In a previous post, I created benchmarks for what should be considered a replacement-level player in a few of my FanGraphs points leagues. Though some may disagree with the specifics of my process, the general question we’re all trying to answer remains the same. At what level of projected P/G should you easily be able to decide on cutting a player? Here’s what I came up with for corner-infield players:

1B Replacement Level: 5.03 P/G
3B Replacement Level: 4.71 P/G

With those marks in mind, here are four players I must make keep or cut decisions on this offseason.

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Nolan Schanuel, 1B
Salary: $3.00
Average Salary: $6.09
2023 P/G: 5.04
Proj 2024 P/G: 4.67

With 29 games under his belt in 2023, Steamer expects the 21-year-old lefty to accumulate 125 games in 2024. That’s a very big jump, but one look at the Angels RosterResource page reveals no other clear option at 1B. Sure, Brandon Drury did play 47 games there in 2023, but with a DH spot (sadly, and likely) opening up in the Angels lineup, Drury will likely spend most of his time there. In addition, if you look at Eric Longenhagen’s June write-up of the top prospects in the Angels system, there’s not a single projected first baseman in the 28 players analyzed. Schanuel has a defensive path forward. The next question to ask is, how’s his defense? If you’re on the hopeful side of the argument, don’t read this excerpt from Michael Baumann’s September Schanuel piece:

Amateur first basemen have a low ceiling because of their limited defensive potential, and anyone who’s playing first base at 18 or 20 years old usually isn’t going to end up stealing a lot of bases when he’s 28 or 30.

In 244 innings at first base, Schanuel recorded -2 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), meaning his defense cost his team two runs. The best first baseman with at least 200 first base defensive innings, Carlos Santana, saved his team 11 runs by DRS while the worst, Spencer Torkelson, cost his team 11. Schanuel landed a little worse than right in the middle of the first base DRS spread, which is as unhelpful as it gets when it comes to this evaluation. The Angels could very well add first-base depth this offseason to hedge their bets.

Regardless of his defensive ability, he soared through three minor-league levels in 2023 as a recent draft pick to then make his debut with the big-league boys in mid-August. That’s where he began to catch people’s attention, slashing .275/.402/.330 in 132 plate appearances. Among rookies in 2023, the average K% was 25.8% and the average BB% was 8.1%. Schanuel did better on both of those marks, striking out only 14.4% of the time and walking 15.2%. That points to some serious upside in 2024 in the OBP department, but with a big sacrifice in power. Steamer projects the following slash line:

.258/.364/.407

With such a short track record to go off of, I’d like to see what ZiPs has to say about Schanuel as it projects with more of a similarity score process. The problem is that in a FanGraphs points format, walks don’t pay the bills like slugging ability and Schanuel’s projected 4.67 points per game sinks him down into replacement level.

Keep or Cut?
If I were rostering him for anything over $3, I would cut. Yes, he is projected to be under what I would consider “replacement level”, but I’m going to keep and hope and gamble that Schanuel’s development will be important to watch and that the upside is there given his plate discipline. Michael Baumann’s take:

…he’s only 21 and is lean in such a way that it wouldn’t surprise me if he put on more muscle in the next couple years. It’s not a huge stretch to imagine him as an elite all-fields line drive hitter.

That sounds right to me, and I’ll take the gamble in 2024.

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Alex Bregman, 3B
Average Salary: $32.24
Salary: $34.00
2023 P/G: 5.79
Proj 2024 P/G: 5.96

Alex Bregman is projected for a higher P/G mark in 2024. Here’s a slash line comparison to help understand how:

2023: .262/.363/.441
2024: .267/.367/.458 (PROJ)

It’s a very small, almost insignificant difference. Basically, Steamer thinks Alex Bregman will be Alex Bregman and maybe he’ll hit one or two more doubles. Steamer simply split the difference between Bregman’s 2022 23 home runs and his 2023 25 home runs, projecting him for 24 in 2024. That was a sentence with a lot of twos!

