Demotions and DFAs, August 25

21 ranked players sent down or designated in the last 3 days.

21 players the engine ranks were sent down, designated, released or suspended in the last 3 days, 9 optioned, 6 designated for assignment, 3 outrighted, 2 declared free agency, 1 released. This is the half of the transaction wire nobody covers, and it is the more useful half: a demotion tells you who to drop, and it opens the playing time somebody else is about to inherit.

Sent down

Sorted by what the player was worth before the move. The bar for appearing here is lower than on the rest of the site on purpose: a demotion is by definition a player whose value is falling, and applying the usual roster-relevance line would leave almost nobody. These are names that sit on real rosters.

Designated, released or outrighted

A different signal from an option. A player sent to the minors keeps his roster spot and often comes back in weeks; a player designated has been removed from the 40-man and is usually gone for the season as far as your league is concerned.

How to read this

Being optioned and being designated are not the same thing. An option sends a player to the minors while he keeps his place on the 40-man roster, and plenty come back within weeks. A designation removes him from it, and in fantasy terms that is usually the end of the season for him.

Value is what the engine had the player at before the move, not after. It is there to tell you whether this was somebody you would have been starting, which is the question that decides whether it matters to you.

The bar for inclusion is deliberately lower than elsewhere on this site. A demotion is a falling player by definition, so the usual roster-relevance line would hide exactly the moves worth reading about.

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