Credit: Junfu Han-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Over the course of the season, I wrote 17 Ottoneu Hot or Cold Right Now articles. These articles, which Lucas Kelly and I tried to get out weekly, cover players who are being added, being dropped, being auctioned or just performing particularly well or particularly poorly. The goal is to analyze why the player is Hot or Cold at the moment and offer advice on what you should do. I have been writing these for a number of years now, but have never written a recap. That changes today.
Just like it’s important to learn from our mistakes, reviewing bold predictions serves a similar purpose. By their very nature, I shouldn’t be getting many of these predictions right, but it’s a good practice to go back and figure out if there are any lessons to be gleaned from my hubris. And it’s fun to gloat about the ones I got right!
1. Cristopher Sánchez is a top-10 SP (by P/IP among pitchers w/ 100+ IP) ✅ 2025 P/IP: 5.82 (6th overall)
Let’s start things off with a bang! Sánchez followed up his breakout season in 2024 with an even better season a year later. The velocity jump that he showed off during spring training stuck around all season long, though the cutter that he was tinkering with never showed up in the regular season. Evidently he didn’t need that fourth pitch; his changeup and slider were more than good enough on their own. It was those two pitches that convinced me that he could take a big step forward when making this prediction at the start of the season; they were both elite offerings in ‘24 and indicated to me that he had some untapped potential to take a step forward. Sánchez has the perfect profile for Ottoneu: an elite groundball rate and corresponding low home run totals and he just added a ton of strikeouts this year.
Based on the same process that led me to pick Sánchez in 2026, here’s a small spoiler for my 2026 bold predictions: Ryne Nelson’s four-seam fastball was the second most valuable pitch in baseball by total run value and Janson Junk’s sweeper was the seventh most valuable pitch in baseball by RV/100.
2. Reese Olson is a top-25 SP (by P/IP among pitchers w/ 100+ IP) ❌ 2025 P/IP: 4.89 (N/A)
The same process that led me to pick Sánchez above also led me to pick Olson here. Unfortunately, his injury history was a factor I opted to ignore which wound up sinking this prediction. After suffering a shoulder injury in 2024 that led to a two-month stint on the IL, that same issue popped up again this year in late July. He also dealt with a finger injury that cost him a month and a half of the season. Between those two injuries, he only pitched 68.2 innings in ‘25, though they were high quality innings. His changeup and slider — the two pitches that give him such a high ceiling — were just as good this year and give me some hope that he could see a breakout if he could ever stay healthy for a full season.
For what it’s worth, his P/IP would have ranked 26th among starting pitchers with at least 100 IP if he had hit that threshold. The process for making this prediction was solid, but his shoulder just didn’t allow it to hit.
3. Eduardo Rodriguez is a top-50 SP (by P/IP among pitchers w/ 100+ IP) ❌ 2025 P/IP: 3.08 (108th overall)
This prediction was banking on a healthy season from Rodriguez. Well, he only had a short three-week stint on the IL with a minor shoulder injury and ended up throwing 154.1 innings this year. Unfortunately, they were extremely poor quality innings. The interplay between his fastball and changeup has deteriorated to the point where both pitches returned negative run value in 2025. At this point in his career, he’s simply too hittable even though his strikeout-to-walk ratio looked okay. He had some good stretches during the season, but the profile is far too volatile to rely on.
4. Max Meyer scores the most total points among Marlins starting pitchers ❌ 2025 Total Points: 210 (7th on Marlins)
Meyer had an exciting spring training after debuting a sinker and sweeper to bring his pitch mix up to five. He actually started the season off with five solid starts and his ERA and FIP were hovering around three through the end of April. May was rough and then he hit the IL with a hip impingement in June and was lost for the season. The two new pitches he introduced to his repertoire weren’t the huge difference-makers that he needed them to be, though his peripherals weren’t terrible across his 12 starts in 2025.
As if Meyer’s struggles and injuries weren’t enough, the Marlins ended up holding onto Sandy Alcantara for the whole season, and no surprise, he wound up leading the team in total points.
5. David Festa scores the second most total points among Twins starting pitchers ❌ 2025 Total Points: 180 (7th on Twins)
The process behind this prediction was sound. I saw a bunch of risk in Minnesota’s starting rotation and figured that Festa would be the beneficiary of some of that risk. Joe Ryan was brilliant and easily led the team in total points, but Pablo López lost three months to a forearm injury, Bailey Ober took a huge step backwards, and Chris Paddack and Simeon Woods Richardson were both as mediocre as ever. Where I got things wrong was thinking that Festa could emerge from this mess as a key contributor. His peripherals were solid during his debut season in 2024, but injuries derailed any progress he hoped to make this year. He was diagnosed with a mild form of thoracic outlet syndrome in September and his future as a productive major leaguer is very much up in the air.