But, here’s a valuable statistic; between 2017 and 2023, which cuts out Bregman’s partial rookie season, the third baseman has accumulated 3981 plate appearances, good for 16th on a leaderboard full of big-time players. He finds himself on the VIP list of players like Freddie Freeman (1st, 4308), Francisco Lindor (2nd, 4305), Paul Goldschmidt (3rd, 4285), and Marcus Semien (4th, 4273). Bregman’s track record of volume and 20+ home run potential make me just want to keep him at $34, but we’re not there yet! There have only been four seasons in Bregman’s career where he has missed the 20 HR mark:

2016 – 8 HR (short rookie year)
2017 – 19 HR (missed by 1!)
2020 – 6 HR (pandemic, duh)
2021 – 12 HR (injury)

Now, how does that translate to value? According to the work I did creating tiers for all offensive players, 5.96 P/G is tier two status, and tier two players were paid $18 on average. But 5.96 P/G is close to making it out of tier two and into tier one. I’m willing to pay for tier one where the average price jumps to $29. There are also no available third basemen as of yet and I don’t think there will be come cut date. In this particular league, José Ramírez ($56), Rafael Devers ($35), Manny Machado ($34), Bregman ($34), Austin Riley ($27), and Nolan Arenado ($24) are the highest paid and though I would like to have Bregman closer to $30, I don’t think I could get him back for that price at the draft.

Keep or Cut?
Keep!

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Matt Mervis, 1B
Average Salary: $4.74
Salary: $4.00
2023 P/G: 7.11
Proj 2024 P/G:

Who is Matt Mervis, really? Hopefully, he is not his 2023 27-game slash line:

.167/.242/.289

Hopefully, Mervis can do better than the RosterResource red highlight that signifies he is in a “Projected platoon vs RHP”. Hopefully, he makes the big league club this spring and moves up slightly from the eight spot he’s projected to bat from. That’s a lot of hope for $4. I, admittedly, make the mistake of giving up too soon too often in keeper formats, but I need something I can grab onto with Mervis. I’m having a hard time finding it.

Mervis struck out an alarming 32.3% (26.3% vs. R and 57.9% vs. L). With only 19 at-bats against lefties, it’s nothing to get all worked up about, but it’s not something to ignore either. It’s his power that got so many excited when he was an up-and-coming prospect and a lot of the hype came from fantasy touts after his Arizona Fall League performance. Then there’s this, from Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin’s assessment of the Cubs system back in July:

His raw power is real, though. Mervis’ hands are fast and powerful, and he’s capable of hitting titanic pull-side blasts. He once hit a home run that struck the Cubs’ spring training stadium’s upper level… from their primary minor league backfield. Hanging breaking balls and anything that finishes on the inner third of the plate are vulnerable to his pull-heavy style of swinging.

How did that turn out in his short 2023 stint? As expected with the fastballs, but not so with breaking balls, mostly because he saw very few of them.

Statcast

I don’t like banking on the idea that Mervis might see lots of hanging breaking balls on the inner third. No, the truth is found if you just keep reading his prospect report beyond the “smashes breaking balls” part:

Mervis ends up being pretty long to the outer third of the zone, and big league fastballs up and away from hitters who swing like this tend to present a real problem. Mervis’ initial big league trial was pretty rough and we don’t anticipate things will get much better. He’s got a lot of Quad-A signals and we’re now receiving them.

Statcast

You can see, unhighlighted in the visual, that pitchers took advantage of the scouting report and worked him outside. But, highlighted in the visual, you see that he didn’t do much with pitches on the inside third, pitches that he is supposed to pull out of the galaxy.

Keep or Cut?
I have thoroughly talked myself out of this one. He’s a cut for me and I may just try to sneak him on my roster for $1 with the hope that the swing adjustments he was reportedly making in AAA pay off.

