Is your roster a little topsy-turvy? Do you have most of your value standing on the in-field dirt, waiting out in the bullpen, or just about one season away from being in the big leagues? You know you have to fill all of those outfield spots too, right? Maybe you do have an outfielder, literally one outfielder, and he’s a good one. Well, that’s nice, but you’re still going to need at least four more. Part of the challenge of playing Ottoneu comes from the fact that much of your competition is in the same boat, they need cheap outfielders too. You’ll need to be smart about it, but you can find valuable outfielders who cost next to nothing. When it’s time to go to the auction before the season begins, mark these outfielders and hope you can sneak in and out, only paying a few dollars or less.

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There’s no such thing as a playing time lock, but…

Luis Rengifo, LAA
Avg Salary: $5
ATC Projected PA: 533

This switch-hitting 27-year-old had a breakout year in 2022 when he stepped into the batter’s box 511 times and hit 17 home runs while slashing .264/.294/.429. He walked a lot more in 2023. His low 3.3% BB% in 2022 jumped to 9.2% in 2023. He repeated his .264 batting average in 2023 but improved the rest of his slash-line with a .339 OBP and a .444 slugging percentage. His approach changed, he stopped swinging so much and dropped his contact rate out of the zone. That came at the detriment of his in-zone contact rate, but getting on base with more passivity allowed him to score 10 more runs for his team in a smaller amount of plate appearances (445). Rengifo’s ATC projection suggests his slash line could regress (.256/.315/.420), but his playing time looks solid. Angel’s beat writer Jeff Fletcher reported Rengifo could be the leadoff hitter in 2024 and that would certainly bring his production up a tick:

Ron Washington gave us his *current* lineup thinking today…

1 Rengifo/Moniak
2 Schanuel
3 Trout
4 Rendon
5 Ward
6 Drury
7 O’Hoppe
8 Adell/Hicks
9 Neto

He changed his mind on Schanuel leading off because he wants more speed. All of this subject to further change, obviously.

— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) February 22, 2024

Rengifo is one of the more expensive targets in this article, he’s rostered in 76.1% of FanGraphs points leagues. He has positional flexibility (2B/SS/3B/OF) and most of what I’ve written above has been well noticed by fantasy leaguers. If you’re lucky, and you can snag Rengifo for under the $4 average, you will have an excellent value.

Mark Canha, DET
Avg Salary: $3
Projected PA: 508

Canha has been a steady contributor for fantasy teams in the past few seasons. Last season, he finished with 4.32 points/per game and was only rostered in around 33% of leagues. In November, I calculated points league replacement level at 4.33 points per game for outfielders in 12-team leagues. Canha went over that mark in both 2022 (4.64 P/G) and 2021 (5.17 P/G) and finished the season at 5.27 points per game in the 204 plate appearances he accumulated with the Brewers. In each of the last three seasons (2021-2023), he played at least 139 games. Canha is an accumulator, so don’t get too excited about his individual stats. His batting average has outperformed his expected average in the past two seasons, and in the past three seasons, his slugging percentage has outperformed his expected slugging percentage. What can we expect from him in 2024? Regression, but only some. Here’s Canha’s ATC projection below his 2021-2023 stats:

Andrew McCutchen, PIT
Avg Salary: $3
ATC Projected PA: 459

It seems odd to categorize the 37-year-old veteran McCutchen as a “Playing Time Lock”, but who else is going to DH for the Pirates? If he can rebound from last season’s Achilles tear and stay healthy, McCutchen could certainly be a reliable, above-replacement level player in Ottoneu points leagues. Ready to read something crazy? McCutchen has never, not once, slumped below the 4.33 points per game mark that I hold as a replacement-level outfielder. Ok, ok, he did record 4.34 points per game in 2022, but that was a career worst. Last season, in 473 plate appearances, McCutchen turned in a 5.24 points per game season. He’s not a lock for playing time as he heads into his age 37 season, but he certainly benefits from the DH spot and could easily hit 10 home runs while slugging close to .400. I wouldn’t count on anything more than that. The graph below clearly shows what happens to a ball player’s production as they go through the inevitable:

