They say necessity is the mother of invention. And they are right. But you know what else is the mother of invention? People saying seemingly weird things and then stopping and thinking, “Wait, maybe this is something!”
That’s where the latest Ottoneu innovation came from, and it’s a fun one. During the heat of draft season, when we run out of things to talk about other than the 10,000th debate over Edgar Quero’s auction value, a discussion about slow auctions (the 10,000th of those, too) resulted in people to start making outlandish suggestions about how to run drafts. And then Ottoneu creator Niv Shah commented:
What if players were randomly distributed?
He immediately got an “I would sign up for that” response. I half-joked, “Randomly assigned players with randomly assigned salaries.”
“Error bars around last 10 salary,” Niv replied. “So some variance, but generally market.”
And from that “a random league” was born. And while this sounds like a gimmick there is real interest in it and real value to it (which you can see from that thread). Niv and I will be co-managing a team in that league and I want to talk about a) why I think this is not just an interesting experiment, but a useful concept and b) what Niv and I need to do as managers of our randomly created team.
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:
Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
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. (I won’t include this section until we’re a few weeks into the regular season.)
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.
Emerson Hancock threw the best start of his career to open the 2026 season, blanking the Guardians over six hitless innings while setting a career high for strikeouts with nine. Despite being the sixth overall pick in the 2020 draft and working his way through Seattle’s vaunted pitching development pipeline, Hancock has struggled across parts of three seasons in the big leagues. Coming into this season, his career FIP was sitting over five with just a 15.6% strikeout rate.
Hancock had a pretty good spring training as he worked on honing his pitch mix; he struck out 21 across 15 innings of work in Arizona. The improvements were evident in his performance on Sunday evening. The biggest difference for him was a four-seamer that featured nearly three inches of added IVB and a sweeper that featured more than an inch and a half of added horizontal break. We don’t have arm angle data yet in this young season, but I suspect that the new movement profile on Hancock’s pitches is thanks to a slightly lower arm slot. He’s lowered his arm angle pretty significantly over the last two years and his release height was a few inches lower in his start on Sunday.
The issue with Hancock is opportunity. He’s getting this shot in the starting rotation because Bryce Miller started the year on the IL with an oblique injury which will keep him sidelined into May. Of course, Hancock made 16 starts last year because four of the five Mariners’ starters spent time on the IL during the season. Hancock looks like he’s finally made the adjustments he needed to to become a successful big league pitcher, and for now, he’ll have a spot in Seattle’s rotation to prove that he can stick.
The first save of the season for the Twins went to Cole Sands on Saturday. He walked one and struck out two en route to closing out a 3-1 win over the Orioles. The ninth inning picture in Minnesota was very unclear this offseason and Sands was one of the primary candidates to pick up saves alongside Taylor Rogers and Justin Topa.
Like I said in this column last week, you don’t have to go chasing saves in Ottoneu leagues (non-5×5 leagues, anyway) which means we’re free to evaluate relief pitchers on their skills rather than their role. For Sands, the 29.1% strikeout rate he ran in 2024 definitely looks like the outlier; the 21.4% mark matched what he ran in 2023 and it was a few points lower than that in his debut year in ‘22. He’s got solid command but doesn’t have the overpowering stuff you’d normally see from a high-leverage reliever. I’m not sure there’s anyone better in the Twins bullpen right now, so Sands could definitely run away with the ninth inning job early this season.
The big story for Randy Vásquez this spring was a huge jump in velocity. We saw the effects of that extra oomph in his first start against the Tigers on Saturday; six scoreless innings with eight strikeouts. His fastball averaged 95.0 mph after sitting around 93.5 mph last year, and his sinker, curveball, sweeper, and changeup all saw similar jumps in velocity as well. The only pitch that wasn’t thrown harder was his cutter and that pitch had a completely different movement profile. It was a bit flatter with a couple of inches of added horizontal movement and Vásquez earned three whiffs on seven swings against that pitch (a 43% whiff rate). I’m also encouraged by the added velocity on his breaking balls; he earned a combined four whiffs off his curveball and sweeper.
The extra velocity is great to see, but batters will adjust to the added heat on his fastball. I’m interested to see if his breaking balls have turned into swing-and-miss weapons and if the cutter is going to be more effective now that it’s acting more like a hard slider. We could be witnessing a pretty significant step forward from Vásquez but you might want to wait a week to see if he can prove it against a tough Red Sox lineup this weekend. If you have to make a bid now, bid conservatively and be cautious in using him against Boston.
