Dynasty Divorces is back for another season! Every year, fantasy baseball outlets release their Top 100 lists. In this series, our rotating collection of authors will highlight players who have been dropping in dynasty rankings and provide relationship advice. Staying involved with a once-highly coveted player too long could lead you to regret not ending things sooner. Splitting too soon may leave you with daydreams of “what could have been” as the player rebounds with a league mate.  With each highlighted player, we will look back at the relationship and provide advice on what to do going forward. Without further ado, let’s dive in!

ANTHONY RENDON, AGE: 31, THIRD BASE, LOS ANGELES ANGELS

Analysis by Phil Barrington

Back in a first-year dynasty before the 2020 season, I took Anthony Rendon with the 18^th pick, after choosing Acuna first overall and Freddie Freeman 17^th. Rendon was coming off his (only) all-star season, and what he did going into his free agent year was special. 34 home runs, a league leading 126 RBI, a slash line of .319/.412/.598. Dude finished third in the MVP voting that year, leading the Angels to sign him to a monster contract (and he was the 23^rd overall Dynasty player on our 2020 list).

He did alright in 2020 too, playing in 52 games, hitting nine home runs and slashing .286/.418/.497. I was feeling pretty good about my third-round dynasty pick going into 2021, you know what I mean? Though it mattered to us here at The Dynasty Guru as Rendon dropped to 57^th overall based on the weaker season, compared to 2019. Then 2021 happened, and all the good juju in Anaheim was used on Shohei Ohtani’s historic season, as Mike Trout was injured almost the whole season, and Rendon did not fair much better, appearing in only 58 games, after right hip surgery ended his 2021 season in July. He also suffered a groin strain, foul ball off left knee, and a left hamstring strain, before that pesky hip surgery.

CAN I KEEP HOLDING ON?

Rendon had his worst season since 2015 (which limited him to only 80 games following a bevy of injuries; strained quad, sprained MCL, oblique strain, etc) and thus he was dropped in rankings and no longer trusted as a starting caliber third baseman at age 31. But Rendon was relatively healthy from the years 2016-2020, and he said this during spring training “I think that’s the earliest I’ve ever started hitting in an off-season in November. And then I got on the treadmill and I was full speed by like January. And it gave me the confidence just knowing that I was recovering based on how I felt the next day.”

That is what we like to hear, but is it enough? The Angels lineup should be better, and Rendon will have to be a big part of that. Thus far, he is playing every day, and after a slow first four games, and his last four games (April 12-16) he has a homer, two steals, and a hit in each contest. It is the little things, but are they enough to keep holding on?

Is this a case of getting out too late, or not at all? We ranked him 94^th this season, and that is not a positive trend. It appears time for a divorce; my hope is that he bounces back because I do not even know what to look for in a trade, and cutting him outright is a rash decision. Has his value plummeted so much that a second round FYPD pick is all one could get? I think he should net a first at least, and that is what I will be looking for at minimum. When asking some of the other writers here at TDG, two top 150ish prospects or a vet ranked around 100th overall were seemingly the best returns. If you still believe Rendon is worth taking a chance on, he may cost less than you think.

GLEYBER TORRES, AGE: 25, SECOND BASE/SHORTSTOP, NEW YORK YANKEES

Analysis by Brett Cook

Gleyber Torres. The guy that was traded from the Cubs to the Yankees for Aroldis Chapman to help the Cubs win their first World Series in over a century. Isn’t it funny that they traded Chapman to the Cubs and Chapman came back to the Yankees? And they have both of these guys now! I will stop beating around the bush now and give you the advice you came to see.

The websites we track dropped Torres drastically going into the 2021 season compared to the rankings going into this season. Here at TDG we ranked Torres as the 56th overall dynasty player and dropped him to 151 this year. Another website had him at 39 last year and dropped him all the way down to 170 this year. Just to show you how bad thing have been for Torres, one of the websites placed him at 249.

Why is he dropping this far so fast? One reason is the lack of power. In 2018 and 2019, Torres combined to hit 62 home runs in 167 games.  At this point in 2022, when you add the rest of his career numbers from 2020 until now, Torres has played in 179 games. In those 179 games, Torres has hit a measly 13 home runs. He is hitting less than one-fifth of the home runs he was in the beginning of his career. We will call that strike one. The second strike against Torres is his isolated power. When you average out the first two years of his isolated power, it comes out to .233. Not bad at all. Then you look at his isolated power from 2020 and beyond and it was .125 in 2020 and .107 in 2021. It is up a little higher currently (.161) but I don’t believe the small sample size is indicative of how the rest of the season will play out for Torres. The third strike against Torres is his wRC+, which has dropped in every season since 2019 (125, 106, 94, 60).

IS THERE ANY WAY TO WIN IN THIS?

I don’t think there is. At this point, if you have Torres on your dynasty team, my guess is that you road this ship to these depths. It isn’t enough leagues under the surface of the water to write a book about but it is bad enough to make you lost on what you should do. If you had him last year and were excited about that ranking near 50 only to see him drop 100 spots in many rankings, then you may be completely lost on what to do. Trading Torres now could mean that you lose so much value because what you gave up in the past to get Torres will be nothing compared to that you will get now. On the other hand, if you keep him then there is no telling how far he could drop this time next year. I am one to say jump the ship now.

Dynasty Advice

Send us a message on Twitter @dynastydivorces if you have one or both of these guys and you want specific advice on what to do with these players. We will try our best to help you!