Fantasy Baseball Injury Rankings: Top 45 IL stashes reveal if Max Scherzer, Grayson Rodriguez worth the wait

"Every injury is 6-8 weeks."

It's a line I use sometimes on the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast when I'm feeling particularly glib, and of course, it's not literally true. But there's enough truth to it for me to point out that we're inside of eight weeks to go. So if every injury is 6-8 weeks, then every injury from this point forward has the potential to be a season-ender.

It makes you think twice about how you allocate your IL spots. Fortunately, the dwindling schedule has brought clarity to some long-term IL stashes like Mike Trout and Evan Carter, who have now officially been ruled out. Kodai Senga technically came off the IL but wound up going right back on with an injury (strained calf) that, at this late stage, is effectively a season-ender. And then there are those pitchers -- Jesus Luzardo, for instance -- who aren't officially out for the year but won't have enough ramp-up time to return to a starting role, their teams have said. No sense in stashing them.

So yes, some potential IL stashes have removed themselves from the discussion, allowing me to rank only 45 this time instead of the usual 50. But what about those who just got hurt and don't have clear timetables yet, like Grayson Rodriguez and Max Scherzer? What about those who've already been sidelined for some time but are still only in the early stages of rehab, like Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Bo Bichette? What kind of priority are they?

I'll admit that the later we get into the season, the more a player's timeline matters. An extra week or two obviously has a bigger impact now than it did in May. But there's enough time remaining that I think impact -- i.e., how good a player is -- still takes top priority.

This is only true up to a point, of course. Ozzie Albies (fractured wrist) and Jordan Westburg (fractured hand) won't be back until the last two weeks of the season, if even that, so you'll see they don't rank so high here, despite being impact players. But Yamamoto could still return with a month to go. Scherzer may miss only the minimum 15 days. Such outlooks are optimistic, but as long as they're still rational, I'm willing to hold out hope.

Why? Because they could actually be the difference between winning and losing. Sure, I could devote the IL spot to a lesser player with a nearer return, like Thairo Estrada or Lance Lynn, but what am I going to do with him when he's back? Plant him on my bench? Drop him, even? It hardly seems worth the trouble.

Of course, your interpretation of an impact player and a bench-warmer will vary depending on the depth your league. The deeper the league, the more an Estrada or Lynn matters. So I should clarify that, as is generally the case, I've tailored this list for a 12-team league.