Managing a dynasty league is mainly about patience. Guys fall off lists only to come surging back the following year. Arjun Nimmala was off every top 100 list a year ago, and now he’s jumping into the top half of those same lists. I gave up on Jacob Misiorowski as a starter due to his walk rate and Milwaukee’s refusal to give him a shot when they were trading for Quinn Priester and signing any warm body off the wire to plug into their rotation. Meanwhile Misiorowski has brought his walk rate down to 10% from 14.4 and 13.4 the prior two years. (If anyone else jumped ship on him too early, you might want to grab him)
All that said, if you want to get in on the guys who are changing their narratives for the better, and you haven’t had graduations, you have to make cuts. Knowing when to cut bait is one of the trickier parts of dynasty.
When to Cut Prospects a Break
Besides the usual cautions about small samples, cut a prospect some slack when they struggle at a new level. Adjustment periods are normal at every level, especially the major leagues. Aaron Judge consistently did this and had a longer development track than most MVPs. A week ago, Nick Kurtz had one home run and a sub-.300 OBP. He’s hit four bombs since.
Injuries can derail or undo adjustments. Besides the big season enders, nagging wrist, hamstring and obliques can drag a player’s top-line and underlying numbers down. A lost year will often drop a guy off lists, but if you held on through that year, you probably want to hold long enough to see how they do while healthy. Jeferson Quero missed all of 2024 and is killing it right now in… wait, he’s still rehabbing in the Complex league against teenagers… Nevermind.
When to Cut Bait
I talked in Statline Scouting about how I don’t pay too much attention to strikeout and walk rates on single-season leaderboards unless they’re really extreme. What I do care about is trends – are they striking out more or less than they did at lower levels? Jackson Chourio had almost a 27% strikeout rate in 2022, including 42% in a week at Double-A. But he brought it down to 18.4% in 2023 and has held around 22% in the majors. Even Elly De La Cruz, who struck out over 30% prior to 2023, brought it under 27% in AAA in 2024 before getting called up, and has shaved a couple of points off each year since. Samuel Basallo didn’t have any strikeout issues until he got to AAA last year (at 19!) and fanned at a 31% clip there. Returning this year he’s got it down to 24%. That’s what I like to see. So who has been going the wrong direction?
Coby Mayo
I covered Mayo’s short term risk in a previous article, but my long term outlook on him has soured too. Mayo’s professional debut featured a .236 ISO, 9 homers, and 18.5% K rate in 53 games between the complex and low-A as a 19-year-old and put him quickly onto prospect lists. His K rate jumped to 26% in ‘22, including 34% while playing very young for the level at AA. Okay, we’ll give that a pass, and he kept it down around 24% at both double and triple-A in ‘23, but saw it tick slowly up to 25% there in 2024 and sits at 27% in his third trip to the level as the O’s have Yo-yo’ed Mayo this year. So this isn’t about the 47.5% in brief, part-time stints in the bigs, it’s the trend over three years at AAA that has me questioning how well he’s going to adjust, and his best and worst case scenarios are probably the extremes of Chris Davis. He’s up again so there might be a selling opportunity.
Carson Williams
Williams has also come up here already when looking at his Prospect Savant page. He has some degree of safety for his plus or better shortstop defense, but he’s always had strikeout issues, hovering around 30% at every stop, outside brief stints in the high minors in 2023 when he was only 20 years old. He’s still young for AAA at 22, but his K rate has ballooned to 37% this year, with underlying swing and contact rates that fully support it. I also don’t trust his consistent double-digit walk rates when he’s chasing 29% of the time. I just don’t know if his 98th percentile EV90 and speed can overcome flailing that much at the dish. Maybe he can be a 20-20 guy who hits around .200 and if that’s valuable in your league, sure, but that’s not a top 25 dynasty prospect to me.
Colson Montgomery
Recently sent back to the Arizona complex for a reset, Colson Montgomery struck out 21% of the time there, a hair more than he did in his pro debut at the same level in 2021. Across three levels in ‘22, he kept his strikeout rate under 20%, and again in ‘23, finishing at Double-A. That gave the White Sox confidence to send him to AAA at only 22 years old, where it unsurprisingly jumped to 28%. That would just be a yellow flag for someone who has always played at tough levels for their age, but he came back and has struck out 35% of the time in his second go this year. I picked him as a prospect stash in a couple of leagues, expecting a call-up this year, but he was jumped by Chase Meidroth, who is holding his own so far. Montgomery has cut down on the whiffs since his complex league reset to a much more tolerable 22%, so maybe I’m overreacting, but his average EV and EV50 lag well behind his max/EV90, suggesting he’s also making a lot of bad contact, which is reflected in his pitiful xStats.
Dishonorable Mention
He’s graduated from lists now, but I really liked Heston Kjerstad and mostly was frustrated he wasn’t given consistent playing time to figure out major league pitching. Well, he’s gotten that so far and, uh…
That doesn’t look like a major league regular to me.
Obviously, these guys still have value as they are still on most top 100 prospect lists, and you should try to trade them if you can, but if I can get back (or pick up) someone jumping into the 50-100 range, I’m doing that. I mentioned last week that I cut Montgomery for Jacob Melton, and since then, I traded Carson Williams for Melton. We’ll see if I regret either of those moves as much as I already regret dropping Misiorowski. On the other hand, maybe Brandon Clarke and Jacob Melton will make them easy to forget.