If that graph scares you away, no one can blame you. Smart fantasy players aren’t betting on McCutchen taking a step forward, but holding just above the replacement level line is a realistic expectation. The full picture should be taken into consideration when someone else bids $2 during an auction draft. Going up to $3 might not be worth it.
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Shared Playing Time Puzzle Pieces

Willi Castro, MIN
Avg Salary: $3
Projected PA: 445

The 33 bases Castro stole in 2023 will make him a target in all formats, but if your league-mates are devaluing his uncertain playing time, you can sneak in and take a chance. The Twins have a lot of injury risks and Castro can fill in nearly any position in a pinch. Both his batting average and on-base percentage ticked up between 2021 and 2022 and then again in 2023 and that was fueled by improved plate discipline:

While his hard-hit rate did not change much between 2022 and 2023, his barrel rate did, moving from 3.5% in 2022 to 6.8% in 2023. To recap, Castro gets on base more often than the average hitter, then he steals bases. He has begun finding the barrel more often by finding better pitches to swing at. That sounds good to me. I’m buying in.

LaMonte Wade Jr., SFG
Avg Salary: $4
Projected PA: 470

Even with the ultimate tinker-er in Gabe Kapler, Wade still accumulated 519 plate appearances in 135 games. Wade, a left-handed hitter, actually hit better (.269) against left-handed pitching than he did against right-handed pitching (.254) in 2023. However, his OBP and SLG were much better against righties. Last season’s .262/.373/.417 overall slash line was far and wide better than his .221/.305/.359 line from 2022 and seeing more reps likely contributed to the advancement. FanGraphs writer Kyle Kishimoto wrote about potential playing time issues for the Giants in 2024, but it was written before Matt Chapman was signed and J.D. Davis was cut. Now, Wilmer Flores and Wade are likely in a platoon split with Wade on the strong side. 2023’s step forward was good for 4.8 points per game in Ottoneu, above replacement level and worth as much as $2 in 2024.

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Playing Time Gambles

Estevan Florial, CLE
Projected PA: 284

I was excited when I read in Jeff Zimmerman’s late February “Mining the News” that Florial has a chance to become an everyday player:

It might seem obvious, but Guardians hitting coach Chris Valaika was the first to go on record this week and say Myles Straw is competing for his job this spring. Marking him in the lineup every day is no longer a given. Ramón Laureano has plenty of experience in center, but Florial is the one Vogt called “a specimen.”

As of this writing, Florial has a high spring training strikeout rate, of 42.1%, and a high walk rate, of 10.5%. This combination is typical of Florial’s profile as he has an MLB 30.6% K% in 115 at-bats. Still, he’s never been given a chance to gain consistent playing time and I am, at least, interested to see what he can do. It’s probably too little too late as many baseball fans have been waiting for Florial to show off his tools for too long and have given up. It was over three years ago that Eric Longenhagen wrote this in his analysis of Florial as a prospect in the Yankees system:

I’ll gladly eat crow if Florial ends up being a consistent big league hitter for a half decade because that’ll mean we’ll have gotten to see his electric tools (he has one of the best throwing arms I’ve ever seen), but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

However, for $1 wouldn’t you like to see if the raw power Florial has been known for can be tweaked just enough to actually connect with the bat for something like 10 dingers? 10 dingers for a dollar here! 10 dingers for a dollar! It’s a gamble, but it’s certainly within the range of outcomes should Florial out-compete his teammates in spring training.

Aaron Hicks, LAA
Avg Salary: $1
Projected PA: 373

Hicks was a 4.86 points-per-game player last season for the O’s and if he can manage another 90 games in Los Angeles, then he very well could hold that mark. Father time may be coming for his power, but Hicks is still finding the ball in the zone and has shown a resurgence in the past few seasons in both his wOBA and his slugging percentage:

Unfortunately, he’s already had issues with soreness this spring and his projections don’t seem to be buying that he’ll be on the field enough for steady plate appearance totals by the end of the year. To further put a damper on Hicks’ fantasy potential, he outperformed his statcast expected average, wOBA, and slugging percentage in 2023. Perhaps the right approach here is to believe the regression projection systems bake in and hope for a little more. $1 and no more.