6. Brent Rooker is a top-3 OF (by P/G among batters w/ 300+ PA) ❌ 2025 P/G: 5.7 (16th among OF)
Rooker earned OF eligibility by mid-May but instead of repeating his huge breakout from 2024, he merely settled in as a very good hitter with a .349 wOBA this year. That was good enough to return $38.7 in value according to the Auction Calculator, but nowhere good enough to appear in the top 3 OF in Ottoneu, let alone the top 10.
The process was decent here. Rooker crushed the ball at home in Sacramento’s minor league ballpark (.372 wOBA at home), but he took a significant step back on the road (.326 wOBA on the road). The good news is that his plate discipline numbers were better than ever and his batted ball peripherals didn’t take a nose dive.
7. Anthony Volpe is a top-12 SS (by P/G among batters w/ 300+ PA) ❌ 2025 P/G: 3.6 (34th among SS)
I believed a significant jump in bat speed during spring training would help Volpe breakout in his third big league season. The bat speed improvements stuck in the regular season, resulting in career bests in average exit velocity, maxEV, Barrel%, ISO, and SLG. Unfortunately, his BABIP fell back to where it was during his rookie campaign and his plate discipline didn’t improve. His overall wOBA actually fell a point from where it was in 2024, and to make matters worse, his defense absolutely cratered as well.
8. Maikel Garcia is a top-15 2B (by P/G among batters w/ 300+ PA) ✅ 2025 P/G: 5.4 (4th among 2B)
A breakout! Garcia significantly improved his plate discipline last year and his batted ball peripherals painted a much better picture than the .270 wOBA he posted in 2024. I predicted that he’d see a rebound with his batted ball luck to push his wOBA back up to around .300. I didn’t expect him to significantly improve his plate discipline again and start hitting for power by getting the ball off the ground more often. The result was a .347 wOBA, easily the best of his career, and a massive breakout season. What makes Garcia even more valuable is his position flexibility: he’s eligible at four different positions and everything about his improvements this year look sustainable into the future.
9. Miguel Vargas scores the most total points among White Sox hitters ✅ 2025 Total Points: 609 (1st on White Sox)
All Vargas needed was an opportunity for full-time at-bats. The White Sox obliged and he delivered a solid, if up-and-down, season in 2025. He had a huge slump during the three weeks before the All-Star break, and two minor IL stints derailed the second half of his season, but he wound up with a .314 wOBA at the end of it all. That was good enough to eke out Lenyn Sosa for the team lead in total points. His excellent plate discipline metrics and solid batted ball peripherals give him a bit of room to grow as he continues to develop in the big leagues.
10. Neither Roman Anthony (❌) or Kristian Campbell (✅) will be starting-caliber options at their respective positions in 2025 Anthony 2025 P/G: 6.1 (10th among OF) Campbell 2025 P/G: 3.6 (37th among 2B)
I’m giving myself half credit for this one. Campbell made the Red Sox’s Opening Day roster but really struggled in his first taste of the big leagues and found himself optioned back to Triple-A by mid-June. His huge minor league breakout in 2024 was impressive, but it came in just his second professional season. The jump from the high minors to the big leagues is extremely difficult; Campbell had just 85 plate appearances in Triple-A and 255 in Double-A before making his major league debut. The talent is undeniably there, but I think Boston rushed him to the big leagues.
As for Anthony, his talent and track record were a little more well established, but I didn’t think he’d find enough playing time to make an impact in the big leagues in 2025. The Rafael Devers trade opened up an opportunity for Anthony and he ran with it. He only accumulated 303 plate appearances in the big leagues but he absolutely made the most of them.
Over the last couple of weeks, I wrote about 1st and 2nd half splits, looking at one big gainer (Mike Burrows) and one big faller (Kodai Senga). Today, I turn my attention to the plate, with a first look at a hitter who fell off.
I hate reviewing these bold predictions because, by their very nature, bold predictions are often wrong and so it is kind of depressing to go back and see just how wrong I was. I said as much when I wrote my bold predictions in March, and noted that my hope was they would be useful, even if wrong:
Last week, I wrote about Mike Burrows, as he was the single largest gainer in Ottoneu FanGraphs points per IP between the first and second halves of the season, among pitchers with at least 30 IP as a starter in both halves. Today, I wanted to look at that same list and cover the pitcher who was the single largest faller among that same population. Except, I am not going to.
Happy Arbitration Day, to those who celebrate! Today is the day Ottoneu Arbitration opens, both for vote off leagues and allocation leagues. If you are new to Ottoneu and not familiar with arbitration, there is a ton of information here – a quick Google search for “FanGraphs Ottoneu Arbitration” will bring up a decent number of results, but – before we get to the All Stars mentioned in the title – here are some of the best links.