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Isaac Paredes, 1B/2B/3B
Average Salary: $8.11
Salary: $13.00
2023 P/G: 5.55
Proj 2024 P/G: 5.43

This version of Paredes has received a $2 arbitration increase in each of the past two seasons, bringing his rostered salary well above the average. His projected 5.43 P/G in 2024 lowers him, just barely, into tier-three status among all offensive players with at least 75 games in 2023. But, there’s upside and it comes from Paredes’ power, or lack of power, or…it’s complicated. In a FanGraphs points format, slugging percentage is key and Paredes is projected to slug .463. The upside, however, comes from his 2023 mark of .488. In each of his big league seasons, he has increased his slugging percentage. Though his .362 wOBA doesn’t match his .314 xwOBA, his average launch angle has increased from 7.5 in his rookie season to 22.2 in 2023. He hovered around 6% with his barrel rate in 2022 and 2023 and while the league average was 8.1% in 2023, Paredes is still only 24 years old, and his MaxEV of 110.4 is respectable. FanGraphs writer Esteban Rivera examined this conundrum back in July of 2023 which is an excellent read for anyone trying to figure out Paredes. As Rivera points out, Paredes’ game is to pull the ball in the air and despite his lack of raw power, his approach and understanding of the zone allow for his actual statistics to beat out his expected statistics, allowing for sneaky good results:

Will he be figured out? Will pitchers simply focus on throwing to the outer edge of the plate, limiting his ability to get into his pull power? So far, it seems, that Paredes is covering the plate just fine:

Statcast

Isolated to only balls in the zone, you can see he’s still able to pull plenty of balls on the outer half. The visual above makes for a very broad assessment as there’s no isolation of pitches, but what I like most about Paredes’ improvements over the past few seasons is his ability to hit the fastball. His Pitch Info pVal on four-seam fastballs jumped from -3.1 in 2021 to 0.7 in 2022 to a whopping 8.4 in 2023.

Keep or Cut?
Now for the hard part. Remember that part about sneaky results? Well, the term “sneaky” no longer applies to a $13 player. Keep or cut? It’s simple, just answer the question, keep or cut?! Well, $13.00 is a lot and I may be overvaluing Paredes’ power, but I love his positional flexibility and I’m paying a little extra for the upside in 2024. I’ll keep, but don’t tell too many people.

Part one of this installment looked at four-seam fastballs and cutters. Part two analyzed sinkers and splitters. Part three, our final act, will detail sliders, curveballs, and changeups.

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Last week I tried to create benchmarks for what should be considered a replacement-level player in a few of my FanGraphs points leagues. Here’s what I came up with for middle-infield players:

2B Replacement Level: 3.71 P/G
SS Replacement Level: 3.51 P/G

The actual MI position is a tricky one to nail down, so I’ll just separate the two positions out for now. This replacement level mark is not an exact science. Maybe your league mates have been stock-piling shortstops for some reason and that would change the way you calculate a replacement-level player. Regardless, if you have a sense of what kind of player you can typically find on the waiver wire throughout the season, you can make decisions on whether a player is worth keeping in 2024 or not. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few of my middle-infielders and analyze their keepworthiness for 2024.

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Tommy Edman, 2B/SS/OF
Salary: $11.00
Average Salary: $11.98
2023 P/G: 4.17
Proj 2024 P/G: 4.50

Edman’s projected 4.50 P/G according to Steamer places him in Tier 5 among all players who played in over 75 games last season. Steamer expects Edman to take a step forward in 2024, increasing his P/G mark by over 0.30 P/G. What’s the reason for that? Well, his BABIP was at a career-low .248 in 2023 and Steamer took notice, bumping it up to .264 in 2024, which is aiding increases in his slash line:

2023: .248/.307/.399
2024: .264/.321/.407 (PROJ)

Though Edman did lose some time to injury in 2023, he still reached 528 plate appearances. Steamer has bumped that up to 536 in 2024 and FanGraphs Depth Charts is even higher at 581. No one seems too concerned that Richie Palacios will be taking over either 2B or SS playing time from Edman in 2024. Unless something unexpected happens this offseason, Edman seems like a very good lock at everyday SS. Edman’s speed is still an asset and though FanGraphs points leagues reward power and slugging percentage more, speed still plays and I’m banking on a positive hitting regression for Edman.

