Welcome back to the SP Drip. My goal for this bi-weekly column is to comb through the upcoming schedule each week to find a few under-owned pitchers (less than 50% ownership across Ottoneu) who could be used to help you hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues or to make sure you’re hitting your innings pitched cap in points leagues. Tuesday’s article will cover the weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and Friday’s article will cover the upcoming week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday). That way, you’ll have time to start your auctions in time to actually drip these pitchers into your lineup.

Upcoming Schedule:

A bunch of teams have easier schedules this weekend including the Braves, Cardinals, Diamondbacks, Giants, Mariners, Marlins, Mets, and Tigers.

Difficult schedules include the Angles, Brewers, Cubs, Nationals, Orioles, Rangers, Rays, Red Sox, Reds, Twins, and White Sox.

Highlighted matchups:

Despite all the teams with bad matchups, there’s a full slate of recommendations this weekend. The two young starters from the Braves, Dylan Dodd and Bryce Elder, are scheduled to make starts in Kansas City against the Royals. The former had a rough outing against the Padres in his last start, allowing seven runs in 4.1 innings. The Royals should prove to be a much easier opponent. Elder just held the Reds scoreless over 6.1 innings in his start on Monday and hasn’t allowed a run in either of his starts this year.

The two Padres pitchers are creeping up in ownership since the start of the season and both are light recommendations against the Brewers. It’s not an obvious matchup to exploit since Milwaukee has actually been hitting pretty well to start the season, but it’s at home and both Nick Martinez and Seth Lugo have proven they can be counted on this season. The latter has been particularly impressive in his return to the rotation with another strong start coming against the Braves on Sunday.

Anthony DeSclafani turned in another solid start in his last turn through the rotation and he gets a really easy matchup against the Tigers in their huge ballpark. On the other side of that matchup, Matthew Boyd could be a bit more of a risky pick. He handled the Astros and Red Sox okay, allowing two runs in each of those starts, but he hasn’t been able to pitch out of the fifth inning yet. He’s allowed as many walks as he has strikeouts so the efficiency is still lacking.

Jhony Brito is lined up to make his third start of his career after capably handling the Orioles last weekend. He gets a tougher opponent in the Twins so this will be a pretty tough test for him. I’m recommending him anyway. Michael Grove did not fare well in his second start after impressing in his season debut; he allowed nine runs to the Diamondbacks on Sunday. He’ll get the Cubs at home in his next start and that’s a bit of a risk given the high home run park factor of Dodger Stadium. I’d understand if you wanted to wait and see how he performs this weekend before picking him up.

Recap: April 7–9

A much better weekend after those terrible results during the first week in April. I count two clear wins and no losses. The surprise was Brad Keller’s performance against the Giants. The strikeouts weren’t there, but he held San Francisco to just three hits in 5.2 innings of work. That’ll play. Nick Pivetta’s start got pushed back to Monday, but he performed well against the Rays, shutting them out over five innings with six strikeouts and just two walks.

Welcome back to the SP Drip. My goal for this bi-weekly column is to comb through the upcoming schedule each week to find a few under-owned pitchers (less than 50% ownership across Ottoneu) who could be used to help you hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues or to make sure you’re hitting your innings pitched cap in points leagues. Tuesday’s article will cover the weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and Friday’s article will cover the upcoming week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday). That way, you’ll have time to start your auctions in time to actually drip these pitchers into your lineup.

Upcoming Schedule:

Obvious favorable schedules include the Astros, Braves, Brewers, Dodgers, Rangers, and Orioles. There are also a handful of teams who are either playing tough opponents in pitcher friendly ballparks or against weaker teams in smaller venues; the A’s, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Mariners, Red Sox, and White Sox fall into this camp.

Bad matchups include the Cardinals, Guardians, Marlins, Mets, Nationals, Pirates, Reds, Rockies, and Tigers.

Highlighted matchups:

The series between the Orioles and A’s features three different recommendations. Kyle Gibson has thrown two decent starts so far this year with an 8:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 12 innings. He introduced a sweeper late last year and it’s been featured pretty heavily in his pitch mix so far this season. Dean Kremer is a bit more of a risk, even with the weak opponent. He’s had spurts of success, particularly last year, and his first two opponents this season were pretty tough — the Red Sox and Yankees — but he’s also introduced a sweeper into his repertoire.

For Oakland, JP Sears is a repeat recommendation and Kyle Muller would have been but his ownership rate crossed over the 50% threshold this week. Sears struggled a bit in his first start against the Guardians, throwing 4.2 innings with eight hits allowed, one walk, and five strikeouts. Adam Oller is also lined up to start during this series and you’d have to take a pretty big leap of faith to consider starting him.

