Collette Calls: Early Drops in Expert Leagues

Take a journey in time with me back to April 27. I needed to make some moves with my RotoWire Online Championship Beat Jason Collette team, which has been doing quite well this season (currently 2nd place!) despite some challenges on my roster. One of those challenges was my eigth-round pick, who was hitting .152/.275/.272 with three homers, 14 runs, and was 10 of 14 in steals through the first six weeks of play. This is a player I took ahead of the linkes of Cody Bellinger, Riley Greene, Christian Yelich, and Randy Arozarena because I wanted a power/speed guy that would play every day. The player in question was playing every day and was stealing bases, but his production was otherwise abysmal. I made the decision, mostly out of pure frustration, to cut the player rather than bench him, because I felt the critics were right about him. I anger dropped Luis Robert Jr., the 94th overall selection in my league, in order to pick up Nolan Gorman.

I was the only person to drop Robert Jr. that particular scoring period and just the second fantasy manager in this format to do so. The other manager picked up Alex Call, while I picked up someone I have yet to use in my lineup. I missed out on a week in which Robert Jr. hit two homers, drove in seven, scored five times and swiped five bases. Someone in my league spent $714 the very next scoring period to add Robert Jr. to their team only to watch him go 2-for-16 with just one run driven in for the week. Misery does love company, but if I end up not being able to catch the team in front of me by season's end, this decision will loom large. Add it to the long list of questionable moves I have made in my fantasy career, such as once trading Larry Walker for Steve Traschel and cutting Francisco Lindor from my AL Tout Wars reserve list about a week before Cleveland called him up for his major-league debut.

The fact remains that in a format where fantasy managers do not have the ability to stash players on the injured list and have a limited bench, managers are pressed to make tough decisions. Thanks to a report that subscriber, Bart Perry (whom I compete against in the Waffle House Area Roto Fantasy league each year) put together, we can easily look at some of the tough and not so tough calls which have been made across the Rotowire Online Championship format through May 11th. I have found nine players with ADP higher than Robert Jr.'s who have been cut from one or more fantasy teams in an Online Championship league already and will look at a few more notable names as well.

Jazz Chisholm Jr: ADP 19; cut in one league

This move happened prior to the start of week seven as the manager replaced Chisholm Jr. with Jon Berti. The latest news on Chisholm Jr. was that the high-grade strain of his right oblique was going to sideline him 4-to-6 weeks. Original timelines are always overly optimistic, and Josh Lowe's current delay from the same injury as he enters the seventh week of his recovery reminds us of that. A review of the team's bench shows both Matt Shaw and Jake Mangum tying up roster spots along with an injured Dylan Moore, so the move appears need based without any other option for a third baseman on the club. The decision to project someone like Mangum or a backup catcher like Miguel Amaya leads me to believe the person rage-dropped Chisholm Jr. in the same manner I did with Robert Jr. 

Corbin Burnes: ADP 37; cut in one league

I recognize Burnes has been somewhat frustrating this season, but he was dropped for Ryan Gusto on May 4 despite Burnes being 1-1 with a 3.58 ERA over six starts. This team is also a middle of the pack team within its league but made the decison to cut what was likely their first pitcher taken because their reserve list was tied up with spots for Jake Cronenworth, Ivan Herrera and Ezequiel Tovar. They also chose to keep Brant Hurter and Mark Leiter Jr. when making this cut. To make matters worse, Ryan Gusto did not make it out of the third inning Monday, allowing 10 baserunners and seven runs to the Royals.

Devin Williams: ADP 44; cut in 6 leagues

This one must have been a tough decision for six different fantasy managers, as Williams was a top closer for most fantasy managers this draft season. He has been dropped for Camilo Doval, Nick Kurtz, Ryan O'Hearn, Luis L. Ortiz, Ryan Pressly and Jose Quintana over the past three weeks. It is one thing to lose your top closer to injury, but to lose him to downright ineffectiveness a month into the season was too much for at least six fantasy managers to watch any longer. The Williams experience has varied from batter to batter; there are times when he has looked like the Williams we were drafting and too many times where he has looked like Ed Whitson or Sonny Gray. In a 12-team mixed format, it requires a serious test of will to carry someone relegated to middle relief without any sign of that changing soon. 

Blake Snell: ADP 48; cut in one league 

Snell was dropped shortly after going on the injured list for Andrew Heaney. Snell missing time due to injury is nothing new, since we know he only throws more than 130 innings when he's purusing a Cy Young. He had but two outings before he went down with shoulder trouble and a recent setback has put a stop on any timetable for his return. Quite frankly, I'm surprised Snell has only been dropped in one league, because he will likely have tied up a bench spot for teams for two-plus months by the time he does resume pitching. 