Keep or Cut?
I am keeping for 2024. If I were rostering him for $12, I would cut him and take my chances trying to get him back for less at the auction. Cuts have not been made in this league yet, and when I look at the players who are not rostered at the 2B/SS positions who played more than 75 games in 2023, the best I can find is 4.35 P/G (Jeff McNeil). That makes me feel pretty good about where I’ve set the replacement level considering McNeil ended the year on the IL.

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Andrés Giménez, 2B
Average Salary: $9.11
Salary: $6.00
2023 P/G: 4.39
Proj 2024 P/G: 5.15

Giménez’s slash line took a hit in 2023 compared to 2022:

2022: .297/.371/.466
2023: .251/.314/.399
2024: .265/.328/.427 (PROJ)

If that’s not an example of a projection system regressing to the mean then I don’t know what is. It would be easy to say that he was BABIP’d in 2023 (.289) and move on. But Giménez is still only 25 years old and I do think there is another gear in his game. His power skills took a hit in 2023, but he played in a career-high 153 games. Could there be an aspect of fatigue involved? Take a look at some of his power skills between 2022 and 2023:

Barrel% 2022: 6.2 -> 2023: 5.5
HardHit% (Statcast) 2022: 37.6 -> 2023: 27.0
xwOBA 2022: .326 -> 2023: .300
EV: 2022: 87.8 -> 2023: 84.8
MaxEV 2022: 109.9 -> 2023: 108.8

He also started to pull the ball more with less power:

There is a disagreement between his statcast HardHit% and his SportsInfo measurements. Regardless of which you believe in more, the bump in 1% in the graph would need to be a whole lot higher in order for the pull-the-ball-in-the-air approach to help Giménez’s power. Though the table below is not adjusted for batted ball events, it does indicate that Giménez is generating the most power from line drives:

He seems to find himself in this place where he needs to add a little more power to his pull-the-ball-in-the-air approach, or he needs to simply focus on making hard contact and plate discipline to increase his BB%. His 30 stolen base potential is at risk and declines further from the .314 OBP he showed in 2023.

Keep or Cut?
Last season’s 4.39 P/G was well above what I’ve marked as replacement level (3.71 P/G) and Steamer likes a positive regression in 2024. The upside is there, stolen base potential and perhaps he finds a way to add power to his new approach. If not, and he reverts back to a harder-hit ball, not in the air, then I still like what he did in 2022. Most second basemen with over 75 games in 2023 at 5.00 P/G were rostered, on average, between $5-$12. I’m keeping anywhere below $8 and might even go a few dollars higher.

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Brice Turang, 2B/SS
Average Salary: $4.30
Salary: $3.00
2023 P/G: 2.51
Proj 2024 P/G: 3.87

Turang’s projection places him above the replacement level at 2B in 2024, but just barely. He came very close to a full season in 2023, playing 126 games and recording 546 plate appearances. Steamer projects a step forward when looking at his slash line:

2023: .218/.285/.300

2024: .246/.319/.370 (PROJ)

Steamer also thinks his six home runs and 26 stolen bases will turn into 10 home runs and 20 stolen bases next season. Turang is not being rostered in Ottoneu leagues due to his ability to provide a P/G mark above that of any replacement-level player. Managers are rostering for his future value and upside potential. The question is, will it come? For now, he seems good enough defensively to stay in the 2B position, and depending on what happens to shortstop Willy Adames in 2025 when he hits free agency, it could be a few more seasons before we really get a sense of what Turang will become. His contact rates from 2023 looked a little troublesome and he really struggled to hit the fastball. While rookies walked 8.1% and struck out 25.8% of the time in 2023, Turang did better, walking 8.5% of the time and striking out 21.0% of the time. However, he did not hit the ball hard very often, only barreling the ball 2.9% of the time. The league average among rookies is 7.6%.

Keep or Cut?
This is my last season holding Turang for upside and it might not last long. He hasn’t shown the skills necessary to be a rosterable hitter, yet. That is in a points format, however. Any player who can hit 10 home runs and steal 20 bases at a very low price should probably be rostered in roto formats. In points formats, anything over $3 is a cut for me.