Diversity is good in all places. In the natural world, in the workplace, in your neighborhood, a collection of diverse parts makes the sum stronger. In fantasy baseball, that means your team has power hitters, base stealers, contact hitters, ironmen, rotation horses, flame throwers, and AI robo-mutant zombies that eat pine tar for breakfast and rosin for dinner. Ok, that last one may have taken things too far. The point is, if you’re only drafting for overall value (easy to do), you could end up with a lopsided team. Sure, you’ll win the home run category, but that’s only 12 points. You need to diversify and here’s one way you can do that during your next draft.

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The terminals at Baltimore-Washington International, BWI, were packed with Orioles fans excited to escape the last grip of Maryland’s cold winter weather, heading to Florida for live baseball once again. The unusual sight of sandals and sun hats standing in lines to get on planes can be off-putting, yet invigorating. Spring Training brings that little bit of hope to baseball fans that summer will actually come again, hard as it may be to believe.

“Are you going to the game tomorrow?”, asked a short older woman as I climbed over her to get to what seemed like the last seat on the plane.

“Yea, I’m going Saturday and Sunday.” This statement was greeted with a quick sideways look followed by a “good for you” sort of expression.

“We’re only going tomorrow. I’m so excited! I can’t wait to see that Jackson Holliday!”

My nice neighbor would have to join me at the game on Sunday if she wanted to see Baltimore’s golden boy, as he was given the day off on Saturday against the Yankees.

Cole Irvin would take the bump for the O’s and Marcus Stroman for the Yankees at Ed Smith Stadium on Saturday, March 2nd. Irvin was coming off an impressive first start where he threw two innings and faced only six batters. It was reported that his velocity was up:

Irvin numbers:

28 pitches, 20 strikes

9 cutters averaging 88.6 mph, up 3.1 from his 2023 MLB average

All 5 of his pitches had an average velo increase of at least 1.3 mph from 2023 with #Orioles https://t.co/zupo0yoyNZ

— Jake Rill (@JakeDRill) February 25, 2024

It was a good sign from the lefty who is fighting for a roster spot, though a setback to John Means‘ recovery from Tommy John surgery and a possibly detrimental injury to Kyle Bradish’s elbow has given Irvin a better chance. The pop of the catcher’s mitt from the bullpen as Irvin warmed up seemed to have a little something extra this spring. Then again, it could have been the months without the sound that made it extra crisp.

The first pitch Irvin threw was to Yankee shortstop Anthony Volpe and he swung away, lining a sharp single into right-center field. The Yankees are hoping Volpe will be able to get on base more often in 2024 as he struggled to do so with a .209/.283/.383 line in his rookie season. It seems that the reported tweaks he’s made to his swing are already showing some improvement.

As he stood on first base, the more attuned fans in attendance wondered out loud if Volpe, who stole 24 bases in 2023, would pick up where he left off and take second. He danced and shuffled off first base enough to make Irvin consider a throw over. Perhaps the goading worked to Volpe’s advantage and, to some extent, Alex Verdugo’s, as Irvin missed inside and hit Verdugo placing runners on first and second. Irvin was able to get out of the inning without a run-scoring. He finished the game having thrown three innings, giving up three hits, a walk, and no runs. There’s certainly room in the O’s starting rotation and even more so for a left-handed pitcher. But Julio Teheran came in after Irvin and threw one solid inning with a strike-out, so there’s still a competition happening in the O’s camp.

Here are the fringe Orioles starters and their ratio projections:

It seems most likely that Teheran will make the team as a long-reliever in the bullpen. Otherwise, the O’s pen showed promising signs from Dillon Tate, the 29-year-old righty who missed all of 2023 with an arm injury, and Nick Vespi, the 28-year-old lefty. Both relievers threw one inning, struck out one, and kept the Yankees off the bases. Though he did not come into the game, I could see last year’s breakout reliever Yennier Cano working out on an Orioles backfield. Cano has some fantasy promise in a season where the O’s will be without Félix Bautista (Tommy John) and while Craig Kimbrel is certainly a lock to be the closer, Cano is the next man up. One more notable appearance came from the 27-year-old Wandisson Charles. Back when he was a prospect with the Oakland Athletics, Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein wrote about Charles:

[S]itting in the 95-98 range with his fastball. He still lacks consistent feel for location and a good secondary pitch, but his sheer arm strength merits inclusion [on this prospect list].

