Fantasy baseball's Week 22 is among the busiest on the 2024 calendar.
Every team is scheduled to play at least six times, with the Kansas City Royals scheduled for a league-high eight games, another 14 teams scheduled to play seven games, and an overall total of 98 games across the league. The Royals' additional game is the result of a Monday doubleheader against the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field, with one of the contests making up for a June 5 postponement.
Speaking of makeup games, there are two others, both with important ramifications in fantasy baseball. The Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox will complete their June 26 game, which was suspended with one out, a man on first and an 0-1 count on Danny Jansen in the top of the second inning (Monday at Fenway Park). That gives these teams an effective "doubleheader," meaning a 27th man will be added to each team's roster for the day.
Note: For ESPN league purposes, statistics for the completion of the suspended game will not count (either retroactively for June 26 or in Monday's scoring), due to the resumption of the game taking place at least seven days later than when it originally began.
The Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds, meanwhile, will play a Friday doubleheader at Great American Ball Park, with one of the games making up for their April 11 postponement. With these additional games, the Reds, Guardians and Brewers are among the 14 teams scheduled for seven contests, but each will have a day off during the week rather than playing on all seven days, like the Red Sox, Royals and Blue Jays will.
September dawns during Week 22 -- Sunday is the 1st, smack dab in the middle of Labor Day weekend -- which means the annual MLB roster expansion. Although, in the modern era, that's no longer the huge story for fantasy baseball that it was a half-decade ago or even further back. Team rosters will expand from 26 to 28 players (and 29 when scheduled in advance for a doubleheader on the given day) -- no more and no less -- with a maximum of 14 pitchers.
Additionally, beginning on Sept. 1, service time no longer counts towards a player's rookie eligibility, meaning teams can call up prospects for "auditions" without risking them becoming ineligible for 2025 awards. Last season, this meant the Sept. 1 promotions of Brett Baty, Alexander Canario, Colton Cowser, Jasson Dominguez, Xavier Edwards, Ronny Mauricio, Kyren Paris and Austin Wells on Sept. 1. Evan Carter, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Jordan Lawlar would all follow them to the majors within the next week.
This is therefore one of the prime times for prospective pickups, with this year's crop of prospects who could soon be added to rosters including Dylan Crews (Washington Nationals), Dominguez (New York Yankees), Marcelo Mayer (Red Sox), Coby Mayo (Baltimore Orioles) and Brandon Sproat (New York Mets).