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Jonathan India, 2B
Average Salary: $12.13
Salary: $16.00
2023 P/G: 5.20
Proj 2024 P/G: 5.23

India found himself in Jeff Zimmerman’s “Hitters Who Played Through a 2023 Injury” report at the end of the season, but the difference between his projected OPS and final OPS was a tiny .003. Regardless, Zimmerman’s research has determined a decline in performance while players play through injury, and with an injury like plantar fasciitis, the one India suffered through in 2023, you can hope that India will improve with health in 2024. Even with the injury, he was above replacement. Players who earned around the 5.0 P/G mark in 2023 with over 75 games have an average salary between $5-$14.

In 2023, India’s BB% increased, his K% decreased, but his overall slash line declined, except for SLG. His wOBA was also up over his 2022 mark. His BABIP was at a career low, .281. His power metrics and batted ball profile have roughly stayed the same, but he’s hitting the ball in the air more. The problem is that his fly ball increases did not correspond with his power increases throughout the season:

His swing percentages tell a story, I’m just not sure what the story is. It looks as if his swing decisions have improved. He has swung outside of the zone less often, swung inside the zone more often, and become more selective overall. None of that really helped against left-handed pitchers, though, he hit .207 against them. That’s the second-worst mark in front of Alan Trejo among second basemen with at least 100 plate appearances against lefties. That’s worrisome when you look at the Reds RosterResource page and see India lined up in the DH spot. He feels dangerously close to finding himself platooned.

Keep or Cut?
I think the $10 or $11 dollar mark is appropriate. Anything over $12 feels like a cut.

Did you roster any 4.33 points-per-game outfielders last season? Better yet, did you roll that 4.33 P/G outfielder into your starting lineup on a regular basis last season? If you did, you were straddling the line of replacement level. Last week I placed offensive players into ranked tiers based on their final P/G achievements and 4.33 P/G is a tier-five player at best. Here’s a reminder of the points spread between tiers:

Offensive P/G tiers for all position players who played in more than 75 games in 2023:

Tier 1 range: 9.1 P/G – 6.0 P/G

Tier 2 range: 5.9 P/G – 5.5 P/G

Tier 3 range: 5.5 P/G – 5.1 P/G

Tier 4 range: 5.0 P/G – 4.7 P/G

Tier 5 range: 4.7 P/G – 4.3 P/G

Remember that represents all players clumped together. 4.33 P/G is actually pretty good if we’re looking at only catchers. The tiers above are independent of position and therefore, flawed. Today, I’ll dial in what should have been considered rosterable in 2023 by position, making note of what a replacement-level player recorded in points per game. Let this serve as a starting point as you may play in a different league format than I do, which would create different-sized player pools. You should be able to easily copy and paste the table in this article and edit the inputs accordingly. Before the table, I need to set the parameters:

– This is representing a 12-team, FanGraphs points league
– I am considering players on my bench above replacement level and am being somewhat arbitrary about it. Each league has 40 roster spots, but I’m leaving 10 of those roster spots for minor leaguers and below replacement-level players. If you add up the “Starters” and “Bench” columns, that is what I’m marking as each team’s number of above-replacement level players. Again, copy and paste the table and make edits if you wish.
– I have excluded players whose “Level” was anything but a major league team at the time of the data pull, eliminating minor leaguers.
– If a player is eligible for that position, they were included in the analysis for that position.

If you take all outfielders in your league, rostered or unrostered, and you sort them by points per game, you simply check the points per game mark of the 73rd-best player. But wait, isn’t a replacement-level player the player with the highest P/G mark available on the waiver wire? Well, yes and no. Let’s now put this system to the test with that 4.33 OF I mentioned in the intro. First, I’ll start by going into my league’s free-agent player pool, isolating outfielders who are currently free agents and played in more than 75 games last season. That last 75-game qualifier is not a part of the table above, but since I’m using end-of-season data, I want to show the players who accumulated playing time and kept a high points per game mark. Here’s what I see:

