leagues, don’t bother. I’ll be targeting him with hitter stacks in DFS early and often in 2026. That 30% FB% played okay in cavernous AT&T Park, but with some of the changes they made to Comerica Park recently, this is about a league-average park for hitters. So I think Verlander is going to give up plenty of bombs this year before his retirement party.
SPENCER SCHWELLENBACH
We were downplaying Schwellenbach’s injury last year, but that looks pretty freaking stupid now! At least this news came out early enough that I have plenty more drafts to do where I won’t be tempted.
Schwelly broke his elbow last year and missed the last 4+ months of the season. But the elbow is still all jacked up. I looked up what a bone spur is and it looks really freaking weird and gross.
Human beings weren’t created to do this to our elbows, but I’m glad some dudes do. Imagine having a thing on your elbow that juts out six inches and having to explain that.
I’ve seen a lot of people already victory lapping their takes on Schwellenbach being too high a risk to take him this year. And that is despicable behaviour. Gross.
But it’s something I would do too if I hadn’t given him the green light here.
There’s been a lot of talk about high velo and velo increases being correlated to injury risk. And this is a win for those in that crowd. Schwellenbach kicked up the velocity by a tick from 2024 to 2025. He took it from 96.1 to 97.1. And what did he got for his hard work? A broken ass elbow. And when his broken ass elbow grew back, it grew back with an extra weird spur part.
Here’s every other starter who added at least one mile per hour to a fastball last year:
Do with that what you will!
If you’re a serious gambling man, I’d consider leaning into a Mets division winner bet. Not having Schwellenbach puts the Braves’ rotation on pretty thin ice.
BLUE JAYS BROKEN WINGS
The Blue Jays had a tough ending to the 2025 season, and 2026 is opening up pretty rough. They had plenty of bad news to dump today.
Anthony Santander is toast
That contract looked questionable a year ago. Nobody really believed he was worth that money, but now he’ll be coming up well under 100 games played in the first two years of the contract. Goodbye, Anthony.
It’s good news for Addison Barger. The Okamoto signing made him look like a potential platoon, but now he should get regular reps out in right field. He has serious pop and one of the best throwing arms in the league, and I think that’s more than enough for him to play through some slumps at the plate. Upgrade him.
We found out that Kazuma Okamoto will be play third base primarily, and first base when Vlad DH’s. He’ll probably go into 2027 with 1B/3B eligibility, but it could take several months for him to get it in 2026 unless Vlad would get hurt.
Shane Bieber’s arm is fatigued already:
The price hasn’t made sense to me all offseason. He didn’t want to go to free agency, clearly, and now we know why. Major avoid there.
Bowden Francis will also have Tommy John surgery and miss the year, but we don’t really care about that for fantasy purposes. But I was on the Blue Jays page, so there you go!
LINDOR HAMATE BONE
What a puny freaking bone to cause such problems.
If he has the surgery tomorrow, a six-week recovery has him ready for Opening Day. There’s always talk out there about how the hamate bone operation can sap power. But I don’t think that’s true.
I don’t think we should react too much to this. It would be good to know what the Mets are going to do, but I’m not sure if it even moves down a slight in my shortstop ranks. I suppose the uncertainty would make me pass at the current ADP, but if he’s going to fall a round or two, I’d probably jump on that
If he gets the surgery, he’ll probably be back in the first week or two of the season. At worst, he misses a couple of weeks. If he doesn’t get the surgery, then maybe he just didn’t need it! This could be a massive nothing burger. And the worst-case scenario honestly does not seem that bad.
Take Neto/Turner/Betts over him right now, that’s fine, but he’s still the SS7 at the absolute lowest. I’d be out there hunting for discounts.
JOSH HADER UPDATE
This popped up:
These are the types of reports you shouldn’t react to, in my opinion. He’s a ten-year veteran, and he throws like 55 innings per year. There’s no rush, bro.
He’s going to be a post-100 pick now, and I’d buy the crap out of that.
Those are the high-impact stories for fantasy drafts right now. Hope this helps you make sense of it. We’ll be back with a ton more news reaction in The Spring Signal series.