After getting started with middle infield last week, this week we move on to outfield. Why start with those two spots? Because they are huge lists and I want to get them done. Rock solid logic, there. Outfield is also an interesting position over the years, as it has varied between feeling deep and feeling shallow. This year, between the emergence of guys like Kyle Stowers, Tyler Soderstrom, Roman Anthony, and James Wood and the re-emergence of guys like George Springer and Cody Bellinger, it feels like it is trending back towards “deep” and that makes it a fun position to think about for auctions.
My 4×4 tiered rankings for middle infield came out yesterday, and as promised in my intro article back in December, I am going to follow up each positional ranking with two things: my rankings for FanGraphs Points leagues and notes on how rankings would differ for other formats.
Chad started off the Ottoneu rankings push with his 4×4 middle infield rankings yesterday and I’m following up with my rankings for Ottoneu points leagues. You can find all the information about the format and methodology for these rankings in Chad’s introduction.
Here are few more notes about my process:
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 up to five public projection systems (ZiPS, Steamer, OOPSY, THE BAT, and PECOTA) to provide some additional context. That gives each player a wealth of data sources to form their projection. Currently, the projections below only include Steamer and THE BAT projections. I will update the rankings in February once ZiPS, OOPSY, and PECOTA are released.
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 three or four plate appearances when they start a game. To provide a little more context for these kinds of players, I’m projecting players using points per plate appearance. That measure should give us a better idea of how a player produces no matter how he’s used by his team.
Just to reiterate a point that Chad makes in his introduction: yes, these rankings are presented ordinally, but the tier a player appears in is much more important than if they’re ranked 16th or 28th. Within tiers, players are generally ranked by their projected Pts/PA but that doesn’t necessarily mean I think one player is significantly more valuable than another in the same tier. I’ve got notes on the top 50-ish players below and I’ll add more notes when I update the rankings next month. Let’s get into it.
Still only 26, he’s improved significantly over the last few years. Added a bit of power in 2024, needs to put it all together to really take step forward.
As we move into the final weeks before the keeper deadline, it’s time to get our Ottoneu rankings out. Over the next three plus weeks, you’ll get regular rankings articles from me and from Jake Mailhot, as discussed in my rankings preview in December. I will post my 4×4 tiered rankings position-by-position, and follow up that day or the next with rankings for FanGraphs Points league. On the 4×4 articles, I’ll give some overall thoughts on the position, while in the FanGraphs Points articles, I’ll offer thoughts on how the position looks different for 5×5 and Head-to-Head leagues. Jake’s FanGraphs points rankings will come out the day after my 4×4 rankings. We’re starting with middle infield.
The Ottoneu keeper deadline is quickly approaching. There’s less than a month left to make your roster decisions before the January 31 cut deadline. I’m going through a handful of difficult keep or cut decisions at every position group to give you a transparent look at my decision making process and hopefully help you with theses specific cases for these specific players. I’ve already covered hitters in three separate articles — corner infielders, middle infielders, and outfielders — now I’m wrapping everything by covering three starting pitchers.
I’m not sure the Mets know what to do with Kodai Senga so I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t know what to do with him on your fantasy squad. Injuries cost him nearly all of 2024 and a hamstring injury in June derailed his season a year later. Before that injury, he had put up a 1.47 ERA and a 3.24 FIP in 13 starts. During the rehab from his injury, his mechanics were thrown out of whack, and after he returned to the majors, he produced a 5.90 ERA and 5.76 FIP across nine starts. Ultimately, he was demoted to Triple-A in September to work on those mechanical inconsistencies.
Even if Senga is completely healthy in 2026, there were enough yellow flags in his first-half performance that a rebound back to the level of his excellent 2023 debut isn’t necessarily guaranteed. During those first 13 starts of the season, his strikeout-minus-walk rate was 13.3%, just a hair below league average and well short of the 18.0% K-BB% he posted during his first season in the US. Most of that was driven by a significant drop in strikeout rate.
You could point to his signature pitch, the ghost fork, as the reason why he wasn’t seeing as many swings and misses in 2025. And while that pitch was a little less effective last year, it was his cutter that saw the most dramatic drop in effectiveness. In 2023, his cutter was the fourth most valuable pitch in baseball by Run Value with a 2.9 RV/100, far outpacing his forkball (1.0 RV/100). In 2025, his cutter was exactly neutral with a 0.0 RV/100. Unlike his diving forkball, Senga’s cutter was a contact suppression machine during its peak, but batters made much higher quality contact against that pitch last year. That combination — a forkball that wasn’t getting as many swings and misses and a cutter that wasn’t generating as much weak contact — has me worried that Senga’s ceiling is far lower than we might think.