Andrew McCutchen – 5.24 P/G

Jeff McNeil – 4.35 P/G

Luis Rengifo – 4.34 P/G

Edward Olivares – 4.33 P/G

Willi Castro – 4.11 P/G

So, in theory, this mark works for my league. McCutchen, McNeil, and Rengifo were all hurt toward the season’s end, so in reality, the first available player eligible for the OF spot is Castro. To really prove this out, I’ll do the same exact thing in a second league. Here are OF eligible players available as free agents with over 75 games played:

Tommy Pham – 4.73 P/G

Harold Ramírez – 4.63 P/G

Jose Siri – 4.42 P/G

Ok, so it’s not perfect, but it’s close. I rostered Cedric Mullins all season and he finished the year at 4.37 P/G. Should I have dropped Mullins for Siri? Tough to say. Hindsight is 20/20. I still prefer Mullins for 2024. For now, this may help inform you of where you need to make cuts this offseason. Stay tuned for next week’s post where I work through this same exercise for points per game projections in 2024 and begin converting those projections into dollar values.

pVals are a topic of debate among pitch-level data masterminds. One side may consider them useless. Good pitches get hit and bad pitches get taken for strikes and pVals don’t explain any of that. On the other side, people like to know what actually happened. If a splitter left in the middle of the zone gets a called third strike when it probably should have been mashed for a home run, then pVals still credit the pitcher. The strikeout is what actually happened.

Keep in mind as you peruse this season’s best fastballs just that; pVals aren’t perfect. You’ll read about Chris Bassitt’s sinker and think, Chris Bassitt is a clear candidate for being drafted, but read on and you may back away from that stance. pVals help us understand what occurred, but take caution when using them to predict what will happen. Confused? Let’s just watch some GIFs.

Part one of this installment looked at four-seam fastballs and cutters. Part two will focus on sinkers and splitters.

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It’s important to know what a good points per-game mark is and what kind of price points are attached. In this post, I’ve taken all offensive players and isolated down to those who played in more than 75 games in 2023, an arbitrary cut-off. Then, I placed them in decile groups according to their points per game marks in 2023, creating tier groups. Each decile contains 32 or 33 players. I chose to only present the top six deciles, bringing the player totals to 196. That doesn’t necessarily cover a full league of rostered offensive players, but it gets close. Here’s a look at the spread of tiers one, two, and three:

Tier one shows us the largest spread due to outliers like Ronald Acuña Jr.‘s 9.11 P/G season, Corey Seager’s 8.31 P/G season, and the Dodgers combo Mookie Betts (8.14 P/G) and Freddie Freeman (8.1 P/G). Those were the four offensive players who held P/G marks above eight in 2023. The crazy part is that there’s no qualifier involved beyond the 75-game cutoff, meaning, the best players in 2023 stuck around and accumulated their way to the top. Each of these top of tier-one players played in at least 119 games. The spread of games across these top three tiers doesn’t differ much. However, the average price certainly does:

Average Games Played and Cost by Tier:
Tier 1: 138 G, $29
Tier 2: 141 G, $18
Tier 3: 129 G, $10

These prices are specific to my league but still give a good sense of what a top-tier player should cost. Once we get into Tier two, the price goes down and we’re left with very good everyday players who aren’t going 70-40, but are still contributing daily. Tier three is where I’d like to live. Here are max, min, and median players by P/G within each tier:

Let’s move on to tiers four, five, and six, where a tight four to five points per game range is the norm:

Now, we get down to the player pool where the really tough decisions get made. Does the player have more to give? Or, will they forever be a tier six player who you swap between bench and starting position? Are they likely to fall out of tier six and drop down into the dungeons of lower tiers? These are the questions that we’ll be asking ourselves all off-season as we click them back and forth between “cut” and “keep” on our “Roster Organizer” tab:

This analysis does not take into consideration the players who showed up for 75 games or less and crushed. Players like Davis Schneider, Royce Lewis, Evan Carter, and Zack Gelof are omitted from the box plots above. However, a big takeaway for me is how similar players in tiers four, five, and six are from a points-per-game standpoint.