The part about his “physical presence [resembling] that of an NFL edge rusher” certainly rang true, as did the part about his lack of control. Charles threw one inning gave up a hit, walked a batter, and struck out a batter.

On the offensive side of seven Orioles runs came the following notes:

–Kyle Stowers hit a shallow home run to right field in his only at-bat in the game. Stowers is one of the many Orioles who should now be getting consistent major league playing time, yet is blocked by established outfielders. This is a good thing for the Orioles, a bad thing for players who want to play but are blocked, and an even worse thing for fantasy players who want their keepers to accumulate stats. Ok, maybe it’s more frustrating for the actual players. Stowers dealt with an injury early in the season in 2023 but ended the year with a AAA slash line of .245/.364/.511 in 233 plate appearances. The 30 plate appearances he earned at the big league level in 2023 garnered a dismissible .067/.152/.067.

It's been quite the spring so far for Stowers: https://t.co/8u5WSsEwtp

— Jake Rill (@JakeDRill) March 2, 2024

–Coby Mayo went hitless in three at-bats. He is certainly an imposing figure at third base and should be given, at least, a cup of coffee this season. He, like Stowers, has certainly outgrown AA (.307/.424/.603) and moved closer to outgrowing AAA (.267/.393/.512) in 2023.

-Fantasy managers should not sleep on Austin Hays and he let them know with a no-doubt home run to right field. He’s projected to be a mainstay in the Orioles outfield and to hit, by most projection systems, just shy of 20 home runs. The wall in left field will have something to say about Hays’ home run potential in 2024, but with health, he could put together a full season of good production.

Though the O’s fans were out in droves, Ed Smith Stadium was half-filled with New Yorkers interested in what Stroman would offer in the upcoming year. He would face Cedric Mullins, Adley Rutschman, and Ryan Mountcastle in the top of the first and would get each out on a ball in play. Marcus Stroman has an NFBC ADP in the 280s and projects to be a mid-rotation starter for the Yankees. Going into his 10th major league season, his projection has a lot of data to build off of:

Stroman hit 200 innings pitched twice in his career but hasn’t gotten over 150 in his last two seasons. He threw four innings and gave up only two hits while striking out three. Trent Grisham is only projected for 365 at-bats, but he looked as good as ever playing center field. With his defensive ability and the likelihood of his needing to fill in for injured players, some fantasy managers may be interested in rostering Grisham in deep leagues, yet the ATC projected slash line of .222/.321/.405 may not be too appealing.

After looking at the Yankees box score from the previous day, it was clear that the Yankee big dogs would be on the golf course on Saturday. All of Juan Soto, DJ LeMahieu, Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo, and Giancarlo Stanton were in the lineup the day before I arrived. But that provided a good opportunity to see some of the young talent the Yankees have in their system. Players like Caleb Durbin (3B, age 24), Ben Rice (C/1B, age 25), and Brandon Lockridge (OF, age 26) all had productive at-bats. As is likely to happen in Spring Training, the lineups became filled with AAA and AA players, all looking to make an impression on someone. Yankee hitters got on the board with three late runs, but couldn’t catch up to the young O’s and the seven runs they put on the board.

As odd as it is to see players walking out of the dugout and towards the clubhouse in the middle of the game, having gotten their work in for the day, there’s a sense of ease that comes with knowing the slog of the season hasn’t kicked off just yet. Your fantasy team hasn’t begun collecting stats, it may not even have all of its roster spots filled yet. But, checking in on roster situations and young prospect production is something that can give you more of an edge during a draft.

If an Ottoneu fantasy baseball team were a race car coming up to the finish line at the season’s end, there would be a whole lot of smoke coming out. The windows would have a layer of filth and film blocking you from seeing the driver inside. Bug guts would be splattered all over the hood, and a few pairs of body-less insect wings would still be twitching on the hunk of hot metal. Duct tape would be holding on semi-important parts and all kinds of unusual noises would be heard. Making it to the finish line is, for god sake, difficult.

