This is a stressful time of year for fantasy baseball players. You’ve either just held your draft or you are about to hold your draft. The first few days of the baseball season are exciting. There are a marathon of games on ESPN and MLB.tv and everything seems so new. Hope springs eternal for almost every team and every fantasy player can still envision their team winning the crown. However, sometimes the best laid plans go awry. Teams make sudden decisions that impact your team. Most of the decisions don’t have a dramatic impact on your team, but the ripple effects can have an impact.

On the other hand, occasionally a last second injury can have a dramatic impact on your team. It doesn’t happen very often, but it happened in the NL West this season. Unfortunately, you can’t put these guys in bubble wrap and you can’t just keep them on the bench throughout Spring Training. They need to play because they need to shake the rust off. Shaking the rust off leaves them open to injury.

Arizona Diamondbacks

The entire offseason for the D-backs was about making moves necessary to contend in the division. The Padres and Rockies were taking steps back (or sideways) so the D-backs felt they could vault themselves into the conversation with the Giants and Dodgers by joining the arms race. Getting Zack Greinke and Shelby Miller is huge, but it came at the expense of their depth. That depth will be taxed immediately after A.J. Pollock shattered his elbow on a slide at home plate this past week.

Pollock is someone’s first outfielder in every league in every platform. He usually has been going as one of the top five or six outfielders in the game across the board. So, losing him is a little more painful than losing the typical fringe guy. The D-backs might be without him for two to three months. Fantasy owners will be without a player that hit over .300 and provided fantasy owners with decent production throughout all five categories. No one on the D-backs will replace that kind of production, but it could provide some teams with a decent waiver wire claim.

Verdict: Socrates Brito is penciled in to get the first crack at holding down the fort in center field. In addition to having one of the coolest names in sports, Brito has been an average performer that could provide decent production in every category.

Colorado Rockies

The biggest news in Colorado happened off the field. Incumbent shortstop Jose Reyes was charged with assault on his wife and a hearing was scheduled for opening day in Hawaii. Just last week, the authorities decided to drop the criminal charges against Reyes because his wife is refusing to cooperate with their case. At first glance, this would appear to be good news for the Rockies and I suppose it is in the long run, but we have to remember that Aroldis Chapman will be suspended for 30 games under very similar circumstances. In fact, he had witnesses that also helped his case. In the case of Reyes, we have a woman that was obviously assaulted that is not cooperating for whatever reason. That happens all the time, but we all know what is happening here.

So, Reyes will be suspended for at least 30 games if not more. Trevor Story won the job out of camp and will get anywhere from five weeks to two months to win the job outright. He hit .354 with six home runs in Spring Training this year, so if he wasn’t on your radar he probably should be. He’s hit a combined 64 home runs at the minor league level over the past three seasons, so that power is not an aberration. He added double digit steals each season as well. Potentially, he could be a better fantasy option than Reyes was.

Verdict: Trevor Story could be the next big shortstop in the same vain as Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, and Corey Seager. He will get at least a month to prove himself.

Los Angeles Dodgers

Injuries have been the order of the day in Los Angeles as well. Yet, their injuries are not nearly as debilitating as the Diamondback injury. For one, it is not affecting any of their stars, but it also happens to come at two positions where they have plenty of depth. Andre Ethier’s fractured tibia happened on March 18th, so that is probably old news to most people that are plugged in. This opens the door for Carl Crawford to finally reestablish himself as one of the most electric outfielders in the game. Once upon a time, he was one of the first outfielders off the board in fantasy drafts. It’s been a long time since those days.

Still, Crawford has produced an OPS north of .700 four seasons in a row. So, it’s not like he has completely fallen off the map. He hasn’t had more than 500 plate appearances since his first season in Boston. Ethier will likely only miss about half of the season, but that could be enough time for Crawford to reestablish himself. Additionally, Howie Kendrick will start the season on the disabled list. Chase Utley is clearly on the decline, but he has an opportunity for at least a couple of weeks to be relevant.

Verdict: Utley probably will not play enough to be relevant in fantasy terms, but Crawford may still have some relevance. He has been penciled in to leadoff for the Dodgers for the time being.

San Diego Padres

The Padres are clearly on the decline, but they still have a few pieces that should interest fantasy players. In an offseason trade that flew under the radar, the Padres dealt perennial disappointment Yonder Alonso to the Athletics in exchange for Drew Pomeranz. The deal didn’t appear to have much fantasy relevance since Pomeranz was earmarked for the pen and Alonso has been chronically underwhelming. That changed somewhat when Pomeranz won one of the spots in the starting rotation for the Padres.

Moreover, that spot might become that much more solidified if the rumors surrounding James Shields are true. Still, the past results for Pomeranz are underwhelming. As a starter, he is 10-20 with 4.60 ERA in over 200 career innings. As a reliever, he has a 2.14 ERA in 63 innings. When the deal occurred in the offseason there was some thought that he could get an opportunity to close once they dealt Craig Kimbrel and Joaquin Benoit.

Verdict: At first glance, seeing Pomeranz start is not exciting for any fantasy owner, but Petco Park is a great pitcher’s park, so he could possibly settle in as an end of the rotation arm.