Having a solid handle on what a good points per game mark is for full-season players is important and hopefully, it will give you some benchmarks for your offseason decisions. Next week, I’ll take a look at the distribution of position eligibility across tiers to get a sense of how valuable, for example, a tier one shortstop is over a tier four shortstop. See you then.

There are all kinds of ways to measure the effectiveness of a pitch. Pitch Values (pVals) or “Pitch Type Linear Weights” give us a sense of, from the glossary, “…the changes in average run expectancy from one count to another”.

while the changes in run expectancy between an 0-0 count and a 0-1 or 1-0 count are obviously very small, when added up over the course of the season, you can get an idea of which pitch a hitter was best against.

pVals are not predictive and they don’t explain the true talent or raw characteristics of an individual pitch the same way Stuff+ or other pitch models can, but it does tell us what actually happened. Now, imagine that! You can dig into the specifics of pVals on the glossary page but for now, let’s celebrate this season’s greatest pVals.

Part one will look at four-seam fastballs and cutters. Part two (coming soon) will focus on sinkers and splitters.

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Have you ever found yourself paying for something that you just knew you couldn’t afford? At the store, you talked yourself into it. You over-exaggerated how much “extra” you had in your budget. You convinced yourself that you needed this shiny, beautiful thing and that, heck, you even deserved it. But when you got home, thoughts started to creep in. How am I going to afford this?  My butt doesn’t look as good in my home mirror as it did in the store. Maybe I can get a second job. Maybe I can make cuts in other areas. Do I really need this? Eventually, after a week’s worth of instant mac n’ cheese dinners, you decide that it’s not worth it, that it’s time to come to reality, and that the high-priced item needs to go back to the store. In the case of Ottoneu fantasy baseball, managers are watching their arbitration dollars pile up and are asking the same questions. Can I really afford Adley Rutcshman now that the market has caught up? How much is too much for Ronald Acuña Jr.? Why is everyone picking on me?

During arbitration, your league mates will increase your players’ salaries, tightening the screws on your overall budget, but you get to do the same to them. Maybe the best thing to do is to simply force them to take their own high-priced items back to the store or, dropping the metaphor, cut the player. Let’s take a look at each team’s most expensive player in the FanGraphs Staff League II:

I’ve gone into experimental mode and added $3 to every player’s salary. In yellow, I’ve highlighted the players who were brought up above the average salary due to my adjustment. In red, I’ve highlighted players who were already rostered above the average and are now well over that limit. This helps visualize which teams I could have the biggest impact on with my arbitration dollars alone. That’s all well and nice but keep in mind that you wouldn’t be able to give each team $3. That would put you well above your $25 spending limit in 12-team leagues. No, you’ve got a healthy $25 to dish out and not a penny more. So, let’s create a different scenario.

I’ll take each team’s best two players and I’ll divvy out at least $1 to each team as required, focusing on teams that have players just about to tip over the average edge of the cliff. Here goes:

Once again I’ve highlighted players in yellow who I brought above the average. In red are the players who were already rostered for a price above average, and I’ve really started gouging. Muahahah! Take that! Can’t afford to pay!? Too bad! Ok, Aaron Judge is safe. So are Shohei Ohtani, Yordan Alvarez, Juan Soto, and Kyle Tucker. But it would take a concentrated effort to bring those players up to or above the average. You could very well do the opposite of what I’m suggesting here and give those players all of your focus, but I would imagine other members of the league will concentrate some inflation firepower in that direction. The rest of the players in the white cells, Goldschmidt, Bieber, and Snell, are already rostered above the average and don’t need any scale tipping to be done.

This is the way to keep the stars in each year’s draft and part of the reason, like baseball, Ottoneu is a very difficult game to play. Of course, this is only one strategy to use, but it can be very effective. Now, just imagine a world where every member of your league reads this article. Stay with me here. Each owner in your league adds just a dollar or more to each team’s top players. Now that would make for some interesting keeper deadlines, wouldn’t it?

