Spring cleaning. It’s a phrase we often hear this time of year as we focus on getting things organized around our houses or apartments or cars or garages. The warming weather and fresh breezes entice us to get things back in order after the long drawn out winter (for most of the country) and it’s fitting that fantasy baseball teams have the same time frame for cleaning up the rosters in the form of deciding keepers. For most players in keeper leagues, it comes down to value and if you are getting a better deal than what the player would go for in the draft either by round or dollars. Dynasty owners on the other hand have a different sort of criteria that often determines who they keep on their roster and that’s why sometimes it can be a tricky decision as to when to let a player go and clean some spots on your roster ahead of the draft.
The hardest thing to accept, and one most filled with regret, is knowing that you let a player go who goes on to have a successful few seasons right after you stopped carrying him over. So how do you know when to stop carrying a guy and when to give them one more year to prove themselves that they’re not just eating a roster spot for you? Each player is different for sure, but there are several categories each can fit into that will make your decision easier.
Chronically Injured
The first category is an easy one and probably the most important one to pay attention to. Every year there are injuries throughout the majors and minors to be sure, but there are fewer guys that get injured multiple times a year or in consecutive years. Yoenis Céspedes , Giancarlo Stanton , Aaron Hicks , Rich Hill , and David Price are all players that fit this description of late. Sure, the upside is strong with all of them in one way or another but the price for them getting injured is also high. The same goes for prospects as well too. Jake Burger of the White Sox, Chris Rodriguez of the Angels, and Corey Ray of the Brewers are all great examples of prospects that have suffered more than a couple of serious injuries in their time in the minors to this point. What’s the value in keeping guys like this on the roster? I get it the names of the major leaguers are highly intriguing with names like Price and Stanton but if their names were Jones and Evans and they had the same stat lines year-after-year, would you still be willing to keep them with all the time missed for injuries? It’s better to use your roster spots on guys who actually stay on the field or the mound than saving the spots for the upside that just never comes.
Decreasing Performance
Players have prime years. Every player does, though some positions are adjusted a bit; for example catchers tend to mature a few years after the rest of the position players. Prime years are called that for a reason; they are typically the six-to-seven most productive years of a player’s career offensively and the ones that fantasy owners hope to have a guy on their roster(s) for. Age 26-32 is typical for position players and the same can be said for pitchers though it may be a bit longer, especially with the elite arms in the game. Performance will go downhill at a certain point and for some it goes quickly, like Jake Arrieta and Dustin Pedroia while others it tends to diminish in a steadier fashion like Miguel Cabrera or Albert Pujols . Either way, once a player starts to show signs of decreasing performance it’s time to start contemplating not carrying them over for the next year. That roster spot could go to an up-and-comer who is still yet to get into their prime rather than hoping a player will have one last shot at a great year when historically it just doesn’t turn out that way. The same can be said for prospects as well. There is no reason to hold on to prospects for forever if they aren’t carrying their weight. Let’s take J.P. Crawford for example. He was once a top-20 prospect in baseball by most accounts, but as he climbed the ranks of the minors, it was clear that the bat couldn’t hang and his standing kept falling. Lewis Brinson is another prospect that has carried a well-known standing since his days in Texas but ever since the trade that sent him to Milwaukee, he’s struggled and that continued in Miami. Just because they once had good standing in the rankings doesn’t mean you have to keep them hoping they live up to that hype since it just isn’t showing up in reality. There are plenty of prospects out there to get your hands on that can, and are, live(ing) up to their skill set and projectability.
Blocked Players
This is perhaps the trickiest category to judge accurately amongst the ones listed in this piece. Players on the major league roster can change on a dime from injuries or trades or free agents in the offseason. The other thing that can make this tricky is that prospects, or major leaguers, can change positions without warning if the team deems it necessary to keep the bat in the lineup. For example, let’s look at the Red Sox current roster and prospects. Michael Chavis and Bobby Dalbec both came up as third baseman in the system and when Chavis came up in 2019, they played him at second base originally with just a handful of games played there in the minors and in the Arizona Fall League and now Chavis may in fact be shifting to first base to split time with Mitch Moreland . Dalbec was getting time at second base and first base last year and at the Arizona Fall League which makes it trickier to figure out exactly where everyone is slotting in, and we’ve not even mentioned Triston Casas who is another third base and first base type. There is a pretty hard and fast rule though when trying to sort through everything, talent always plays. Baseball teams are in the business of putting the most talented players on the field at once and so if there is a talented guy without a position, the team will make a spot for them. Take Scott Kingery , Nick Senzel , Gavin Lux , Keston Hiura , Javier Báez , and the aforementioned Chavis and Dalbec. All of those players were moved off of their natural positions at some point or another or players in the majors were moved off their positions to make room for those players simply because of the talent always plays mantra. That’s not to say it’s always that easy as we look at the A’s roster and specifically second base where they have three different players they can play at that spot in Chad Pinder , Franklin Barreto , and Jorge Mateo who all have different skill sets that can make them appealing in different ways. The same can be said for the Rockies at the same position with Ryan McMahon , Brendan Rodgers, and Garrett Hampson , while they also have Daniel Murphy as well. If you have players in these spots, the best thing to do is just simply do all the research you can and watch as many spring training games to get a feel for what the team is doing. Ultimately though, this is the category that will always be the toughest to sort out year-after-year to be sure.