The projections are picking up on those concerns and see Senga taking a pretty significant step back in 2026. Health concerns aside, there are enough flags in his pitch arsenal that present enough risk to steer clear. And when you add his mechanical issues and injury history back into the picture, it’s a pretty easy call to avoid paying too high a price for Senga in 2026.
Keep or cut?
I’m cutting Senga in both of my leagues where I’m rostering him and I doubt I’ll be looking to redraft him in the spring.
Through his first 11 starts of the year, Gavin Williams put up a rough 4.27 ERA and 4.65 FIP. It wasn’t terrible, but it was a concerning start to the season after an up-and-down year in 2024. From the beginning of June through the end of the season, his ERA fell by nearly two full runs down to 2.50 but his FIP only dropped to 4.27. His strikeout-to-walk ratio improved slightly during those final four months of the season but the biggest reason his ERA improved was thanks to a .221 BABIP and a 87.5% strand rate. Most of his underlying peripherals pointed to the same pitcher on the mound, but a ton of good batted ball luck helped him flip his season.
For Ottoneu players, an improved ERA shouldn’t necessarily help Williams’s fantasy production and a FIP above four is usually a bad sign. But here’s where understanding the ins and outs of your given format becomes extremely important.
Gavin Williams, Ottoneu Points Performance
Time Period
FIP
BABIP
FGpts/IP
SABRpts/IP
Prior to June
4.65
0.323
3.43
3.47
June Onward
4.27
0.221
4.57
3.86
In Ottoneu leagues using the FanGraphs points system — which critically takes hits allowed into account — Williams dramatically improved his production during the later half of the season. In leagues using the SABR points system — using only the inputs for FIP — Williams’s season was frustrating from start to finish.
As for Williams’s pitch arsenal, he was able to develop a very effective sweeper last year that returned a 44.0% whiff rate. That’s an excellent pitch to add to his repertoire, though his lack of command holds him back from really raising his ceiling. That’s sort of the big issue with his profile. He has a good, hard fastball, two excellent breaking balls, but he needed some incredible batted ball luck to turn into an effective pitcher for fantasy. His command was still an issue throughout the season, leading to some pretty inconsistent outings. Still, his Location+ improved from 91 during the first two months to 96 through the end of the year. That’s something to build off of, but until he’s able to make some significant improvements in that area, I fear his excellent stuff will be held back from reaching its maximum potential.
Keep or cut?
Thankfully, all three leagues where I’m rostering Williams use FanGraphs points, so I was able to partially enjoy his second half improvements in 2025. I’m probably keeping him at $8 and $9 but I think I’ll be cutting him at $11. His inconsistencies and command issues make him a risk to roster at a double-digit salary.
Coming off what seemed to be a mini-breakout during his short 10 start stint with the Astros during the second half of 2024, Yusei Kikuchi latched on with the Angels last year. Even though he was leaving the pitching development powerhouse in Houston, I expected the changes he implemented while he was there to stick in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, they didn’t. Some mechanical issues led to a drop in velocity and a lower arm slot affected the shapes of all his pitches. He spent most of the season working out the kinks in his delivery, slowly raising his arm slot and regaining some of his velocity.
I think the thing that worries me the most is the effectiveness of Kikuchi’s fastball. He’s one of the hardest throwing left-handers in baseball, but he’s entering his age-35 season in 2026. His velocity dropped early last year, and even though he regained it in the middle of the season, it dropped again in August and September and his results tanked along with it.
Last year, he generated the lowest whiff rate on his fastball since his debut season in 2019. Both his slider and changeup were a little less effective at getting swings and misses too. It all added up to a 5.5 point drop in strikeout rate and a much higher walk rate that was more in line with what he was posting during his time in Seattle.
Kikuchi has never been a model of consistency during his career. He’ll have dominant stretches from time to time, but his command issues have often held him back from reaching his ceiling. It looked like he had turned a corner in Toronto and Houston in 2023 and ‘24, but he came crashing back down last year thanks to his mechanical troubles. Steamer projects a small bounce back but he’s getting to the point in his career where the velocity of his fastball is sitting on a knife’s edge; dip just a little and the whole repertoire comes crashing down.
Keep or cut?
$5 is probably the highest I’d want to roster Kikuchi for heading into next season. There’s always the possibility he’ll figure out his mechanics over the offseason and post another strong season like he did in 2024, but there are too many flags to risk anything higher than that. I’ll probably keep him at $5, but he’s a quick cut if his fastball isn’t looking good in the spring.
