Chad Young’s Ottoneu Tiered OF Rankings Follow Up

The rankings beat marches on. Yesterday, you saw my 4×4 rankings for outfield and today I’ll share my FanGraphs Points rankings, as well as thoughts on the other formats.

The rankings beat marches on. Yesterday, you saw my 4×4 rankings for outfield and today I’ll share my FanGraphs Points rankings, as well as thoughts on the other formats.

After getting started with middle infield last week, this week we move on to outfield. Why start with those two spots? Because they are huge lists and I want to get them done. Rock solid logic, there. Outfield is also an interesting position over the years, as it has varied between feeling deep and feeling shallow. This year, between the emergence of guys like Kyle Stowers, Tyler Soderstrom, Roman Anthony, and James Wood and the re-emergence of guys like George Springer and Cody Bellinger, it feels like it is trending back towards “deep” and that makes it a fun position to think about for auctions.

My 4×4 tiered rankings for middle infield came out yesterday, and as promised in my intro article back in December, I am going to follow up each positional ranking with two things: my rankings for FanGraphs Points leagues and notes on how rankings would differ for other formats.

As we move into the final weeks before the keeper deadline, it’s time to get our Ottoneu rankings out. Over the next three plus weeks, you’ll get regular rankings articles from me and from Jake Mailhot, as discussed in my rankings preview in December. I will post my 4×4 tiered rankings position-by-position, and follow up that day or the next with rankings for FanGraphs Points league. On the 4×4 articles, I’ll give some overall thoughts on the position, while in the FanGraphs Points articles, I’ll offer thoughts on how the position looks different for 5×5 and Head-to-Head leagues. Jake’s FanGraphs points rankings will come out the day after my 4×4 rankings. We’re starting with middle infield.

We wrap up this series today with a look at tough keep or cut calls on pitchers. This is the group I like the least. Pitching is an area where I least trust the projections and so I have the hardest time figuring out how to value these guys. As a result, I tend to prefer obvious values and I am often willing to pay a premium in trade for a guy pitcher I have no questions about. Of course, they are pitchers, so there are always questions – volatility in performance, injury risk, etc. But, I still have to make decisions, so here are some of my tough ones.

It feels like it has been forever since I last updated this series by reviewing my tough calls at MI and that is what the holidays do to us. A couple of weeks of family time and travel and suddenly it’s 2026, we’re just over a month out from pitchers and catchers reporting, and I am running out of time to make these decisions. Today, we turn our attention to the OF and debate whether to hold these OF bats or kick’em to the curb.

We’re now onto the fourth installment of our Keep or Cut decisions series. Jake has offered up his tough choices at CI/C and MI, I covered CI/C last week so now it is my turn to discuss MI. Usually, I make a point of looking at names Jake didn’t look at, but this week, I am going to start by (quickly) rehashing one of the players he covered with a slightly different take.

Jake Mailhot kicked off our series of articles reviewing our toughest keep or cut decisions on Monday, looking at some tough calls at C and CI. Today, I’ll follow his lead and go over my toughest calls at those spots, looking at one tough call each at 1B, 3B, and C. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, I asked you what you wanted to see from my rankings this winter, and the results were pretty interesting. I got a ton of comments, messages on Slack, etc. It was great to hear how much those value those rankings provide (except to the one dude who clearly hates rankings; sorry to you and the anti-rankings community for any harm I cause you with my rankings this off-season) and how much people appreciate the one-line comments on each player. But there were some other pieces of feedback worth noting, and those have all shaped my plan for rankings this year.
With arbitration behind us, trade season upon us, and cut decisions looming, it is rankings season for your favorite team of Ottoneu writers. The last couple of seasons, you have gotten tiered rankings for Ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues both from Jake Mailhot and from me. We’ve focused on FanGraphs Points because it is the most popular Ottoneu format, and because the combination of our rankings and 5×5 rankings from other writers are enough to create a decent set of rankings for 4×4, 5×5 and SABR Points Ottoneu leagues. But you know what we haven’t done? Asked you what you want?