Archive for Featured

Every baseball and fantasy season brings wonderful surprises and massive disappointments. Among the top hitters in our Fantasy Player Rater are two Nationals (James Wood, CJ Abrams), post-200 ADP breakouts Otto Lopez and Jordan Walker, and Liam Hicks, a catcher added off FAAB and waivers in April. We know that it takes more than just our first-round selection to win our leagues, and we strive to avoid traps and busts, but it’s impossible to know who those are ahead of time. That’s why we play the game. We can break down first-rounders into three groups: those who return first-round value ($25+), those who don’t return it, but don’t sink our squad ($15-$24), and those who outright destroy us. Over the last decade, only 35-45% annually return first-round value or come close to it. Last season was a positive outlier in this regard. Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani were the top producers ($40+). Juan Soto, José Ramírez, Bobby Witt Jr., Fernando Tatis, and Corbin Carroll easily returned first-round value. Elly De La Cruz was on the bubble ($24.8, 16th hitter per the 12-team Player Rater) and technically counts as a hit. Fernando Tatis Jr. had a Round 2 ADP in 12-team leagues and was a borderline first-rounder in 15s. He, too, earned $24 and change. We also had the unique occurrence of the first three pitchers off the board — Tarik Skubal, Paul Skenes, and Garrett Crochet — all ending the season as the top three fantasy pitchers.

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• Daily SP Chart archive
• 2-Start podcast episode
• SP Rankings (last update: 6/5 | next: mid-July)

Welcome to the Daily SP Chart, click here if you’re new to get an idea of what I’m doing with these rankings.

3-x

• Sugar Shane gets a muted Yankees team as they sit 27th vL over the last month and dead-last the last two weeks. He had a bumpy June but got the ball rolling on a strong July with 6 scoreless at KCR last time out.
• I had some interest in most of the guys coming back from over from NPB/KBO this year but in no world did I think Griffin would emerge into an all-formats must start like this. Sparkling ratios, a strong 18% K-BB (Top 30), and a remarkably supportive offense helping him to 9 Ws so far.
• Kirby & Woo swapped days so it’s Kirby today despite him being on yesterday’s board, too.
• King was in a bit of a “prove it” stage for me, falling down my board after a 6.41 ERA and poor skills during a 5-start run. He’s working his way back up with 2 gems in his L3, including back-to-back starts against the Dodgers (1 good, 1 bad). The next step is hopefully an uptick in Ks. He’s down to a career-low 21% K rate and hasn’t fanned more than 5 since May 18th.
• Bennett is in a groove, allowing fewer than 3 R in each of his L4 and going at least 6 IP in the L3. CHW is a volatile offense because of their swing-and-miss so while they are 10th in wOBA on the year, they’re just 27th in the L14 days.
• We (the royal “we”, as in the larger baseball community) need to stop anointing Roki every time he strings together some good starts. Appreciate them, note the improvements when they show up, but don’t forget this is a 24-year old still just 23 starts into his MLB career. HRs remain at the core of his problems with a 2.0 mark, including 3 last time out. I still can’t pass up a Rockie Road (shouts to Nick Pollack! 🫡) outing despite the recent struggles (7.13 ERA/1.50 WHIP in L30).

2-x

• Two mega-Duds (6, 9 ER) level set Martin’s ERA back into the 3.00s, but he responded well both times. Six shutout following the 6 ER Dud and B2B gems after the 9 ER collapse at NYY. A 5 BB outing at CLE his last time out continues a concerning control trend over his L6 with an 11% BB after a 5% in his first 11. BOS is better of late with 5.3 R/G in the last 13, but that isn’t enough to completely fade Martin.
• Kremer has 3 excellent starts on the year and was even sharp in 4 rehab starts returning from injury but I don’t want to overrate a tiny sample and blindly use him against a CHC team that can smoke anyone.
• I might be closer to 1-1.5 x on Cecconi given how hot this MIN offense is right now. They’re behind only the Rockies vR with a .382 wOBA vR in the L30 days. Cecconi did have great 2.66 ERA in 10 starts from May 7-June 27 but just a 12% K-BB with it suggests it was more of a hot run than a skill improvement. He also had a Dud last time out, his 4th of the year, so when he’s off, he’s way off.

0-1 x

• Springs is another heavy home/road split Athletic but he’s not nearly as good as Ginn on the road when I recommended him (Ginn was OK but left after 4 IP, 61 pitches w/illness) so this is a tentative play, especially with DET playing a lot better ball of late.
• Arrighetti is such a classic risk-reward with his volatile skills yielding a wiiide range of outcomes and we’ve seen a microcosm of that in his last 2: 3 IP/8 ER and 6 IP/1 ER. Feeling lucky?
• I rave about Feltner 2-3x a month and how much I wish he was on any other team but COL. He’s riding 3 straight QS, only one on the road. In fact, he’s the rare Rockies pitcher who has been a good bit worse on the road: 4.14/1.11 at home | 4.58/1.47 on road. Obviously, it’s never fun to face LAD but he’s catching them at about the best time you can as they’re just 16th in wOBA over the last 2 weeks.
• Downshifted Jones to 0-x after being 2 on the initial post. He’s reach 5 IP in just 1 start, I just don’t see the upside starting him right now. If he was at least going 5 IP regularly, we could chase a Win since PIT is good, but he’s not so we can’t.