We wrap up this series today with a look at tough keep or cut calls on pitchers. This is the group I like the least. Pitching is an area where I least trust the projections and so I have the hardest time figuring out how to value these guys. As a result, I tend to prefer obvious values and I am often willing to pay a premium in trade for a guy pitcher I have no questions about. Of course, they are pitchers, so there are always questions – volatility in performance, injury risk, etc. But, I still have to make decisions, so here are some of my tough ones.
The Ottoneu keeper deadline is quickly approaching. There’s less than a month left to make your roster decisions before the January 31 cut deadline. I’m going through a handful of difficult keep or cut decisions at every position group to give you a transparent look at my decision making process and hopefully help you with theses specific cases for these specific players. I started with the corner infielders and middle infielders before the holidays and will wrap up with pitchers later this week.
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Teoscar Hernández, OF
Salary: $18, $19, $20
Average Salary: $21
2025 P/G: 4.55
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.04
A big bounce back season during his first year in Los Angeles had me hopeful that Teoscar Hernández’s down year in Seattle in 2023 was a one year blip. A year later, it kind of seems like the bounce back was the blip after Hernández posted a 102 wRC+ in ‘25, slightly worse than the 107 he posted with the Mariners a few years ago. Entering his age-33 season this year, which Hernández should we expect to see in 2026?
Let’s get the good news out of the way first: Hernández’s contact quality looked pretty good despite the underwhelming results. His hard hit rate was still well above average, and even though his barrel rate fell by more than three points, it was still barely outside the top quartile among qualified batters. That drop in barrel rate might have had an outsized effect on his bottom line results however. His expected wOBA on contact fell from .457 in 2024 to .403 in ‘25 despite no significant change to his batted ball mix. He wasn’t pounding the ball into the ground more often, he was simply less productive on the contact he was making. His average bat speed was down a little, but not dramatically which does provide some hope that he can rediscover his knack for barrelling up pitches.
The other concerning trend last year was a walk rate that fell to the lowest it’s been in his career. Hernández has never really been a patient hitter, but his walk rate usually fell right around league average when he was a middle-of-the-order run producer in Toronto. In 2025, it dropped to 4.8%. There were no dramatic changes to his underlying plate discipline metrics which makes his walk rate even more of a mystery. His swing rate in three-ball counts was 72.7%, much higher than his norm and the second highest three-ball swing rate in baseball. That tells me he was trying to swing his way out of his struggles rather than maintaining his measured aggression that served him so well in the past.
Steamer is essentially splitting the difference between Hernández’s down seasons in 2023 and ‘25 and the rest of his productive history. That’s probably a pretty reasonable expectation — he’s getting to the age where power output starts to slide and he doesn’t have the kind of approach that would allow him to thrive once his bat speed falls off a cliff. I think he’s probably got one or two more productive seasons left in his bat and there’s always the possibility he bounces all the way back to his ‘24 level.
Keep or cut?
I think I’m cutting all three of my shares of Hernández. His projection isn’t terrible but two out of the last three years have been extremely disappointing. I’m just not comfortable paying that much salary to see if he can figure things out in 2026 as he enters the decline phase of his career.
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Kerry Carpenter, OF
Salary: $15
Average Salary: $10
2025 P/G: 4.44
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.37
How do you evaluate a part-time player who absolutely scorches the ball as the strong side of a platoon but useless when facing same-handed pitching. And what if that part-time player was coming off a down season where many of his offensive metrics took significant steps backwards. That’s the dilemma posed by Kerry Carpenter.
Because he’s the strong side of a platoon, Carpenter’s fantasy performance needs all sorts of context to fully understand. He’s primarily used against right-handed pitching and often pinch hits late in games if he isn’t starting. Those extra appearances off the bench artificially depress his overall points per game, though we can use points per game started, or more simply, points per plate appearance, to cut through some of that noise. Here’s a look at the various lenses we can use to clear up our evaluation of his production:
Kerry Carpenter, Ottoneu Fantasy Production
Year
Overall P/G
vR P/G
Starting P/G
Overall P/PA
vR P/PA
Starting P/PA
2023
5.18
4.61
5.41
1.33
1.39
1.33
2024
5.43
5.61
6.07
1.60
1.78
1.59
2025
4.44
4.07
5.08
1.24
1.31
1.27
When looking at points earned in games he started, Carpenter wasn’t too far off his production from his breakout two years ago and he looks a lot better from a points per plate appearance stand point as well.