Ottoneu points leagues aren’t the same as 4×4 or 5×5. But there’s a subtle difference between H2H and season-long points leagues, as well. In season-long leagues, you have limits on games played for each position and innings pitched by your pitchers. That has relatively limited impact on bats, but it could theoretically impact the value of pitchers pretty significantly.
First half/second half splits can be misleading. Inevitably, we will find ourselves in March, watching the hype increase on multiple players who were brilliant from mid-July to the end of the season, while wondering, “Was this real improvement? Just a hot streak? Should I fade the hype or buy in before the price gets even higher?” And some of those players will crash and burn and be cuts by May. And some will be legit breakouts. It’s risky to get too excited about short-term performance, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something by identifying players whose second half was a big departure from their first.
Following in Chad Young’s (and my daughter’s) footsteps, it’s time to look back on some of the mistakes that I made managing my fantasy baseball teams this year. It’s not easy to look back on some tough decisions, especially ones that had a big impact on the standings, but it’s an important part of growing and learning as a fantasy baseball player. I’m sure there are plenty of other mistakes I made along the way this year, but here are five that will haunt me until next season.
9th Place
On June 9, my team in League 13 was in ninth place in the head-to-head standings but fifth place in overall points. There had been a number of unlucky weeks that had sunk my head-to-head record, but I was confident my team would be better over the course of the summer. That week, I spun up a trade with Chad Young and Niv Shah’s team: I got Francisco Lindor and Alec Bohm and gave up Kyle Stowers, Bubba Chandler, Ronny Mauricio, and Connor Norby.
It was a good trade. Lindor directly addressed a need I had at shortstop — Carlos Correa had been my shortstop to start the season but he had largely disappointed up to that point in the season — and Bohm was a solid bat that I could plug in at either corner infield spot. I’ll probably regret giving up Stowers and Chandler, but neither Mauricio or Norby look like they’ll be making an impact in the big leagues anytime soon.
After making the trade, I sort of sat back and waited to see if my team would start rising up the standings. At the All-Star break, I was up to sixth place in the head-to-head standings and still fifth place in overall points. A couple of weeks later when the calendar flipped to August, I had fallen one place in the head-to-head standings, but I continued to sit on my laurels. I wasn’t really looking to make a move and I continued to believe that my team would eventually start playing up to its place in the overall points. A few weeks later, I had fallen another spot in the head-to-head standings and by that time, it was too late to fix anything. I made a trio of sell-off trades at the August 31 trade deadline, feeling pretty disappointed I wouldn’t get a shot to make some noise in the league playoffs.
Mistake: I made a buy-now move early in the season and then didn’t follow up with more additions.
Lesson: I think my position in the head-to-head standings was too dire back in early June despite the rosy outlook my overall points indicated. I tried to straddle the fence between going for it and not giving up too much of my team’s future value. The result was exactly what you could have guessed: a mediocre team not good enough to make a run down the stretch.
0.75 P/G-P/IP Differential
In League 32, I had the best team offense by a pretty wide margin; my team had put up 5.80 P/G through the first two months of the season but my pitching was at just 5.05 P/IP (9th in the league). I knew I needed a few key upgrades to my pitching staff to really challenge for the league championship and I figured I could deal from my deep pool of talented hitters to address that need. On June 2, I swung a trade to try and address that need: I got Willson Contreras, Bailey Ober, and Michael Conforto for Jarren Duran.
At that point in the season, Duran had put up 5.25 P/G, a pretty significant step back from his breakout last year. Ober was mired in a pretty rough start to the season, but I believed in his talent, and Contreras was a pretty big upgrade for me at catcher. It wasn’t a disaster, but the trade definitely didn’t accomplish my goal.
Performance Before and After Trade
Player
Before Trade
After Trade
Jarren Duran
5.25 P/G
5.61 P/G
Willson Contreras
4.30 P/G
5.90 P/G
Bailey Ober
3.91 P/IP
2.24 P/IP
Granted, Contreras did outperform Duran over the remainder of the season, and he was a pretty big upgrade for me at catcher, but Ober was a disaster and he was off my roster just a month later. I actually wound up including Ober in a trade for Christian Yelich to fill the hole in my outfield made by the departure of Duran. I finally made a trade for Max Fried in mid-August, but that was too late to really help my pitching staff. I wound up in second place in the league.
Mistake: Prioritized need over talent.
Lesson: I went into that Duran trade looking to address a few specific needs. My team was doing fine but I knew it was a pretty unbalanced roster. I rushed into the trade without looking for a better offer or another target because it checked two boxes, a pitcher and a catcher. When dealing from a position of strength, you don’t need to take the first reasonable offer you see. Take the time to really figure out if it’s the right move for your team.
