Drops & Disasters: Fantasy Baseball Roster Moves (3/30)

After waiting all offseason for “real” baseball, we now have it. Fantasy managers have finished drafting teams and now begin the challenge, and the grind, of managing them. If you are like me, you probably have watched as much baseball over the last few days as you could get away with given family, work and other commitments. Most of you probably are pleased with some players and fantasy teams, while being displeased with slow starts by others.

Sunday is the first in-season FAAB, and while managers should be striving to improve their teams wherever possible, they should proceed cautiously regarding potential drops, especially players who are healthy with regular roles. If there is one lesson to bear in mind this week, it is to not overreact to a mere handful of games to open the 2025 season.

To be sure, injured players should be evaluated as potential drops, as should players whose roles appear different than what was expected when drafting them. Additionally, there may be certain players available in FAAB that, in hindsight, appear to represent clear improvements to rostered players. What managers should be avoid doing, however, is dropping players merely because they have underperformed expectations over very few games. Thus, while there are legitimate reasons to drop players this week, impatience with performance over a dozen or so at bats or a single start is a poor reason, and one that could come back to haunt managers down the road.

Some of the players who should at least be considered as potential drops this week are set forth below in the following two tables – the first includes hitters and the second includes pitchers. In addition to the player’s name, team and position, the tables include the player’s roster percentage in the premier 15- and 12-team contests: the NFBC’s Main Event and Online Championship, respectively. Finally, the tables list my rankings as to how strongly – or not – I feel each particular player should be dropped in those 15-team and 12-team formats, respectively. The key to these rankings, from 0-4, is as follows:

• 0 = Do not drop
• 1 = Team context dependent; probably should not be dropped on most teams
• 2 = Team context dependent; compelling arguments to drop and not drop
• 3 = Team context dependent; probably should be dropped on most teams
• 4 = Drop

(Note: I screwed up last week and used a 1-10 scale; I am now back to using the 1-4 scale above.)