The source of his struggles in 2025 seem to stem from a 54 point drop in BABIP and a 3.5 drop in walk rate. All of his underlying batted ball and plate discipline metrics look in line with his established norms and he even posted a career-best 22.8% strikeout rate last year.
Keep or cut?
I’m having a hard time justifying keeping a platoon outfielder for $15, even if he absolutely crushes right-handed pitching. The highs of 2024 are probably a high-water mark for him and Steamer isn’t predicting a big step forward for him in 2026. $10 is a more reasonable value for a really good part-time player like Carpenter, but a $15 salary gets squeezed off the roster.
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Trent Grisham, OF
Salary: $7, $5, $4
Average Salary: $5
2025 P/G: 5.35
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.19
After settling in as a defense-first center fielder in San Diego, Trent Grisham enjoyed a huge breakout in New York in 2025. He’s shown he’s capable of producing at the plate in the distant past — he posted a 110 wRC+ across his first two seasons in San Diego in 2020 and ‘21 — but hasn’t hit very well until last year. All of a sudden, he started mashing the ball and wound up blasting a career-high 34 home runs in 2025.
Grisham has always had a patient approach at the plate and his batted ball quality significantly improved after joining the Yankees in 2024. The biggest difference was turning his sometimes overly patient approach into selective aggression on pitches in the zone early in the count. Ambushing pitchers when they tried to steal strikes worked wonders for Grisham and represents a real change in approach for him.
Surprisingly, Steamer believes in the changes Grisham made. It would have been easy to write off his breakout as a one-year blip, but the projections are calling for a solid follow-up season, though not necessarily up to the heights of his breakout.
Keep or cut?
I see the improvements in Grisham’s approach and batted ball quality and I’m willing to bet that they stick around in 2026. I’m keeping all three of my shares.
It feels like it has been forever since I last updated this series by reviewing my tough calls at MI and that is what the holidays do to us. A couple of weeks of family time and travel and suddenly it’s 2026, we’re just over a month out from pitchers and catchers reporting, and I am running out of time to make these decisions. Today, we turn our attention to the OF and debate whether to hold these OF bats or kick’em to the curb.
Credit: Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
We’re now onto the fourth installment of our Keep or Cut decisions series. Jake has offered up his tough choices at CI/C and MI, I covered CI/C last week so now it is my turn to discuss MI. Usually, I make a point of looking at names Jake didn’t look at, but this week, I am going to start by (quickly) rehashing one of the players he covered with a slightly different take.
The Ottoneu keeper deadline is quickly approaching. There’s about a month and a half left to make your roster decisions before the January 31 cut deadline. I’m going through a handful of difficult keep or cut decisions at every position group to give you a transparent look at my decision making process and hopefully help you with theses specific cases for these specific players. I started with the corner infielders last week and will have outfield and pitchers after the holidays.
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Carlos Correa, SS/3B
Salary: $26, $15
Average Salary: $15
2025 P/G: 4.42
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.19
Carlos Correa’s capacity for greatness still resides somewhere within him. Just a year ago, he posted a 154 wRC+, though he was limited to just 86 games thanks to a significant foot injury. He played through that same issue this year and it’s likely that it seriously affected his ability to perform for most of the season. He limped to a .267/.319/.386 slash line (97 wRC+) through the first half of the season, though he improved on that after being traded back to the Astros at the trade deadline.
The most concerning yellow flag in Correa’s peripherals was a groundball rate that jumped 4.5 points from 2024. He was still hitting the ball with authority, but all that additional contact on the ground meant that his barrel rate fell to 6.8%, the second lowest mark of his career. His top level plate discipline metrics were a little out of whack too; his strikeout rate was mostly stable but his walk rate fell by more than three points. There was nothing really amiss in his underlying metrics; he was a little more aggressive at the plate because he saw more pitches in the zone than ever before but that doesn’t fully explain the drop in free passes.
The projections are a little more pessimistic than I’d expect based on his history, though his excellence in 2024 seems like the outlier when looking at his down seasons in ‘23 and ‘25. It all boils down to how his foot is fairing. If he’s truly healthy heading into next season, it’s reasonable to expect him to beat his projections. There’s also the matter of his position switch. Correa will retain shortstop eligibility next year, but he’ll probably lose it the year after unless something surprising happens in Houston.
Keep or cut?
I’m happy to keep Correa at $15 and I’d probably be comfortable up to $18 or $20 just based on his history of production. There’s a risk that he won’t be healthy, but he was valued around $25 during his abbreviated 2024 season. That’s the upside, even if he misses some time next year. But that same health risk means that I’m probably not keeping my $26 share.