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Hot Right Now (HRN) is a weekly Ottoneu feature focused on popular players currently being auctioned or players who you should think about auctioning in your Ottoneu leagues. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, we’ll be highlighting players you should be looking at in deeper and keeper formats. In this feature, we will break down players into two sections:

1. Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
2. Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP over the last 14 days who are also rostered in 80% of leagues or less.

The RotoGraphs Ottoneu team plans to run this feature weekly, updating fantasy managers on the biggest movers in Ottoneu leagues with an analysis of how these players could or could not help your roster.

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Last week, a trade was accepted in my home league. It nearly split the league in two. 

Jack’s Cool League, the JCL as it’s lovingly known amongst friends, is a home league that is going on 14 years of competition amongst 10 teams, conducted in the endlessly entertaining and frustrating head-to-head categories format. 

As you may have guessed by the name, I’ve been commissioner of the league since its inception. Various rule changes have reshaped strategy over the years. 

We added quality starts. Then OPS. We expanded the default Yahoo lineups to add additional IL slots and NA slots. We increased the active roster size to 25, and then to 26, to keep pace with our colleagues in the majors. We instituted a minimum weekly innings threshold. And moved up the playoffs to end the season before major league teams start resting their stars. And this year, we rebalanced the number of utility and bench slots to try and make streaming starting pitchers more of a calculation. 

The only other change has been moving from the Commissioner having discretion to veto egregious trades to having each team having a chance to cast a vote to veto within a two-day trade review period. 

It is extremely rare for a trade to be vetoed in our league, as I believe it should be, but it has happened. Teams will use their voting power and rally other managers to vote if they feel one team is benefitting so much that it dramatically shifts the balance of the league.  Read the rest of this entry »

• Daily SP Chart archive
• 2-Start podcast episode
• SP Rankings (last update: 6/5 | next: mid-July)

Welcome to the Daily SP Chart, click here if you’re new to get an idea of what I’m doing with these rankings.

• I still don’t think Skenes’s struggles are actionable as his last start was the first truly awful one since Opening Day.
• Tolle/Seymour are getting a muted version of their opponent’s offense today with CHW sitting 22nd in wOBA the L14 days and NYY down to 27th in the same timeframe.
• Lugo’s old team is the perfect chance for him to get back on track after a 5.31 ERA/1.48 WHIP in the L30 days.
• Abbott-Cantillo-Boyd all get great matchups which could make them usable in 10s depending on your options. I still don’t really trust Abbott but PHI’s offense remains stagnant despite their overall success.
• Warren/Soriano were amazing to start the season but have both hit the skids as they hit the road today. Both have 5.00+ ERAs and near-1.70 WHIPs over the L30 and yet I’m down to start either in a lot of spots. They were never quite as good as their heights from April/May, but they’re also not this bad, either.
• Ginn should probably be closer to the top of the 2-x’s given his excellent road record: 2.31 ERA/.88 WHIP in 47 road IP. DET has been hitting better of late (14th wOBA L14) but not enough to run from this, especially since we only really get to start Ginn on the road.

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I last reviewed starting pitcher Stuff+ gainers and decliners about a month ago, so it’s time to take another gander at each group.

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Every Monday, this column will break down the most popular waiver wire and free agent acquisitions of the weekend. I dig into the top adds on the ever-popular Fantrax and in the NFBC Online Championship (OC), a national mid-stakes contest with 240 total leagues of 12 and a six-figure grand prize. Reviewing player adds between the two should provide us with a well-rounded perspective and barometer of the fantasy baseball marketplace.

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Every off-season, we hear about pitchers tinkering with their pitch mix, whether that’s simply trying a new grip shown by a teammate, reimplementing old pitches, or reshaping their arsenal. It is always interesting to track new pitching trends to see what sticks in a given season. So I wanted to look at a few pitchers who have made meaningful changes to their arsenal so far in 2026, and how it has impacted their value moving forward.

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While writing my recent articles about how to use projections to find undervalued players based on market ADPs, I was struck by a follow-up question: when ranking players, which is better – ADP, or projections?

As we strive to value players more objectively, probing this question is valuable. It will help calibrate how much weight to assign consensus rankings versus your favorite projection systems. If we’re lucky, it might point us to some things that the market or the robots identify particularly well relative to the other. When we can marry the strengths of objective, data-driven processes with the advantages of human behavior and judgment, we are better off for it.

And this is a meaty question; theoretically each method has its strengths. Average draft position is a ranking derived from the wisdom of thousands of fantasy owners. It should be valuable in this respect. But we fantasy owners are subject to our own pernicious little human biases when it comes to player evaluation. Are we better off just letting the robots do the work for us?

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In one or several of my previous posts, I realized that a couple of starting pitchers that hit the Injured List had also recently suffered a decline in Location+. I haven’t seen a study that investigated whether a recent decline in the metric actually results in a higher chance of the pitcher landing on the IL and I’m not sure how such a study would be designed to begin with. So I don’t want to inspire panic among the owners of the 16 names on this list, but I figure it’s worth sharing as something to monitor, as it does feel like a sharp drop should be cause for concern.

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