15 points
In League 1588, I was chasing down the third place team for pretty much the entire summer. First and second had already been decided by August, but third — and a money finish — was just within reach. My team had been lagging behind the IP pace for pretty much the entire season. I started off the season with eight pitchers on the IL and I just couldn’t keep up the pace through the summer.
Entering the final week of the season, I identified 12 pitchers who had good matchups for the final weekend that might make good waiver wire pickups. My team was really tight up against the salary cap, but two or three of those pitchers would have been extremely helpful as I approached the end of the season. I wound up picking up just one of those pitchers for the final weekend — AJ Blubaugh — and then didn’t even start him on Saturday because I wanted to try and hit the soft IP cap on Sunday when I had three pitchers lined up to start. One of those three starters was scratched from his Sunday start which meant I wound up with 1499.2 IP and fell just 15 points shy of third place.
Mistake: I didn’t plan out how and when I would cross the soft IP cap properly.
Lesson: The 48-hour auctions in Ottoneu make streaming starters particularly tricky, especially when you’re counting on those waiver wire pickups to start on certain days. I should have tried to add a handful of pitchers for that final weekend, knowing that I could sit some if needed. Having all the options on my roster would have been much more preferable to the despair I felt when Gavin Williams’s start on the final Sunday of the season was scratched to keep him fresh for the playoffs.
$61 for two SPs
Let’s go back to League 13. I entered the draft with a pretty hefty amount of money to spend and I was looking for three frontline starting pitchers to round out my roster. Within the first five auctions of the draft, I had spent $61 on Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($30) and Roki Sasaki ($31). That was a little more than half of my budget on two players who I assumed would lead my pitching staff in 2025. Yamamoto turned out to be a fantastic value — the Auction Calculator says he returned $39.5 in production this year — but Sasaki was a pretty big disappointment.
Our auction was held in early February, before pitchers and catchers had reported. The hype surrounding Sasaki was pretty high still, even though there were some warning signs from his up-and-down season in Japan in 2024. I wound up ignoring my own advice that I wrote in my pre-season SP rankings: “I get the hype [surrounding Sasaki], but there are enough concerns about his fastball shape, his injury history, and the transition from Japan to the US that I’m pumping the brakes just a little bit.” I had ranked Sasaki in my fourth tier, valued around $15-$20, but paid for him in this league like he was a second tier pitcher.
Mistake: I bought into the Roki Sasaki hype leading me to overpay for him at auction.
Lesson: It would be easy to say “don’t buy into the hype” but it’s hard to stay completely rational in the middle of an auction when bids are flying left and right. Maybe the bigger lesson is to stick with the research and preparation you’ve done ahead of the draft. If I had stuck with the rankings I had put together, I probably would have passed on Suzuki and could have bid on a $11 Kevin Gausman much later in the draft. Even a $20 Zac Gallen or a $20 Luis Castillo would have been better values than Sasaki. Hindsight is 20/20 on those alternatives, but I needed to listen to reason when Sasaki’s salary jumped 50% over where I had him ranked.
43 HRs
This one is a bit of a bonus mistake since it happened in a 7×7 homebrew league, not an Ottoneu league. On May 27, I was in second place in the league and I received an unsolicited trade offer in the inbox: Cal Raleigh for Cole Ragans. I already had Willson Contreras as my catcher and was pretty pleased with him despite his slow start to the season. At that point, Raleigh had clubbed 17 home runs with a 166 wRC+. On the other hand, Ragans had just been placed on the IL with a minor groin strain and his ERA was more than two and half runs higher than his FIP. I considered the offer, but wound up rejecting it, thinking that Ragans’s luck would eventually turn once he returned from his injury.
In the end, Raleigh wound up blasting 43 home runs over the remainder of the season while Ragans would be sidelined for three and half months with a serious shoulder injury. I regret everything.
Mistake: I’m not sure there’s a specific mistake here beyond simply regretting not recognizing the historic season Raleigh was putting together.
Lesson: I’m also not sure there’s any specific lesson here either. Hindsight obviously makes this trade offer look pretty lopsided, but at the time, Raleigh was sixth in baseball with a 166 wRC+ and I thought he might be a bit out over his skis with that offensive line. Ragans was on the IL, but his peripherals looked so good that I figured everything would be fine once he was healthy. I couldn’t have predicted that shoulder injury that he suffered in his first start after being activated off the IL in early June.
Chatting with Jake Mailhot about our plans for the off-season, he mentioned something his kid talked about: learning from her mistakes. First of all, that’s some A-plus parenting, Jake. But then Jake took it a step further and suggested that if his daughter could learn from her mistakes, so could we. So here are five numbers that represent mistakes I made this year and the lessons I learned.