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Xander Bogaerts, SS
Salary: $9
Average Salary: $13
2025 P/G: 4.49
Projected 2026 P/G: 4.76
At this point in his career, Xander Bogaerts is a much more valuable real life shortstop than a fantasy one. There’s been a steady drop in offensive production over the last three years, though the good news is that his 2025 was an improvement on his dismal ‘24 season. Even though he’s likely well past the era of posting wRC+’s in the 130s, he’s only a couple of years removed from putting up a 119 wRC+ in 2023. While that first season in San Diego was a step back from his time in Boston, his fantasy value still sat around $20 for his efforts.
Despite the league average results on the field, there were some encouraging signs in Bogaerts’s underlying metrics. Never one to post outrageous batted ball peripherals, his hard hit rate was the highest it’s been since 2022 and his barrel rate, air contact rate, and pull rate the highest they’ve been since 2021. The main reason behind all those improvements? A 1.5 mph increase in his bat speed this year. Those gains in those specific metrics should have resulted in better outcomes but his actual wOBA trailed behind his expected wOBA by 12 points.
Steamer sees a bounce back season in Bogaerts’s future and I think I can see what the computer is picking up on. His down season in 2024 was marred by a serious shoulder injury and the improvements to his bat speed and batted ball peripherals tell me that his body has mostly returned to normal.
Keep or cut?
I’m going to keep at $9 and I think I’d be comfortable keeping up to $12 or $13. There’s some risk of age related decline, but he showed he was healthy last year. Don’t pay for his name recognition or the production you’d expect if he still played in Boston, but he still can be a useful middle infield option for your fantasy squad.
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Jackson Holliday, 2B/SS
Salary: $9
Average Salary: $14
2025 P/G: 4.26
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.08
How do you properly assess a 21-year-old phenom who hasn’t lived up to the sky-high hype across his first two seasons in the majors? The scouting reports were so glowing, I imagine plenty of fantasy players paid a pretty penny for Jackson Holliday, hoping that they were getting a future star to anchor their lineups. Holliday could certainly still turn into that star, but he didn’t make the immediate impact many were expecting.
The good news is that Holliday is still exceedingly young and he improved by leaps and bounds during his second taste of the big leagues.His overall batting line was a hair below league average but he made some strides to elevate the ball more often and improved his contact rate by more than eight points. You can still dream on the ceiling because he still has so much more growing to do — both from a physical standpoint and just learning how major league pitchers will approach him — but he could be a year or two away from realizing that potential.
The projections see a small step forward from him in 2026 which is pretty reasonable given his pedigree and age. Still, those improvements only get him to the level of a replacement level middle infielder in fantasy baseball. Could he blow past those projections with a post-hype breakout? Absolutely! Do I want to bank on that happening next year? Eh…
Keep or cut?
I’m probably keeping at $9 though I think that’s probably the highest I’d be comfortable going at this point. Any higher and I’m buying his potential ceiling without any real indicators he’s about to breakout in a meaningful way. I also recognize that your place in your team’s competitive window will have a huge bearing on your willingness to keep Holliday. If you’re in win-now mode, keeping Holliday with a double-digit salary is a tougher pill to swallow than if you’re still rebuilding your roster and looking to compete in a year or two.
From July 23 through the end of the season, Bryson Stott posted a .307/.376/.508 slash line, good for a 143 wRC+ and 5.5 P/G. That hot streak corresponded with a pretty dramatic change to his swing mechanics. He was able to improve the quality of his contact while still maintaining the excellent plate discipline that buoyed his value as a batter throughout his career. With a solid approach now enhanced by more hard contact, Stott has all the underlying indicators of a potential breakout in 2026.
The projections aren’t yet picking up on those mechanical changes — to the silicon circuits, his hot streak to end the season was just that, no real signal to affect next year’s projection. But if his improved swing carries over to 2026, there’s real reason to believe he’ll be able to beat those projections easily. The risk is that he falls back to his previous career norms and remains a replacement level middle infielder for fantasy purposes.
Keep or cut?
I’m willing to pay $6 (and $4) to see if his swing changes carry over to next year. Those salaries are low enough that it’s easy to cut bait if he’s the same old Stott next year, but the potential for a huge breakout is real enough that it’s not a problem to carry him on my rosters to start the season. I’m not sure I’d go into double digits to keep him but I do think the ceiling is a lot higher than the projections think it is.
