You might not have noticed, what with fantasy football rapidly ramping up, but the month of August has been a generally positive month on the whole for players recovering from long-term injuries.
While it's true that Fernando Tatis Jr.'s 80-game PED suspension, ending his comeback from a wrist fracture at least for this season, cast a cloud over the group of prospective injury returnees, the month has been populated by much more encouraging stories: Jacob deGrom, who missed the first four months of the season with a shoulder injury, has made four starts since his Aug. 2 return and in them scored 88 fantasy points, tied for fifth-most among all pitchers during that time span. Lance McCullers Jr., who had been sidelined by a forearm injury until his Aug. 13 return, has delivered back-to-back solid starts and looks like he might be a significant force for our purposes. Eduardo Rodriguez, Edward Cabrera and Jesus Luzardo have also looked rather good since their respective returns, and Mike Trout on Monday hit his first home run since his return from a back injury.
The relevance of all this? It is injuries that cast the greatest cloud over our long-term fantasy planning, the factor that most thrusts our expectations into question, and in far more instances than not, causes us to greatly exaggerate what we might expect from our players upon their return. DeGrom himself is a great example of this, because if you flash back to Opening Day, you might recall all those hopeful projections of a mid-to-late May return and a probable (inevitable?) top-10 fantasy season.
The most experienced of us know to play pessimists when it comes to injury expectations. That said, we're at a critical stage of our fantasy seasons, with only 12 days to go before the beginning of head-to-head playoffs in ESPN standard leagues, while facing a time where injury news is looking about as optimistic on the whole as ever.
With all that in mind -- and, again to be clear, it's best to take the most pessimistic view possible with you expectations from said players -- let's take a stroll through the injured list and align the coming weeks for your fantasy roster. After all, every player return has a corresponding impact on the player's big-league team, and there are often nuances with his return that have a bearing on our planning. For each, I've listed the projected return date -- to be clear, as with any injury this involves almost entirely guesswork -- beside his name.