José Suarez and Matt Strahm fall into that camp of matchups in a dangerous ballpark against a weak team. The former ran into some trouble against the Mariners in his first start of the season but the Nationals pose a much weaker threat. Strahm threw four scoreless innings against the Yankees during his spot start on Tuesday. The lack of bulk is a concern as is the hard contact that went unrewarded in New York.

Bryce Elder was phenomenal in his spot start for the Braves on Wednesday, holding the Cardinals scoreless over six innings with six strikeouts. Atlanta’s rotation is a bit of a mess with two starters on the IL and Elder, Jared Shuster, and Dylan Dodd battling over who will get to stick in the big leagues once everyone gets healthy. Dodd and Elder certainly look more viable as major league starters and the latter has the benefit of a nice matchup early next week.

Recap: April 3–6

After a good start during the first weekend of the season, my recommendations last week were pretty brutal. I count two wins — Muller and Grove — with seven ugly losses including a ghastly -24.1 points from Plesac against the A’s and -22.1 points from Crawford against the Pirates. Ouch. I’m not not sure there are any solid lessons to be taken away from this group of really bad performances. I liked the matchups on paper, but sometimes pitchers throw stinkers against weak teams and you just have to roll with the punches.

Welcome back to the SP Drip. My goal for this bi-weekly column is to comb through the upcoming schedule each week to find a few under-owned pitchers (less than 50% ownership across Ottoneu) who could be used to help you hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues or to make sure you’re hitting your innings pitched cap in points leagues. Tuesday’s article will cover the weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and Friday’s article will cover the upcoming week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday). That way, you’ll have time to start your auctions in time to actually drip these pitchers into your lineup.

Let’s get into it.

Upcoming Schedule:

Favorable schedules include the Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mets, Rays, Red Sox, Royals, and White Sox. You may be able to get away with playing starters from the A’s, Pirates, and Yankees since they’re playing tougher opponents in safer environments.

Lots more teams to avoid this weekend, including the Angels, Blue Jays, Braves, Brewers, Cardinals, Nationals, Padres, Reds, Rockies, and Twins.

Highlighted matchups:

It’s a pretty light slate of recommendations this weekend with so many teams playing tough matchups or in poor environments. Nick Pivetta shows up for the second week in a row. Monitor his first start of the season against the Pirates today to make sure the increased velocity on his fastball carries over from spring training.

There are two starters who could be nice pickups in that Giants-Royals series, one for each team. Anthony DeSclafani started on Monday and held the White Sox scoreless over six innings while striking out four. He was an effective starter back in 2021 but injuries limited him to just five starts last year. If he’s fully healthy, he could be a sneaky addition with an excellent home ballpark. Brad Keller made his first start of the season on Sunday against the Twins and looked okay. He only lasted 4.2 innings, walked four, and struck out six. He introduced two new breaking balls to his repertoire this spring, though the command issues could be an issue as he figures out how to locate them properly.

Mike Clevinger handled the Astros capably on Sunday, throwing five shutout innings with eight strikeouts. He limited his pitch mix to just his fastball and slider and the latter generated a 44% whiff rate. That breaking ball lost a ton of effectiveness last year and it’s a big reason why he struggled so much in San Diego. He’s got a nice matchup against the Pirates in Pittsburgh to continue building off that early success.

Bailey Falter is a bit more of a risk since Citizen’s Bank Park is a very hitter friendly venue. The Reds offense isn’t good but the combination of opponent and ballpark still isn’t ideal. Falter threw 5.1 innings in his first start of the year, holding the Rangers to two runs on seven hits, striking out three.

Recap: March 30–April 2

As a way to keep myself accountable and just because I’m curious, I’ll be showing the results of my recommendations throughout the season.

Civale, Muller, Lugo, and Brito were pretty clear wins while Turnbull, Wacha, and Gonzales big losses. Looking back, it was probably too early to recommend Turnbull before he had even made a regular season start after his injury. Since these recommendations ran a week ago, Civale has cleared the 50% owned mark which is probably warranted. His stuff is pretty good and he was the recipient of some pretty bad luck last year. It was surprising to see seven strong innings from Lugo in his return to the rotation after spending so much of his career in the bullpen. If he continues to provide that kind of bulk with solid ratios, he needs to be owned in a lot more leagues.

Welcome back to the SP Drip. My goal for this bi-weekly column is to comb through the upcoming schedule each week to find a few under-owned pitchers (less than 50% ownership across Ottoneu) who could be used to help you hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues or to make sure you’re hitting your innings pitched cap in points leagues. Tuesday’s article will cover the weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and Friday’s article will cover the upcoming week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday). That way, you’ll have time to start your auctions in time to actually drip these pitchers into your lineup.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to what I hope will become a regular bi-weekly column this season. Streaming starting pitchers is a popular and effective strategy in fantasy baseball but the benefits are largely lost in a dynasty format like Ottoneu. The 48-hour in-season auctions make streaming in this format an exercise in foresight and planning while the deep rosters make finding starting pitching on the waiver wire tougher than in other, shallower formats. But finding ways to fill your innings pitched or games started cap is a real concern for many teams, especially considering the rate of attrition for pitchers in the modern era. In Ottoneu, you can’t really stream, but you can drip.

Read the rest of this entry »

Draft season is almost over and the regular season is just over the horizon. I’m sure there are a few leagues drafting at the last possible moment before Opening Day on Thursday, but I figured we could do a little auction analysis to see which players have gained or lost value during the preseason.

First, I pulled some data on players auctioned since February 1 in all FG points leagues. Then I pulled some data from the Average Salaries page to use as a baseline. Obviously, the average salary listed on that page will include players auctioned during this draft season, so it’s not a perfect comparison, but it’ll do. I’ve also compared the 2023 auction data against the listed “Last 10” value from the Average Salaries page to give a sense of how auction values have changed recently. The tables below will show the top 10 value gainers and losers for both of those measures.

Value up

This list is mostly populated with youngsters who were likely kept at very reasonable values but auctioned closer to their true talent level. For the most part, the average values from this draft season fall pretty close to where I had ranked them earlier this offseason; The outliers are Julio Rodríguez and Bobby Witt Jr. Rodríguez’s helium makes sense after a phenomenal rookie campaign and an offseason where he’s been positioned as the face of the future of baseball. I picked him up in a first-year league for $45 this year, which now seems like a bargain considering where his average value lies.

Witt’s rise in value is a little tougher to parse. He didn’t have as sterling a rookie year as Rodríguez, but the talent is undeniable. I ranked him in the $15-$19 tier but he’s being auctioned closer in value to Marcus Semien, Wander Franco, and Xander Bogaerts. The projections see him improving over his 99 wRC+ he posted in 2022, but not to the level of those other three. His positional versatility probably helps boost his value a tiny bit, but I’m not sure I’d be comfortable paying more than $20 for him right now.

More recently, we’ve seen some spring standouts gain value with WBC MVP and all-world superstar Shohei Ohtani seeing the biggest leap. And with good reason too. With the change in how Ottoneu handles two-way players this season, managers will be able to earn both hitting and pitching points on days where the player is accumulating both. Ohtani was already incredibly valuable in this format and this adjustment will only help managers squeeze every single point out of his two-way eligibility.

Another spring standout who has seen a recent rise in value is Matt Olson. He launched his eighth spring training home run on Monday and looks poised to have a monster season. He struggled a bit during his first year in Atlanta, suffering through a 35 point drop in wOBA fueled by deteriorating plate discipline metrics. If he’s able to get his strikeout and walk rates back in line with where they were during his 2021 breakout while also benefiting from the shift ban, he should be able to blow past his current value.

Kwan is another interesting riser. I wrote about the risks associated with him in my outfield rankings article, but the TL;DR version is that he’s overly reliant on good outcomes on all of his batted balls to truly be an elite points league accumulator. Just look at what happened during his first two months in the league where he posted a .259 BABIP and a 105 wRC+. An $18 salary puts him around guys like Cedric Mullins, Nick Castellanos, and Taylor Ward, all of whom I view as having a higher ceiling due to their potential power output.

Value down

The list of players whose values have fallen is unsurprisingly headlined by a bunch of injured players or players with significant injury risk. The surprise here is Xander Bogaerts. I wrote about why I like him more than the market in my shortstop rankings article and my thoughts haven’t changed. He’s been extremely consistent over the last five years and has a fantastic lineup surrounding him in his new home in San Diego. I get that there’s a bit of concern with both his barrel and hard hit rates falling last year, but I’m betting he’ll be just fine. Bogaerts was auctioned for just $17 in the FanGraphs Staff League and I’m confident that’s going to look like a steal by the end of this season.

Again, the list of recent value losers is populated with guys who have picked up spring injuries. Altuve, Hoskins, Iglesias, Polanco, Díaz, and Severino are all on track to start the season on the Injured List and two of those guys were lost for the season. The drops for Kershaw and Darvish appear to be connected to age-related risk; the former looks healthy and ready for another strong season and the latter was slow to ramp up due to the WBC, but looks poised to join the Padres rotation as the fourth or fifth starter.

I can’t really figure out the drop for Starling Marte. He’s enjoyed a solid spring, with a .344/.361/.563 slash line in 36 plate appearances. Over the last two years, he’s posted a 135 wRC+ with solid peripherals. He did post his highest strikeout rate since 2016 last year and his barrel rate didn’t exactly support his .176 ISO, so I suppose there’s a bit of concern there. Still, his recent average salary feels like a pretty decent bargain on an excellent veteran contributor.

The draft for League 32 – Fantasy Field of Dreams is scheduled for this Sunday and I’m facing a dilemma. If you’ve been following along with this series, I’ve been detailing my journey through rebuilding this team that began last season. In my last entry, I wrote about some general draft strategy for rebuilding clubs, but as I sit just a few days away from actually entering the draft room, I’m having trouble deciding which direction to take my team.

Here’s where my roster currently stands:
Hitters:

Pitchers:

I’m spending $249 on 30 players leaving me $151 to spend on my 10 remaining roster spots. I don’t have the highest total available cash in the draft — five other teams have more to spend — but I do have the highest available cash per roster spot by a pretty wide margin, giving me some nice spending power to fill the holes on my roster.

Before we really dive into the available paths forward, I want to take a step back and talk about my approach to draft prep. I’m a big believer in budgeting per position and creating tiered lists of players to give me a pretty easy path towards ensuring I’m wisely allocating my resources across my roster. I really don’t want to head into a draft without some sort of plan in place and a decent idea of how much money I want to spend on each roster spot I need to fill. Here’s what my ideal budget would look like for the roster spots I need to fill:

If I start out the draft by winning, say, Bryce Harper for $40, based on my budget, I know I’ve got an extra $10 to either allocate to another position or bank for the waiver wire during the regular season. And if I end up splurging on, say, Mike Trout for $60, I know I’m going to have to reallocate some resources from another position to account for the overage.

The way I see it, I need two first basemen, a starting outfielder, a second catcher, a couple of starting pitchers, and a couple of relief pitchers. Those last two roster spots can be pretty flexible and that’s potentially the source of my dilemma. Currently, I’ve got Jorge Polanco and Max Muncy penciled in at second base and third base but the ongoing injury issues of the former give me some pause. For the latter, Muncy’s dual eligibility at second and third give me some options with how to proceed, though he’s probably better deployed at second from a value perspective.

Of course, the available talent pool at second is a lot deeper than it is at third which just adds another compilation. The keystone has players like Mookie Betts, Brandon Lowe, Ozzie Albies, Ketel Marte, Gleyber Torres, and Jonathan India all available while the best third baseman in the pool is either Anthony Rendon or Matt Chapman with very few options after that. Spending a bit on a second baseman and playing Muncy at third is probably the best course of action, all things considered.

At first base, I had a solid plan in place until yesterday when Rhys Hoskins tore his ACL. He was clearly the top available option at the position and the rest of the available players are a pretty significant step-down. Spencer Torkelson seems like the best fit for my roster and where it is in the competitive cycle. Beyond him, the options are down to veterans like C.J. Cron and Wil Myers or utility players like Brandon Drury and J.D. Davis. Luckily, most of the money I thought I was going to be spending on Hoskins can now be spent elsewhere because no other first baseman is going to command the kind of salary he would have if he was healthy.

Because I have a lot of cash to spend per roster spot, I can play around in the top tiers of the available outfielders, picking from Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Betts, George Springer or Masataka Yoshida. But the amount of money I spend on this position will have some pretty significant downstream effects on the kinds of players I can afford later on in the draft. I could go big and grab Trout and spend a lot less on my other roster spots or try and pick up Harper for a discount because of his elbow injury.

On the pitching side of things, there are relatively few top-tier options in the player pool right now; Max Scherzer and Blake Snell are the best available starters and I’m definitely not going to pay top dollar for any relievers at this point in my rebuild. I’m perfectly comfortable picking from the wide range of mid-tier starters that are available and then picking the best $1 relievers with upside I can find at the end of the draft.

I have three paths in front of me depending on how I want to allocate my resources, and I’m asking you, dear reader, to help me decide which way to go.

In this scenario, I’d split the majority of my cash between Betts and Harper while picking up a few solid depth pieces elsewhere. I have a lot of money budgeted for Harper, and while his recovery process has been better than expected, I still expect to get a pretty big discount on him since he’s still projected to miss a large chunk of the season. Targeting him is more about trying to acquire him for a reasonable salary so I can keep him next year, a little further into my rebuild. Betts is clearly the top 2B available, and depending on his salary and position eligibility, could be keepable next year too. He’ll also make a really enticing trade chip this summer if I’m looking to continue building my team for the future.

The problem with this plan is the lack of planned salary room at the end of the draft. I’ve budgeted nearly every available dollar, and while I expect some of those players to come in under budget, I probably won’t have much cap space to play on the waiver wire during the season.

If I’m going to budget that much money for an outfielder, I might as well go all the way and spend on the best option available. Like Betts, Trout could be a keeper next year if his salary is reasonable, but he’s almost certainly going to be used as a trade chip at the trade deadline. India is a solid bounce-back target who is still super young, and with the depth at the position, I could spend a little more on someone like Marte or Torres if I had some extra cash available. I also allocated a few more resources for my starting pitchers in this scenario, but I could save money there too by sticking with my mid-tier plan from the first scenario.

This scenario is all about spreading my resources out as widely as possible across my roster. Rather than targeting one of the top options at any given position, I’m looking to pick up solid contributors at every position. The other benefit of this approach would be a larger amount of cash left over to use during the season. I think if I weren’t rebuilding, this would be the way I’d want to go. It gives me a ton of points across the board, lowering my risk in case one of these players doesn’t work out as expected.

If you want to try and craft another approach with other available players, here’s a list of free agents in the league.

So, which approach should I go with?

I’ll wrap up my 2023 positional rankings with a look at the relief pitching market. You can find links to the rest of my rankings as well as Chad’s below. And a reminder, if you want a big picture view, you can see our ordinal Ottoneu rankings on the FanGraphs Fantasy Rankings Board.

Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP

I really like the format of Chad’s ranking so I’ll try and emulate them a bit here. Here are few more notes about my process:

1. Tiers > Ranks. While these players will all be technically ranked ordinally, the tier they’re placed in really matters. The order within the tiers doesn’t matter as much, though that isn’t to imply that the players within each tier are interchangeable either.
2. Projected points. I’ve been building my own homebrewed projections for the past decade plus, ever since I started playing Ottoneu, and they form the basis for the rankings below. They’re nothing overly complicated; essentially just a MARCEL-esque projection using three years of historical data filtered through a rough aging curve and adjusted for the current run environment. I also include a collection of three public projection systems (ZiPS, Steamer, and PECOTA) to provide some additional context. That gives each player six data sources that form their projection.
3. P/IP is the basis. Points per innings pitched is the gold standard by which you should be evaluating pitchers in Ottoneu but there are plenty of factors that will affect a player’s ranking outside of their raw projection. Injury risk, projected playing time and role, age, and future value are all things that need to be taken into account when evaluating pitchers.
4. Dollar amounts are pre-inflation. The dollar amounts assigned to each tier are pre-inflation but are easily adjusted for your league context.

Rather than give notes on every player like Chad, I’ll give my general thoughts on the position below and discuss a handful of players I like more or less than his rankings. Let’s get into it.

NOTE: For the P/IP projection you see below, I’ve subtracted out points for saves and holds. Those two categories are notoriously fickle and extremely difficult to project. Evaluating relief pitchers based on their raw skills alone has usually worked out for me; teams generally give their highest leverage opportunities to their best bullpen arms, so the saves and holds should flow from those pitchers with the best skills. I’ve also included a column for each pitcher’s projected role based on the Roster Resource Depth Charts. Between those two factors, you should have a pretty solid grasp of how any given reliever should be valued.

Rather than pick a handful of guys to write up like in my previous rankings articles, I’m just going to give some general thoughts about building a bullpen in Ottoneu. There are two competing considerations when building your strategy: relievers are the most volatile part of your roster and they’re the most fungible players in the format. That means even if you invest heavily to build an elite bullpen, a team who spends $10 total on 5 or 6 relievers could outperform your team if they find the right mix of breakouts and sleepers. Be ready to churn through a bunch of relievers throughout the season as pitchers get hurt or lose their effectiveness. That process is so much easier if you’re not invested into a bunch of high priced closers.

While I’m not as extreme as Chad in my devaluation of relief pitchers, I’ve rarely rostered any of the elite closers in my time playing Ottoneu. Generally, I’ll allocate around $25-$30 of my salary cap to fill out my bullpen and that’s usually accomplished by picking a couple of guys from the middle tiers and then a bunch of $1-$3 fliers that I can churn through during the season.

Like I said above, skills really matter because teams will generally use their most skilled relievers in the highest leverage situations. That means Ottoneu Points and 4×4 owners can ignore the closer carousel game that 5×5 players are tied to. A pitcher’s place in the bullpen pecking order matters, but it should be a secondary consideration when you’re looking for potential breakouts on the waiver wire.

With the rankings for position players complete, I’ll turn my attention to the mound, starting with my rankings for starting pitchers.

Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP

I really like the format of Chad’s ranking so I’ll try and emulate them a bit here. Here are few more notes about my process:

1. Tiers > Ranks. While these players will all be technically ranked ordinally, the tier they’re placed in really matters. The order within the tiers doesn’t matter as much, though that isn’t to imply that the players within each tier are interchangeable either.
2. Projected points. I’ve been building my own homebrewed projections for the past decade plus, ever since I started playing Ottoneu, and they form the basis for the rankings below. They’re nothing overly complicated; essentially just a MARCEL-esque projection using three years of historical data filtered through a rough aging curve and adjusted for the current run environment. I also include a collection of three public projection systems (ZiPS, Steamer, and PECOTA) to provide some additional context. That gives each player six data sources that form their projection.
3. P/IP is the basis. Points per innings pitched is the gold standard by which you should be evaluating pitchers in Ottoneu but there are plenty of factors that will affect a player’s ranking outside of their raw projection. Injury risk, projected playing time and role, age, and future value are all things that need to be taken into account when evaluating pitchers.
4. Dollar amounts are pre-inflation. The dollar amounts assigned to each tier are pre-inflation but are easily adjusted for your league context.

Rather than give notes on every player like Chad, I’ll give my general thoughts on the position below and discuss a handful of players I like more or less than his rankings. Let’s get into it.

Pitching is always tricky to evaluate. It seems like there are always breakout pitchers who made a tweak to their arsenal or are suddenly throwing 95 after an offseason trip to Driveline. There are always the established options who can be reliable, but pitchers break down more often than any other position. That means investing a large portion of your salary cap into your pitching staff will always carry some amount of risk.

To be fair, there’s great reward if you choose to pay up for the best pitchers on the market. There’s about 25-30 guys who are projected to cross the 5 P/IP threshold and a handful who might even get up to 6 P/IP. The risk is so much greater in these higher tiers; the best pitcher on the planet has thrown just 156.1 innings over the last two years. They were extremely high quality innings, but it’s an open question whether those few innings were worth the high market price deGrom commanded.

Luckily, if you choose to pass on the best pitchers on the market, there’s a large middle tier that you can build a perfectly productive pitching staff with. There’s probably 40-50 guys in this group that have good projections but won’t break the bank to roster. Some of them even have the upside to push into the higher tiers if things go right in 2023. This is where I like to build the bulk of my staff.

Once you’re past those top 70-80 pitchers, you’re getting into the lower tiers where all sorts of warts and question marks abound. Here, you’re simply searching for potential breakouts and bounce backs. There are a bunch of pitchers in these lower tiers who will give you bulk innings without good ratios. These guys will provide consistent points but their ceilings are usually capped pretty low; they’re good options if you need to mitigate some of the risk you might have taken on with some of your higher priced pitchers.

The other nice thing about playing in these lower tiers is that you can churn through pitchers pretty quickly if they’re not working out. Chasing after the newest breakout or surprising rookie is much easier if you don’t have to jettison a higher priced player to open up a roster spot. There are always guys on the waiver wire who will be useful for your team during the season, the trick is to quickly determine which ones to pursue because they’re actually productive and which ones to pass on because they’re getting lucky or on a hot streak.

Three Guys I Like More than Chad
Cristian Javier – Javier finally received the opportunity to pitch out of the rotation on a full-time basis and he produced a breakout season for the Astros. He struck out nearly a third of the batters he faced in the regular season and was nearly unhittable in the postseason. He excels at generating whiffs with an elite fastball that he regularly locates at the top of the zone. But unlike some pitchers who suffer from a home run problem when they try to elevate their fastballs, Javier manages to avoid barrels too. Just a third of the balls put in play against him were hard hit and just 7.2% of them were barreled up last year. That’s a pretty incredible pair of skills and now he doesn’t have to worry about his role moving forward.

Garrett Whitlock – Like Javier, Whitlock’s usage in 2023 should be much clearer; all signs indicate he’ll spend the entire season in the rotation after getting bounced to the bullpen after suffering a hip injury. I wrote about Whitlock’s potential as a starter last spring but here’s the tl;dr version of it: he possesses three pitches that generate elite results and developed a changeup as a third pitch last year to help him work through lineups multiple times. There is some injury risk here — his hip still isn’t right and he might miss Opening Day as a result — but if he’s healthy and spends the entire season as a starter, he should produce fantastic results for your squad.

Patrick Sandoval – Sandoval’s fastball has been the one thing holding him back from truly ascending to join the game’s elite pitchers. He possesses one of the best changeups in baseball and pairs that with a devastating slider. On July 2, he started throwing his sinker more often and reduced his usage of his four-seamer. His strikeout rate ticked up, his walk rate fell, and his ERA and FIP both improved. You can read more about this shift in pitch mix in my deep dive from last summer.

Three Guys I Don’t Like as Much as Chad
Gerrit Cole – For Cole, everything comes down to his alarming home run rates. He’s still running fantastic strikeout-to-walk ratios and possesses one of the most dominant pitch arsenals in the game. Unfortunately, he’s been increasingly prone to allowing a few too many dingers since joining the Yankees. His HR/FB% over the last three years is 15.8%, the third highest in baseball among qualified starters. It’s a big reason why his xFIP is nearly 40 points lower than his actual FIP during that period and why it was 70 points lower in 2022. Home runs are pitcher killers in Ottoneu and I’m pretty weary of Cole for that reason alone.

Sandy Alcantara – Alcantara turned in a phenomenal season last year to rightfully earn the NL Cy Young award. Unfortunately, a lot of his value in Ottoneu last year came from his league leading 228.2 innings pitched. That kind of workload is nearly unheard of in the modern era and it really helped him outpace his peers in raw points. But when you look at his peripherals, specifically his strikeout rate, he’s clearly a step behind the best pitchers in the league. You can pay for his bulk innings in the hope that he pushes past 200 IP again, but that seems like a risky bet considering how often pitchers breakdown. On a pure rate basis, Alcantara sits behind the pitchers in the highest tier.

Robbie Ray – Ray’s issues mirror Cole’s; he was one of the two pitchers who ran a higher HR/FB% than Cole over the last three seasons. To make matters worse, he dealt with a drop in fastball velocity last year which affected his entire repertoire. The good news was that he maintained the gains in control that allowed him to win the Cy Young in 2021, but his overall performance took a dip after joining the Mariners. Like Cole, it really all comes down to his home run rate and the significant damage it will do to his ability to produce consistently in the format.

We’ll wrap up my position player rankings with a look at the outfield.

Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP

I really like the format of Chad’s ranking so I’ll try and emulate them a bit here. Here are few more notes about my process:

1. Tiers > Ranks. While these players will all be technically ranked ordinally, the tier they’re placed in really matters. The order within the tiers doesn’t matter as much, though that isn’t to imply that the players within each tier are interchangeable either.
2. Projected points. I’ve been building my own homebrewed projections for the past decade plus, ever since I started playing Ottoneu, and they form the basis for the rankings below. They’re nothing overly complicated; essentially just a MARCEL-esque projection using three years of historical data filtered through a rough aging curve and adjusted for the current run environment. I also include a collection of three public projection systems (ZiPS, Steamer, and PECOTA) to provide some additional context. That gives each player six data sources that form their projection.
3. P/G vs P/PA. Points per game played is the gold standard by which you should be evaluating players in Ottoneu. I won’t argue with that. That measure does have some drawbacks, particularly for players who pinch hit, pinch run, or are used as defensive substitutions often. Those limited appearances can skew a player’s P/G lower than what they’re producing when they’re getting full-time playing time. To provide a little more context for these kinds of players, I’ve also included points per plate appearance below. That measure should give us a better idea of how a player produces no matter how he’s used by his team.
4. Dollar amounts are pre-inflation. The dollar amounts assigned to each tier are pre-inflation but are easily adjusted for your league context.

Rather than give notes on every player like Chad, I’ll give my general thoughts on the position below and discuss a handful of players I like more or less than his rankings. Let’s get into it.

NOTE: I’ve included Util-only players in my OF rankings. In general, they’ll be listed at the bottom of whatever tier they’re placed in because of the lack of positional flexibility. In addition, Shohei Ohtani is listed in a tier as if he were only a batter — obviously he provides a ton of value as a pitcher as well and he would be my top ranked player in Ottoneu if I listed his combined value.

In Ottoneu, you’re afforded five starting spots for your outfielders. That creates a situation where the position is simultaneously deep and shallow. The top of the position is filled with superstars but you’ll be able to find solid production all the way down into the middle tiers. There does seem to be a pretty significant drop off once you get 40 deep which means you’ll likely be filling out the last couple of spots in your outfield with flawed players.