Aging Hitters
We previously talked about grabbing players in their prime years and not trying to hold on to guys that have seen a year or two of decline, in which the surrounding advanced metrics explain that type of decline. This category is more talking about the hitters that were worth holding onto even outside of their prime years, but are now really getting up there in the upper-30s and even into the early 40s. Miguel Cabrera , Edwin Encarnación , Albert Pujols , Nelson Cruz , Ryan Zimmerman , and Ryan Braun are just a few of the hitters that fit this category. Based on name alone and what we remember of them in their hay days, there is a nice collection of talent here, however aside from a couple of very good years from Nelson Cruz , has any of them really put a good-to-great fantasy year together consistently over the last few years? Not really. That’s the point of this section. These guys out lived the typical prime years of hitters and a couple of them are surefire hall of famers six years after they call it quits, however, does that justify continuing to roster them just to say you have this “big” name on your roster? Not really. Too many dynasty owners keep players just to keep to eat roster spots because they’re afraid of what will be out there in the draft or they’re simply afraid to draft, but drafting is still part of dynasty leagues and getting a competent fantasy roster out of it is how you win year-after-year, so these types are hitters can be thrown back into the player pool and left for others to try and capitalize on them with.
Aging Pitchers
Pitchers, like hitters, have a peak to their careers and then after the peak ends, they revert back to be an average to potentially below average pitcher that is just trotted out there every five days for their respective major league team, but they don’t actually give you meaningful fantasy stats regularly. The elite pitchers obviously stay in their peak longer than any other ones, but again that’s what makes them elite and there simply aren’t that many of them out there to build around. Once pitchers hit about 33, they really start showing signs of being more in the realm of average arms and ones that don’t always need to be carried over on a dynasty roster. Cole Hamels , Jon Lester , Jake Arrieta , Félix Hernández , and Johnny Cueto are some of the arms that fit in here. Is there a potential any of them could have a bounce back year in 2020? It’s possible, but highly unlikely. Why are we saving a roster spot for a player who likely won’t be anything above-average? That’s not a great winning strategy, especially since you could always get them back in the draft if you’re that attached to them, but there’s always the chance to upgrade as well and that’s the point.
Diminishing Return on Investments
The title of this section can mean multiple things depending on your league format. If you’re in a dynasty league that actually has price increases or draft pick increases to keep a player from year-to-year, i.e. they go from costing five dollars to eight dollars or they cost a fourth round pick instead of a sixth round pick, there is clearly investment involved in keeping a player. But return on investment could also mean that the stat line doesn’t match the years you have put in carrying them over. In either scenario, with the first one being more pertinent, a player not pulling their weight is someone you should look at not keeping. It’s not as simple as just looking at the projected auction value or ADP and projected stat lines though, since there are multiple years of keeping a player at stake in dynasty leagues. You have to factor in why the ADP or auction values and stat lines are where they are heading into draft season, was it an injury from the year before or a lingering one, is it a lack of assured playing time, was it a bad year performance wise the year before (but the advanced metrics show something else)? All of these things can lower a player’s stock heading into the year. It’s up to you as the owner to sort through those factors to judge whether they’re an accurate assessment of what you expect from that player in the upcoming season. If you come to the conclusion that you will have to overpay to keep the player, it’s not worth it to you to take that risk just to keep a player and have one less guy to draft when draft time comes. Everyday in chat here at Fantasy Alarm we see questions from owners asking who they should keep and does it make sense to pay this price (round or dollar value) to hold on to them, our response almost inevitably leans towards the move that is the better value including not keeping the player. Let’s say you’re in a league in which you have to give up a draft pick two rounds better than the round you drafted/kept the player with the previous year and so this year you are debating keeping Luis Castillo in the third round, that’s a fair price this year, but it’s a one-keeper versus keeping a guy like Jesús Luzardo in the 10th which is also good value but has the possibility over being worth more years. These are the considerations that come into play in the diminishing returns category.
Summary
Each of the above categories covers certain types of players that might make keeper decisions tough in dynasty formats for both prospects and major leaguers alike. The toughest decisions a dynasty owner has is knowing when players aren’t worth keeping anymore because there are many years of rostering players involved in those decisions. Keeping players for the sake of keeping players is never a winning strategy in any fantasy league but it’s also the case in dynasty leagues since there are always younger and more high-upside players available in the draft. Don’t be afraid of having to fill roster spots in the draft because you never know who other owners will elect to keep nor do you know who they will draft so you may just find great values come draft day anyway. The goal of dynasty leagues is building yourself a dynasty that can compete and win year-after-year and cutting the types of players listed above is how you’ll achieve that goal. The way you know these strategies work, is that major league GMs use these strategies too to build winners each year.