The Importance of Multi-Position Eligibility

Anything can happen over the course of a long fantasy baseball season. The team you finish the season with will often look completely different from the roster you put together on draft day. A manager's ability to make adjustments is crucial to success in fantasy baseball, just like in real life.

One way to maintain flexibility across your roster is to load up on players eligible to play at multiple positions. Different fantasy league providers assign players their preseason positions based on past or expected usage. In most cases, players can gain additional eligibility by making a certain number of appearances or starts at a position during the season.

There are two main reasons why players with positional flexibility bring added value in fantasy baseball:

• To lessen the blow in the event of an injury

• To maximize the active players on your roster

Mid-season Injury Replacement

Injuries happen - but savvy fantasy managers can take out an insurance policy against potential disaster by staying flexible in their lineup construction. That way, even the most devastating injury won't knock a team out of contention.

Let's puts ourselves in the middle of a situation from last season that affected one manager in every single league: you're in the thick of contention for a playoff seed when your cornerstone player, Miami Marlins OF Giancarlo Stanton, is declared out for the season with a broken wrist.

Now you have to scour the free agent landscape for the player best suited to replace a first-round draft pick that many had penciled in for 40 home runs and 100-plus RBI - no easy task.

Without having multi-position eligible players on your roster, you will always be forced to replace an injured outfielder with another OF from the free agent pool. You're already at a disadvantage by having to downgrade from a starter to a player on the wire, so why restrict yourself to anything less than the full free agent pool?

Luckily, you are able to make the best out of a bad situation because of your foresight to include several players with positional flexibility. You have Red Sox OF-eligible super-utility man Brock Holt slotted in at 2B.

Instead of just looking at free agent OFs as potential replacements for Stanton, you now also have the option to slide Holt from 2B to OF and widen your waiver search to include both 2Bs and OFs.

These measures can be taken to ensure depth at all positions. There are many corner infielders that have outfield eligibility, second basemen with shortstop eligibility, and even rare players that offer eligibility at OF as well as the corner and middle infield spots.

Maximizing Active Roster Spots

Whether your lineups lock daily or weekly, you want to make sure you are maximizing your potential; an empty slot in your lineup is a wasted opportunity.

As is the case when replacing an injured player, multi-position eligibility is your friend when filling a position. This is certainly more straight-forward, as it doesn't require any transactions (no players are added, dropped, or placed on any sort of Disabled List designation).

In leagues where lineups are set for the entire week, it makes more sense to carry additional batters in bench roles in order to take advantage of matchups. The downside of carrying more batters than active player-slots is when you have five OFs on torrid hitting streaks and only four spots in which to roster them.

If one of those players is able to play at another position (again, think of the 2B/3B/SS/OF-eligible Holt), it's likelier that you will be able to put your best bats on the field.

Sparps

One aspect to multi-position eligibility that often gets overlooked is the sparp, a pitcher that is eligible both as a starter (SP) and a reliever (RP). Depending on how your league distributes roster spots, there are situations where having a pitcher eligible at both positions gives a slight edge.

Typically, these are younger players that have pitched out of the bullpen in the previous year but have begun to be stretched out for a spot in the rotation.

Examples for the upcoming year are Nationals SP Tanner Roark, who spent much of 2015 as a long-reliever, and Padres RP Drew Pomeranz, who started nine games for the Athletics last season but is being projected as a reliever in his new home.

Just like batters, sparps allow for a little bit of flexibility when setting lineups, helping to ensure that active slots are not left empty.

Super-Utility Players

Here are several sleepers that are expected to have eligibility at two or more positions for 2016, along with their average draft position: