Blockbusting Ottoneu Style

Regular ottoneu enthusiasts may recall my retooling efforts from last winter in FanGraphs Staff Two. Here’s the short version. After going all-in to win the 2015 campaign, I was left with a very talented and very expensive roster. I needed to slice more $150 off my payroll without affecting the product. I was open to rebuilding, but I always prefer to contend.

The easy way out was to trade one or both of Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw. Unfortunately, my leaguemates and I have very different ideas about the value of expensive, hyper-elite players. I guess it makes sense that they gravitated to my roster. I had to re-equip the hard way – by making a flurry of incrimental moves.

One year later, I get to claim success. The 2016 season may have been my most successful victory yet. Now I’m attempting the same stunt once again. I entered the offseason with $510 spread across 42 players. Of that, only a couple low cost players are obvious cuts. Time to get to work.

The Starting Point

On the surface, my roster has the same issues as last winter. Trout and Kershaw still clog the top, and Paul Goldschmidt has been arbitrated up to $50. Here’s the entire roster.

Yes, I made some weird formatting choices. Get over it. I won’t do a complete roster diagnostic, but let’s hit a few high level bullets. I have too much first base depth. Second base is well covered, as is third base. The original plan was to use Kipnis, Carpenter, and Healy for second base, middle infield, and third base. Obviously, I need a shortstop, third base could be better, and outfield is an obvious place to cut costs due to a wide availability of free platoon fielders.

The starting rotation is both too expensive and too shallow to survive an ottoneu season. Meanwhile, the bullpen is much too deep. The top five have massive ceiling, albeit with some injury blues to Capps and Holland. Zych, Rivero, and Severino are all very interesting gambles too.

Four Trades

Let’s reconfirm my most obvious goals: cut costs, acquire a shortstop, and deal from first base and relief depth. Additionally, I was specifically trying to trade Springer, Arrieta, and one of Carpenter or Kipnis. Let’s see how I did. The following moves were made between the morning of last Thursday and Friday afternoon.

The One With a Shortstop

The Huligans gets:
$34 Arrieta
$15 Belt

I get:
$7 Jonathan Villar
$6 Ryan Schimpf
$5 Addison Reed

Hulet will be my top rival next year. He’s built an incredible pitching rotation and a potent offense. I’ve just made it that much harder to beat him. At this point, I’m resigned to keeping Goldschmidt – every owner who could pay my asking price has told me they can’t/won’t fit him into their budget. That made Belt completely expendable.

Villar solves my shortstop problem, and he has great positional flex for when I acquire another. The FGpts format massively devalues Villar’s best trait. I’m only projecting 750 points next season. Schimpf is a wild card. He had one of the best combinations of points per plate appearance in his debut, but will the Padres actually play him over touted prospects? Reed is a top 15 reliever – an asset I most certainly did not need.

Overall, this is a C- trade in my book. I got cheaper, and I landed one of the few good shortstops under $15. I also made my top rival that much better.

The One That Doesn’t Make Any Sense

The Huligans gets:
$26 Carpenter
$24 Springer
$3 Napoli

I get:
$39 Nolan Arenado

Hulet and I talked daily for two weeks about a Villar trade. Most of the scenarios involved Carpenter or Springer. At no point was Arenado a part of the talks. We ultimately settled on the Arrieta offer after I tried 75 combinations of Carpenter+. By contrast, this Arenado swap came together via an impulse offer from me. In one sense, I did manage to cut costs while trading from areas of strength. However, I didn’t really cut enough payroll. I was supposed to trade that $53 bundle for a $15 return, but I just couldn’t pass on adding a third elite bat to my offense.

This is another C- trade in which I move in the right direction while helping my biggest rival way too much. At least he has payroll problems to solve too.

The Tiny One

Baby Bears gets:
$4 Alvarez
$4 Kim

I get:
$5 Robert Gsellman

I’m probably way too pleased with this almost certainly irrelevant trade. While I’d keep Alvarez and Kim in a vacuum, there just wasn’t a spot for them on my current roster. Given my need for pitching depth, this felt a little like turning nothing into something.

Gsellman has an uphill battle for a rotation job what with Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Steven Matz, and Zack Wheeler standing in the way. Oh, and Seth Lugo too. That’s a talented top five, but it’s also a whole lot of injury prone. I’m reasonably confident he’ll make 15 starts. More importantly, Gsellman posted a very sturdy ground ball rate while limiting home runs last year. Preventing home runs in the easiest way to score big point totals in Ottoneu.

I’ll generously grade this as a B+. I suspect more objective observers will say we swapped cuts.

The One Arenado Made Necessary

Average MLB Stuff gets
$31 Kluber
$11 Miller
$3 Healy

I get
$7 Kyle Hendricks
$6 Stephen Piscotty

I’m now officially invested in the Cubs run prevention machine. I was really hoping to avoid placing an expensive bet in the contact management game after Dallas Keuchel burned me so thoroughly last year. Nothing Hendricks did in 2016 smells unrepeatable. It’s still heartburn-inducing to place so much emphasis on a guy who throws 88 mph.

Hendricks was the guy I specifically targeted in this swap. Piscotty is simply somebody I needed to justify adding Miller. I made the initial offer without Healy, and it was quickly countered in this form.

I sometimes spend way too much time hashing out the fine details of a trade. The Villar swap probably ran six to eight hours in time spent over two weeks. By contrast, this deal took five minutes of effort. The extra expense of Healy was utterly unnecessary. The original offer was already very strong. However, I know Wiers is an Oakland fan, and I didn’t want to butt heads for half the offseason. Rather than fight to keep a guy who is very blocked on my current roster, I opted to save myself some time.

Overall, I hate that I had to make this trade. It’s a D-. However, my roster is now within spitting distance of legal. Cost cutting trades are almost always losses. The key is to still get valuable pieces in exchange.

Final Tally

Over a 32 hour span, I traded Arrieta, Carpenter, Springer, Belt, Kluber, Miller, Napoli, Healy, Alvarez, and Kim to gain Villar, Arenado, Schimpf, Reed, Hendricks, Piscotty, Gsellman, and $80.

Here’s my current roster. I now have $430 spread across 38 players.

I could stand to gain a second shortstop. I’ll polish the outfield depth during the draft.

Replacing Miller with $6 and the right-handed version of Miller is a nifty little transition. There’s still too much talent in the reliever bucket. And I need more starting pitchers. That will probably have to wait until after the draft.