I’ve always wondered how many of those theoretical race cars that are Ottoneu teams got a little extra help in the form of loans, allowing them to finish the season over the $400 salary limit allotted to each team. To be specific, I have data on 137 Ottonue Prestige League-eligible points leagues. Take a look at the average salary among those who finished with hardware in 2023:

This graph may lead you to believe all first-place finishing teams are over-budget. That’s not the case. But the majority of first-place finishers were over budget. Out of the 137 first-place finishers in this dataset, 80 finished the year over the $400 mark. That’s 58% of teams. Let’s look at the distribution of salary among the top three finishers:

This graph above is interactive. Click on “2” and “3” in the legend to isolate the distribution to first-place finishers. Hover over the bar to the left and you’ll notice that some impressive soul out there won their league with only a $234 budget. Who knows what the heck was happening in that league? But focus your attention to the right and you’ll notice that there are plenty of leagues where the first-place finisher either came very close to maxing out their budget or went over. In some cases, first-place finishers were over their 400-dollar budget by 100 dollars or more.

If you’ve ever been in a competition where you tried to work within a framework that you thought was the rules, only to find out you were wrong about that framework, you’ll know anger. But, let’s be clear, going over your $400 budget is plainly within the rule of the Ottoneu law and legal what-have-you. So, either “wake up stoopit, everyone’s doing it”, or hold to your rebuild and birth a dynasty.

That’s really what’s going on here, isn’t it? Maxing out your salary and agreeing to lopsided deals and loans at the end of the season makes for some really difficult decisions in the offseason when it’s time to get below the cap. It’s a double-edged sword. You may have won your league but you did it in an unsustainable way. Here’s an example of how this can work:

Team A is in the running for a first-place finish. Team F is barely staying out of last place. Team A is stacked and if they were to add Zack Wheeler for the final month of the season, they would surely win the league. Team F actually has Zack Wheeler and realizes Zack Wheeler is their only good player and that this instance of fantasy Zack Wheeler is being paid too much already. Team F decides to trade Zack Wheeler. Team A, who could really use Zack Wheeler, is nearly maxed out on budget so they couldn’t possibly be a good trade partner. But, Team A can be a good trade partner for Team F because Team F can loan Team A the money they need to roster Zack Wheeler.

Do you see? Now, will Team A keep Zack Wheeler for next year? No. They won’t be able to afford it. But, they won a championship and that is hard to do. Thus, the double-edged sword.

Now, don’t go running around telling everybody your strategy is to overpay all your players and max out your budget. It’s a true, season-long, reputationally built game that you must play to max out your budget at the right time. But, if you think your team is in a place where you could win your league this year, don’t be afraid to pay at the draft. Good players make good teams. The managers who won first place in my dataset paid. Here’s a look at how many players on average each rank finish (one through three) rostered at $40 or more:

While the edge is small, first-place finishers roster more players at $20+ players, more $30+ players, and more $40+ players than second and third-place finishers. So go out there and spend, spend, spend! Or don’t. But, whatever you do, know that in 2023, teams that finished the season over budget had a better chance of winning first place than teams that finished with money to spend.

Thanks to reader and LOTR enthusiast “Gandalfsstaff” for the comment they made on my article last week:

What if you hopped in the DeLorean and used the new formula pretending it was last year? Would it have predicted better picks in hindsight?

In that article, I wrote about the recipe I concocted, on the shoulders of giants, to target pitchers. I used the skills components in Ron Shandler’s LIMA plan and metrics from Eno Sarris’ pitching models to try and identify great pitchers in the upcoming 2024 season. The recipe included 2023 end-of-season stats and 2024 projected stats:

ATC 2024 Projections

• LIMA: K%>=25%, BB<10%, HR/9<1.3

2023 End-of-Season Actuals

• Stuff+ Fastball (FA, SI, FC) >=100
• Stuff+ Secondary (SL, CH, KC, CU, FS) >=100
• A called strike rate (CStr%, SIS) >12%
• Pitched at least 50 innings in 2023

Names like Zac Gallen, Gerrit Cole, and Corbin Burnes (new Oriole, no big deal) floated to the top of the bubbling, steaming pot. Ok, enough with the cooking metaphor. There’s a problem, though, with back-testing this recipe on last year’s data as Gandalfsstaff suggested. The K%, BB%, and HR/9 used in the recipe were projected by ATC. I don’t have data on last season’s projections. Next season’s Stuff+ metrics, also, aren’t specifically projected. Stuff+ is used to make projections, but we don’t see a fastball Stuff+ projection for Gerrit Cole in 2024. However, as you will see, Cole’s fastball will likely be very similar in 2024 to how it was in 2023. As complicated as that all sounds, back-testing to see which pitchers met all the requirements of the recipe by year’s end is not. Let’s go back in time. Here are the pitchers who accomplished all the bullet points above by the end of the 2022 season:

