Do you ever sit down to read something and think, “wait, I have read this before”? If you get that sense of deja vu while reading this article, it’s because – for the most part – I am repeating what I wrote last year. It is once again a new year and once again time to dive into my Ottoneu tiered rankings and once again I first need to introduce my rankings. Then, over the next few weeks, hopefully concluding before the cut deadline on 1/31, I’ll roll out individual positional rankings.

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As always, I am following the lead of Lucas and Jake, the intrepid explorers who ventured into the grass of the outfield earlier this week to wrestle with some difficult keep/cut decisions. And now it is my turn to go over some additional names – and perhaps repeat one.

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When I wrote about relief pitcher spend last week, I kept looking at the data I was using – Opening Day rosters and end of season results for all OPL-eligible FanGraphs Points leagues – and thinking about all the other questions I could explore. It took a lot to stay focused on bullpens. But with that behind me, I can now turn my attention to a topic I have wrestled with for years: how to split budget between hitters and pitchers.

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If you have been reading my content or following me on Twitter (or now on Bluesky) over the years, you know my stance on RP. If not, here is the TL;DR of everything I have ever written about relievers in Ottoneu: I don’t like to spend on them. Go cheap on the pen, spend elsewhere. But, to be transparent, that was always more a vibes-based thing than real analysis. Until now.

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As always, I am just following the footsteps of Lucas and Jake, who already covered their tough MI keeper decisions this week. They covered a few guys I also have to make calls on, but we’ll turn our attention to some new names for today.

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Earlier this week, Lucas and Jake covered some tough decisions at CI (and helped me make some tough decisions, as well). Today, it is my turn.

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Everyone loves a good MVP debate (actually, everyone might hate a good MVP debate, now that I think about it) and fantasy MVPs are particularly fun (or not fun, I guess) to debate because value can be tough to define. Because of the fixed budget in any fantasy league (either a set number of dollars or a set number of draft slots), a player’s acquisition cost has a real impact on their value. This leaves fantasy managers to debate if the most valuable players are the ones who produce the most, the ones who return the most value relative to cost, or something else. Today I want to consider “something else.”

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My colleague, Lucas Kelly, covered his keep or cut decisions at catcher yesterday and that was a good reminder that I should probably be diving deeper into my rosters to figure out my off-season plans.

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The day after arbitration ends is one of my favorites of the off-season because it feels like everything can start. Salaries are locked, rosters are set, trading is open and we are off to the races for the next couple of months, before we pause again to prep for auctions.

But before we get to wake up to newly updated salaries tomorrow, we have to get through the final day of arbitration today. And that means there are things to do!

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The season is barely over, but we are already on to 2025, and some of the most useful tools for Ottoneu managers are out to help us. Early Steamer Projections are out and Justin Vibber has pulled them into the first push of the Ottoneu Surplus Calculator (SC) which means we have some early, rough values on players for 2025.

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