One of the very best aspects of Ottoneu fantasy baseball is that you are involved all year round. As October hits, stats are no longer accumulating, points are no longer being totaled and performance measurements remain locked in the past. But arbitration begins and the business side of baseball is front and center. Would you believe that someone, somewhere, in an Ottoneu points league is rostering Ronald Acuña Jr. for only $26? It’s true. If he’s not a candidate for arbitration allocation in that league, I don’t know who is. This is a pure example of why arbitration matters. If the person rostering Acuña for only $26 doesn’t have that salary adjusted, they would go into the draft with Acuña and the additional dollars to auction another big name. Oh, the humanity!

You can find all kinds of interesting situations like the Acuña one by downloading average salary data right from your league page and in this post, I’ll take you through the details on how you can use it to generate insights and strategy specifically for your league.

Step 1: Download average salaries and make it specific to your scoring format

If you click on the “Players” tab at the top of your league page, the sub-menu has a link all the way to the right titled, “Average Salaries”. You can also click here. The drop-down menu in the top right corner of the page allows you to specify salaries based on your scoring format. Choose the option that matches your league and then click “Export as .csv”.

Step 2: Merge average salary data with your league’s roster data.

If you followed Step 1 above, then you have your “average salary data”. Now, back on the “Players” tab, simply click “FanGraphs Sortable Stats”. This will take you to a FanGraphs leaderboard. Make sure the drop-down menu reads “All Teams” so that you are being given salary information for your league-mates rosters. Lastly, merge the two data sets on “Name” and subset it to “Player Name”, “Average Salary”, “Last 10”, and “$”, which represents the actual salary the player is currently rostered for in your league. Here’s an example:

You’ll notice a few things in the table above. First, I’ve also included “Last 10” which gives an average of the most recent 10 completed auctions for that player. You’ll also notice that I calculated the difference between the player’s average salary and what they are actually rostered for. From here I can start to make some decisions. For example, I’m not worried at all about the roughly $4.00 difference between the average salary and the actual salary for Benintendi and Kelenic. If you look at Benintendi’s “Last 10” you’ll notice he’s trending down anyways. By 2024, he may be worth less than the $5.00 he’s actually being paid. Yordan Alvarez, however, needs some adjusting. He’s worth more than $34, just try and change my mind.

Step 3: Group your new data set by team to determine who has the most “surplus value”

You can eyeball this process by simply going to your league’s “Arbitration” page and looking at the comparison of “Curr Salary” versus “Proj Salary” by team. Remember that you must give each team in your league at least $1. Note that this process does not provide a true “surplus” value for each team because each team is also overpaying on players. However, you won’t know who is being cut for a number of weeks, and that probably shouldn’t factor into your allocation strategy. It’s important to take stock of who in your league seems to have all the riches. There are a few different ways to do this but I like to take a simplistic route and isolate the league to players who are rostered lower than the average salary. Then, I sum the difference (Avg Salary – Actual Salary) by team and end up with something like this:

Right away I can see that there are two teams who have a big discrepancy between what they are paying and what other teams are paying on average. That could be a difference between two or three players, or it could be that a team is rostering a handful of players for a few dollars less than average. Let’s take a look at team F to see what is going on:

Team F looks a little less scary when you see that the value difference is spread out. Again, Yordan Alvarez needs to be adjusted. But, who else on this list should I allocate arbitration dollars to? Well, that’s the fun part. It’s not necessarily as easy as just tossing dollars on Yordan and Devers. Even if at the end of arbitration, Alvarez’s salary increases to $50, I’d probably still be inclined to keep him on my roster if I were the Team F manager. If that is the case, what does that actually do? Well, it limits the amount Team F will take into next year’s draft, but it doesn’t free up Alvarez for me to draft. That’s where the real strategy comes into play and over the next few weeks, our Ottoneu team will be writing more about arbitration strategy.

Bigger bases in 2023 allowed for more stolen bases overall this year. More players reached the 20+ stolen base mark than ever before in the Statcast era. In fact, the 51 players who reached 20+ SBs in 2023, more than doubled last year’s mark of 24. The increase in stolen base output is explainable, MLB changed a rule. The flux of home runs in the past few years, however, is not as explainable, though many have tried to explain it with an analysis of the make-up of the actual baseball. But, both of those statistics are up individually and in combination.

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