Having deep rosters and daily lineups are definitely benefits as you try and find five viable outfielders to start. I’ve found that platoons work especially well at this position. Players like Jesse Winker, Joc Pederson, and Josh Naylor all have much higher value in Ottoneu because you can really squeeze out as much value out of them when they’re facing the platoon advantage. Personally, I like to try and fill at least three of my OF spots with full-time, consistent contributors, and then grab a handful of players I can platoon.

Three Guys I Like More than Chad
Michael Harris II – I understand the trepidation surrounding Harris. He only played in 43 games above High-A before making the leap up to the big leagues, he really struggled against left-handed pitching, and his surface level plate discipline metrics looked pretty poor in his rookie season. Despite those nits to pick, Harris was a genuine revelation last year. His power surpassed anything he was able to do in the minor leagues and his underlying batted ball peripherals support his newfound power profile. A mid-season swing change after being called up helped him unlock that tool. And the approach at the plate? It too improved as the season went on and he became more settled in at the game’s highest level; he cut his chase rate from around 50% in late-June to just over 35% by the end of the season and improved his in-zone contact rate correspondingly. Those adjustments on the fly as a 21-year-old really speak to his talent, coachability, and drive to succeed.

Teoscar Hernández – It feels like a lot of the concerns surrounding Hernández involve his move to Seattle where he’ll play his home games in the pitcher’s paradise that is T-Mobile Park. Just comparing the park factors, his new home isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation for right-handed batters; Rogers Centre has a factor of 106 for right-handed home runs to 102 for T-Mobile Park. The real issue for batters in Seattle is finding hits that don’t fly over the fences. Hernández certainly has the power to overcome whatever ballpark he calls home anyway. His exit velocities and hard hit and barrel rates all sit in the top 5% of baseball and have for the last three seasons. Perhaps you’re looking at his 129 wRC+, a three-year low since his breakout in 2020. Hernández strained an oblique early in the season and missed about a month on the IL, but he didn’t really get right until a few weeks after being activated. From June 1 onwards, he posted a 146 wRC+ with 23 of his 25 home runs. That beat his career-best mark he posted in 2020 and indicates he was just as productive last year once he got healthy.

Hunter Renfroe – At this point in his career, Renfroe’s power should be unquestioned. He’s blasted 153 home runs over the last six seasons and possesses a career isolated power of .247. The reason I’m so high on him is because he’s seemingly figured out the swing-and-miss issues that plagued him earlier in his career. Over the last two seasons, he’s cut his strikeout rate from 28% during his first five seasons to just under 23%. The biggest difference has been a significant improvement to his overall contact rate. He’s also gotten a little more swing happy with that change in approach, which has helped him put more balls in play with his better bat-to-ball skills. With his power, that’s definitely a good thing and it’s a big reason why his wRC+ jumped up to a career-high 124 last year.

Three Guys I Don’t Like as Much as Chad
Randy Arozarena – Arozarena is almost certainly a better 4×4 or 5×5 player than he is an Ottoneu contributor. His power and speed combo is perfectly suited for those formats that reward stolen bases. In the FanGraphs points format, his speed isn’t nearly as valuable a tool and his power actually isn’t all that impressive. For one, more than half of his batted balls were put on the ground last year. Second, when he does elevate, his hard hit and barrel rates are merely average; he outperformed his expected slugging by 63 points in 2022. Third, he’s notoriously streaky, with significant periods of abysmal production throughout a season. If I’m paying more than $20 for an outfielder, I want a little more consistency and a higher ceiling than Arozarena can provide.

Steven Kwan – The argument against Kwan is somewhat similar to Arozarena; he’s a better 4×4 or 5×5 player than he is a points league accumulator. Granted, Kwan (5.28 P/G) just outproduced Arozarena (5.22 P/G) in his rookie season, but leagues that value runs, average, and stolen bases are where Kwan shines. In Ottoneu, Kwan’s contact-heavy approach leaves too much to chance on all those balls he puts in play. That was the story over his first two months in the big leagues where he put up a .259 BABIP and a 105 wRC+. Without any power to speak of, he’s just too reliant on getting hits to fall to produce points consistently when his batted balls are falling into gloves instead.

Oscar Gonzalez – Gonzalez came out of nowhere to post a 122 wRC+ in 91 games last year and was a postseason hero for the Guardians. The power was just a continuation of a breakout season in 2021 where he blasted 31 home runs across two minor league levels. But the plate discipline leaves so much to be desired. His 48.4% chase rate ranked third-highest among all batters with at least 300 plate appearances. It’s a testament to his bat-to-ball ability in two-strike counts that his strikeout rate sat below 20%. But such an aggressive approach means that he’s walking a knife’s edge, and if all those swings start coming up empty, he could find himself cratering.