For more Fantasy baseball insights, and to keep up with all the latest news, roster trends and more throughout the season, subscribe to Fantasy Baseball Today now on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify. You can find us on YouTube now, with full episodes and clips available every Monday through Friday.

There's dropping a player and there's giving up on a player.

It's not even close to the same thing.

Many will use the terms interchangeably, like it's some sort of resignation when you discard a player you like. But it doesn't have to be a reflection of your feelings nor does it have to be goodbye forever. It's just a response to market pressures in a game where short-term goals don't always align with long-term outlooks.

Roster shortages tend not to be a hot topic of conversation in Fantasy Baseball circles even though they drive much of the action. Partly, it's because much of the expert community plays in deeper leagues, such as 15-team Rotisserie, and that's a format where you can stash most anyone you have an inkling about.

But I get the sense — and yes, data shows — that real, down-home, salt-of-the-earth-type Fantasy GMs aren't in the same boat.

If you look at a standard Head-to-Head league with 12 teams and 21-man rosters, there's a total of 252 players rostered, which is a far cry from a 15-team Rotisserie league's 435. Plus, when it's Head-to-Head and not Rotisserie, you're banking week-to-week results rather than just looking at a final tally. If a player isn't pulling his weight for any length of time, it can put you in a hole you can't climb out of even if your team is dominant by season's end.

So it forces you to make an uncomfortable decision on less information than you'd like and often in contrast to your true feelings. But that's what you signed up for: making the tough calls that put you in position to succeed or fail. If it was easy, it wouldn't be rewarding.

Most Fantasy analysts would advise extreme caution when purging your roster of what appears to be dead weight over a small, insignificant sample of data, and for your first 10-12 picks, that's absolutely true. You're not dropping Chris Sale. You're not dropping Joey Votto, Trevor Story, Andrew Benintendi or anyone else who just happened to have a bad first week. That's amateur hour, and you deserve more credit than that.

But beyond that, it depends so much on your specific circumstances.

Take my affinity for Jesse Winker. Everything I believed about him a week ago — the Joey Votto-like profile, uncommon on-base skills, emerging power — is still true today, but it turns out the Reds' outfield surplus is more of an impediment than I imagined. He's playing only about half the time and not doing anything to claim a bigger piece of that pie.

I imagine he ultimately will, but can I wait around for it to happen when I don't even know when? It depends what I have to lose by parking him in a bench spot. In a Rotisserie league where 320 or so players are rostered and the bench is best served for upside stashes anyway, he would seem to qualify. 

But in a Head-to-Head points league where 250 or so players are rostered and the bench is best served for starting pitchers who can be swapped out as matchups and two-start status dictate, a recent pickup like Trevor Richards or Corbin Burnes is probably going to have a greater impact on your win-loss record. If you have a quality alternative for your outfield, it may be time to move on from Winker, no matter how much you believe in him.

And the same goes for Franmil Reyes. And also Francisco Mejia. Garrett Hampson. Jose Martinez. So much upside and still such likelihood that it's fulfilled this year. But in how long? And what are you giving up in the meantime?

The bottom line is this:

The needs of today outweigh the wishes of tomorrow

This guideline has its caveats, as all guidelines do. I've already mentioned you wouldn't drop someone like Chris Sale even if you deem him unstartable right now. The investment is too high and the payoff too seismic. But in a Head-to-Head league where each team starts just nine hitters, you can't have one that's playing only half the time. And especially if it's a points league, you're probably using your bench to stockpile starting pitchers. In leagues of this size, you can easily find someone else who'll give you adequate production at the position. You can't put your season on hold in pursuit of something that might be better.

Some other guidelines:

Bench space is precious and best utilized differently across different formats

Even if they're not contributing to the bottom line, the players on your bench should matter. They're protected. Of all the players you have access to, which include those on the waiver wire, they're the ones who you've decided you can least afford to forfeit to someone else. In some formats, it'll be upside picks like Jesse Winker, Franmil Reyes or even a prospect like Forrest Whitley. But in other formats where you actually make use of your bench, you can't afford to stash as many "hopefully someday" types. And you'll know where that line is based on what else is out there.

The waiver wire is a repository for roster excess, not an incinerator from which nothing is reclaimed

Again, dropping a player isn't the same as giving up on him. You're just acknowledging that the pressures of accumulating talent and fielding the best lineup have forced your hand. Player values are changing all the time, and if that discarded player resurfaces, you have just as much claim to him as anyone else. In fact, you're probably eyeing him closer of anyone, putting you in a good position to reclaim him. Sure, it's possible someone will pick him up right when you drop him, but provided it's not one of the first 10-12 players you drafted (as should go without saying), he's probably not a high priority for anyone else because ...

Everyone is in the same boat

You think you're feeling the roster crunch? So is everyone else. They're running the same calculations as you and probably assuming they can't drop someone that they actually can. Might they be surprised to see how quickly you pull the plug on Brandon Nimmo? Sure, but they can't do anything about it without making a painful move of their own. And the fact of the matter is ...

The ones making waves have the most movement

This is my not-so-clever way of saying that the players who will attract the most attention on the waiver wire are the ones who are actually performing — the ones dominating the box scores and rising to the top of the roster trends page. They're the ones who your competitors have their eyes on and will trip over each other to claim. That stagnating third outfielder, even if perceived to have more value on Draft Day, will probably be left to stagnate until the day comes when he's the one dominating the box scores.

And maybe then, you get him back. Or maybe not. But in the meantime, you bought yourself some time, freed up some roster space and probably pieced together a pretty good lineup without him. So it's a net gain, right?

Not always. It can backfire, for sure. But when it's an unproven player — which is the sort we're talking about here and not anyone you drafted as part of the foundation of your team — I think the tendency is to hold on too long, costing you opportunities at something as good or better just because he was "your guy."

You can have a new "your guy" — and maybe also the old one, if things break right. You have a better chance of securing the big breakout, though, if you allow yourself to cast a wide net.