Ozzie Albies: ADP 64; cut in one league

Atlanta's offense has struggled this season, and Albies hitting .207 is certainly a part of it. Yet, the move to drop Albies for Gabriel Arias is a bit surprising since the counting stats were still there for Albies. Arias has certainly helped the team's batting average, as he's hit .308 since being rostered by this fantasy manager, with three RBI and six runs scored. Albies, meanwhile, has continued his struggles at the plate, hitting .063 since being dropped with two runs and a single RBI to his name. So far, the move has worked out perfectly for the fantasy manager and kudos to them for having the courage to cut a fifth-round pick for a free agent six weeks into the season.

Marcell Ozuna: ADP 65; cut in one league

Ozuna was dropped by one team in early April for Wilmer Flores. Ozuna had three homers, eight RBI and 10 runs scored when he was dropped and was hitting .306. He has since doubled the home run total with the same number of RBIs while scoring two fewer runs with a .250 batting average. Flores, at the time of this move, was coming off consecutive huge RBI weeks and had already amassed six homers and 19 RBI when the manager pulled the plug on Ozuna. Flores has since hit just one home run, but has driven in 15, scored 9 runs while hitting .236. Again, in the short term, this was a prudent move, but it remains to be seen how this holds up as the weather heats up in Atlanta.

Bryce Miller: ADP 75; cut in two leagues

Miller is off to an unexpected rough start, with a 2-4 record, 5.22 ERA and 1.54 WHIP through his first eight starts. He isn't hurt, at least as much as we know, but his velocity is down a bit and his walk rate from last season has nearly doubled making him a low-end ace to being dropped for the likes of Hyeseong Kim and Joc Pederson a couple weeks ago. Miller was an SP2 or, at worst, an SP3 on most draft plans, so his drop is surprising. One of the managers making the drop is currently 64th in the overall standings while the other manager is a well-accomplished NFBC player in his own right. Kudos to them for making the tough cut early, even if it was to move in a different direction on the roster. 

Tyler Glasnow: ADP 77; cut in three leagues

Glasnow's story, like Snell's, is quite familiar. The 134 innings he threw last season were a career best yet not enough to erase the previous years of awesomeness around injuries. 2025 has been no different, as Glasnow made five starts, winning one, before going down with shoulder troubles. Glasnow's strikeous were still plenty, but his walk rate was its highest since 2017 and the command issues led to four homers in the 18 innings he pitched before his injury. He was cut after week 7 by three fantasy managers, who dropped Glasnow for JJ Bleday, Dane Myers and AJ Smith-Shawver. Glasnow has already failed to meet early expectations, and the longer he remains out with this shoulder problem, the better this decision looks.

Jordan Westburg: ADP 78; cut in one league

Westburg went down with a hamstring strain in late April after a disappointing .217/.265/.391 line to start the season with four homers, 12 runs socred, and six RBI through 23 games played. A fantasy manager made the decision to drop Westburg this past weeked to acquire Hyeseong Kim while deciding to keep Grayson Rodriguez, Logan Henderson and Seth Halvorsen. The manager was already dealing with the injured Hunter Greene and Yordan Alvarez tying up spots and is holding out hope for Roman Anthony to be promoted as well. As someone who was very high on Westburg coming into the season, I can certainly respect the level of disappointment this fantasy manager must have felt making this move.

Roki Sasaki: ADP 98; cut in 10 leagues

Editor's note: Sasaki was placed on the 15-day injured list with a right shoulder impingement Tuesday. For all the laters injury news, check out our MLB Injury News page.

One owner made the cut two weeks ago to acquire Kyle Harrison. The rest made the move this past weekend to acquire the likes of Yu Darvish, Hunter Dobbins, Cade Horton, Andrew Painter, Colin Rea, Jesus Sanchez and Max Scherzer. What does it say for Sasaki that managers made moves to acquire two veterans close to returning from long injuries, two prospects, and two other rookies, to name a few? Sasaki has pitched to a 1-1 record with a 4.72 ERA and a 1.49 WHIP through his first eight starts. The fact he is highly touted and on the Dodgers is the only thing truly keeping him from a higher volume of cuts, because every single indicator is pointing in a terrible direction. Yes, opponents are only hitting .225 off him, but a 1.3 percent K-BB% alongside a 1.6 HR/9 is simply unrosterable in a 12-team format. His first four starts offered promise, but his last four have quickly undone the goodwill from the first four. It's likely he's in roster purgatory this week for many teams.

Sometimes, we are forced to make tough cuts because they involve someone on several of our fantasy teams, or on our favorite real baseall team. They may also be players we touted as analysts or in bragging rights with our friends during the draft. To loosely quote Chris Rock, a fantasy manager (should) only be as loyal as his/her options. If you see something out there on the waiver wire that you feel can better improve your chances to win, look at the numbers and make your call. I might regret cutting Luis Robert Jr. in the long term, but while these past two weeks first made the decision laughable, it now looks somewhat defensible. That said, I still should have just benched him.

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