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Now that looks pretty darn good. Anyone of those seven starters could have anchored a fantasy rotation. The true secret ingredient here is a dominant fastball. My attempt at creating a recipe pre-season 2023 did not turn out well because I wasn’t using the best metrics. pVals are not predictive and they didn’t belong in my preseason analysis. Stuff+, however, is predictive:

You can read all about the predictive power of Stuff+ and other pitching models, but the chart above explains a lot. Fastball Stuff+ is generally repeatable year-to-year. This is nothing new. Once a pitcher has a dominant fastball, they can work their secondaries with more success. Hitters, bless their hearts, have enough to deal with when a fastball’s Stuff+ rating gets above 100. Furthermore, the ability of a pitcher to earn called strikes is important because he needs something that brings the bat off the hitter’s shoulder when the hitter has the advantage. Sure a pitcher has a good fastball and secondaries, but if those pitches rarely get a “Strike!” from the umpire, hitters can just become observers. Finally, the LIMA plan skill components from days of old were just as good in 2021 and 2022. You can’t fake striking someone out. Let’s take a look at who followed this recipe to the flour-stained, bottom of the pages in 2021:

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Once again, the recipe yields positive results. Don’t get too hopeful about this recipe, it’s difficult to predict which pitchers will end 2024 having met all of the very challenging criteria above. It’s even more difficult for even the top-most gifted pitchers in the world to go out and do it! If I were stuck with only one statistic to predict with confidence for the upcoming season, I would choose innings pitched every single time. Nestor Cortes was awesome in 2022 but dealt with injury all 2023 long, limiting his innings pitched and therefore, a repeat great season. If only I were Biff Howard Tannen. Unfortunately, we can’t predict anything with that much confidence, so relying on repeatable skills and moving forward with fingers crossed seems to be the best way to go.

Last season around this time I wrote an article showcasing a recipe that would help select starting pitching in drafts. I queried the heck out of a dataset containing 2022 end-of-season pitcher data and 2023 projected data, slicing and splicing the list down to an interesting group of pitchers, each having done or expected to do the following:

• A SwStr% in 2022 of at least 11%. (2022 MLB SP average – 10.7%)
• A K/9 projection (steamer) of eight or better. (2022 MLB SP average – 8.18)
• Positive pVals (Pitch Info) on at least two pitches in 2022.
• An ADP greater than 100.

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Below replacement level. Worth zero dollars. Heck, worth negative dollars if you roster the player. At least replacement-level players are worth $1. But, below replacement-level? That’s a tough sell. Some players are expected, projected even, to do worse than any other player available at any point in time during the season. So why write about them here?

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Are you the “keep it quick bud, I gotta two o’clock Zoom meeting and I still need to comb my hair” type of fantasy reader? If so, this post is for you. A real quick hitter that explains how the draft value is spread across draft rounds. Read the rest of this entry »

When something becomes sexy, I’m all in. Crocs and socks? Sexy. Minivans with a built-in vacuum cleaner to suck up all the floor Cheerios? Sexy. Throwing a four-seam fastball with a very shallow vertical approach angle due to some serious induced vertical break at the top of the zone? Sexy. Some things some people just can’t pull off. But when a trend becomes a trend, you’re either in or you’re out.

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Fellow league mate: Are you interested in J-Ram?

Me: Yes, of course. J-Ram rules!

With the cut deadline looming (January 31st, 11:59 PM) many Ottoneu managers are probably in similar situations. Rather than cutting players to slim down maxed-out budgets, some are looking to make trades that will bring back the players they want without having to compete at the auction. This is one of the many beauties of Ottoneu. As all other fantasy leaguers are only focused on drafting, Ottoneu managers can wheel and deal all through the winter.  This article will detail a few ways the player organizer can be useful when analyzing your team going into the keeper deadline.

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