Breaking from Projections: 3 Ottoneu Players to Sell

In ottoneu (or really any keeper/dynasty format) you generally want to keep players with surplus – guys whose production will be worth more than the cost to keep them – and cut players without. Of course, it isn’t always that simple. With less than a week before the Ottoneu keeper deadline, we’ll look at three players who I am cutting or trading, despite their projected surplus.

To start, if you need a primer or refresher on surplus, this article from Justin Vibber has you covered. You can check out the 2021 version of his surplus calculator or join his Patreon for a premium version.

For the purposes of this article, when I talk about a player’s surplus, I am talking about value minus cost where:

• Value = The value provided in Justin’s surplus calculator, which is based on Depth Charts projections
• Cost = average salaries across Ottoneu leagues
• Value and Cost are based on numbers captured on 1/25 – these may have moved a bit since that date, but probably not much

Rafael Devers

Devers has pretty meaningful projected surplus in three of the four Ottoneu formats, but I am shopping him where I roster him and doubt I will keep him anywhere. I moved a $26 Devers for a $15 Yasmani Grandal in a FanGraphs Points league in December and I am very happy with that move. The issue is I feel like you are paying for a 75th percentile outcome rather than a 50th with Devers. Depth Charts projects him at a .360 wOBA, but THE BAT (.355), THE BATX (.356), and ATC (.359) are all lower, and ZiPS, which makes up half of the Depth Charts projections, is at .355. Any of those numbers, from the .355 up to Steamer’s .365, would represent the second-best year in Devers’s career.

The issue I am seeing is mostly around strikeout rate. Devers has had strikeout issues most of his career. Even before his K-rate spiked to 27.0% in 2020, he had been over 23% in two of his three seasons. 2019 he appeared to have turned a corner, striking out only 17% of the time, but an outlier contact rate on pitches out of the zone that year hid a chase rate that has increased every year of his career.

Devers continues to crush the ball when he makes contact, but I think the projections are too optimistic on his ability to avoid Ks, and so I would rather pay for a .350 wOBA than .360. Depth Charts projects Matt Chapman for a .350 wOBA and his projected values across formats are all roughly $20. That’s not a huge drop from the $25ish Devers costs in most places, but it is enough that I would be shopping him to a manager who is higher on him than I am.

Aroldis Chapman

Chapman needs a bit of a caveat for 5×5 – because of the importance of saves in a league with 60 RP spots and only 30 MLB teams, closers get an extra premium, so projected values for top closers are always lower than their market value – scarcity drives up prices.

That said, in all of these formats, I am concerned that Chapman’s price represents paying for ceiling. Depth Charts projects a little lower K-rate, a little higher BB-rate, but essentially the same overall line for Chapman as he had last year (2.94 projected FIP vs. 2.93 last year). But Chapman’s fastball velocity has been in decline for a few years now and a guy who once averaged over 100 mph on that fastball was down to just above 98 in 2019 and 2020. 2020 was a small sample, but he also gave up more fly balls and fewer ground balls than ever before and a HR/FB rate of 2.5x his career rate.

If Chapman keeps losing velocity and hitters keep elevating the ball off him, he’ll have an awfully hard time being the same pitcher he has been. And at the price you are likely being asked to pay, he needs to be the same guy he has always been.

Chris Sale

With the exception of 5×5, where his seven projected wins are tanking his value, Sale looks at first glance like a great early season stash who can return his salary and then some. But I think those projected values are too optimistic. The Red Sox plan to be “cautious” with his return, which makes sense given their long-term investment in him. Given a typical 12-15 month timeline for a return from Tommy John surgery and a March 30, 2020 surgery date, that puts him at the end of June for his return. After that, you have to figure “cautious” also includes easing him back in, with shorter outings until he gets back to full strength.

I also suspect that might include going to a 6-man rotation, skipping starts, or shutting him down early. Given all of that, I suspect he gets less than half a season and less than a full workload in that half-season, making the projection of 96 IP optimistic, in my view. Add in some poor performances in the early going as he gets his velocity and control back, and I don’t think he returns anything close to $20 in value this year. The only way I can see spending his average value on him in 2021 is if I am comfortable taking the hit this year in order to have an underpriced Sale in 2022.