With a little more than two weeks left in the season, my home league playoffs haven’t even started yet. We’ve voted to get them moved up, of course. Commish just couldn’t get it figured out, or couldn’t remember to do it. Time went by. People forgot, and here we are, deciding the winner of a 26-week season when all but two or three teams have called it a regular season. Don’t try this at home, if you can avoid it. Another league that’s a little more actively governed has its final set up as the last two weeks of the regular season, and I think it’s generally closer to the rule than the exception for head-to-head leagues to last up until the final day. Few things bother me more than that in our game, partly because my home league has been stuck in this rut forever, partly because it’s so obviously ridiculous. 

If your league is like ours, you know that names don’t matter at all right now. Joey Meneses has been carrying my ten-team outfield of Ronald Acuña, Luis Robert and Giancarlo Stanton. Bobby Witt Jr. has been on my bench for a long time while Luis Rengifo captains a shallow-league infield headed for the postseason. Without these guys, I’d be hurting. Every hot-now bat won’t keep it sizzling, but it rarely hurts to rotate some fresh swingers in if your lineups are scuffling. I know this is Fantasy 101 stuff, but I have to remind myself to go ahead and bench some names every year. 

Dynasty leagues aren’t all that different. You’ve only got so many days left. If you’re in the hunt, you might as well try the Rodolfo Castros and Nathan Eatons of the world. They may not matter for long, but they matter now while Castro is dropping bombs and Eaton is running wild.