Everything I said about Sands and high-leverage opportunities above could be copied and pasted here for Jordan Romano. At least with Romano, you have the long history of success in the ninth inning earlier in his career. Injuries derailed his career back in 2024 and he was pretty terrible in 2025 for the Phillies. His fastball velocity is actually a tick lower than it was last year at just 94.6 mph. It’s really early, but that isn’t encouraging. What is encouraging is the amount of carry he’s getting on his heater. The pitch is seeing nearly two inches of added IVB this year and a lot less armside movement. His release height is a few inches higher which seems to have given his four-seamer much purer backspin.
The Angels signed a bunch of veteran relievers this offseason — including Romano, Kirby Yates, and Drew Pomeranz — and that trio should be in the mix for saves until Ben Joyce returns from the IL. If Romano has truly turned back time and figured out how to make his fastball more effective despite his reduced velocity, he could be a solid pick up. The down tick in velocity worries me, however, and I’d want to wait to see if he’s really back to his old self before chasing him.
Luke Raley blasted home runs in three straight games to start the season, a very good sign for his health. An April oblique injury shelved Raley for two months last year and his swing was never right even after returning during the second half of the season. It’s pretty easy to diagnose what the underlying problem was. Even though his contact quality stayed relatively stable, his swing speed dropped from 75.0 mph to 73.8 mph after his injury. Through four games this year — a small sample to be sure — his swing speed is back up to 74.3 mph.
If you remember his breakout season in 2023 or his equally fantastic follow up in ‘24, you know that Raley can be a solid contributor in leagues with deep rosters like Ottoneu. The Mariners will utilize him in a pretty strict platoon so he won’t provide everyday at-bats for your fantasy team. When he’s in the lineup, he’s been productive, and it looks like his swing is back to normal after last year’s disaster.
With the first games underway, we are going to be flooded with new information. All the spring lineup speculation will give way to actual lineups. The dream that someone might not be stuck in a platoon will die. The hope that a player’s newfound spring plate discipline is a game changer will be dashed. And before too long, you will learn where your roster is deep enough to withstand those losses, plus injuries, and where you aren’t.
You will also potentially have some open roster spots. Maybe you roster Justin Steele and now he is on the 60-day IL. Maybe one of those guys you were dreaming on turns into a cut by April. The good news is, sudden roster needs and suddenly available roster spots go together like a hot dog and a beer – the existence of the former means you probably need the latter, and the latter is just so much better when you pair it with the former.
So let’s try to find readily available players to fill those needs on your open roster. Here is one guy at each position who is currently <50% rostered in Ottoneu who you can go out and pick up if you find yourself in need.N
Welcome back to the Ottoneu Starting Pitching Planner. Based on the Roster Resource Probables Grid, I’ve organized every starter slated to start next week into four categories: start, maybe, risky, and sit. The first and last category are pretty self-explanatory. Starters who fall into the “maybe” category are guys you could start if you need to keep up with the innings pitched pace in points leagues or need to hit your games started cap in head-to-head leagues; they’re good bets to turn in a decent start, but you shouldn’t automatically insert them into your lineup. If you’ve fallen behind on the innings pitched pace or you’re really starving for starts in a head-to-head matchup, you could turn to a “risky” starter or two.
I’ve also calculated a “Matchup Score” for each series using a straight combination of opponent’s home/away wOBA, opponent wOBA over the last 14 days, and the park factor for the ballpark the teams are playing in. It’s indexed so that 100 is average and anything above that is a favorable matchup and anything below is unfavorable. That matchup rating informs some of the sit/start recommendations I’m making, though the quality of the pitcher definitely takes precedence. To start the season, I’ll be relying on projected team wOBA until there’s sufficient in-season data to start calculating these matchup ratings.
First, a reminder that the first week of Ottoneu head-to-head leagues ends on April 5, which means you have 12 days to hit your games started cap. That means you’ve got a very long window to figure out which starters to use over the next week and half, and you may want to sit some of the riskier pitchers on your roster because you’ll have so many options on the table. The table below has my sit/start recommendations for the weekend and then there’s a second table below for the first normal week.
Hot Right Now (HRN) is a weekly 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:
Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
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. (I won’t include this section until we’re a few weeks into the regular season.)
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.
This weekend is the last weekend before Opening Day on March 25 which means it’s the biggest weekend for fantasy baseball drafting of the year. If you’ve got an Ottoneu auction draft coming up, you’ve probably already done the work to identify your team’s needs and the biggest targets in the draft. But what happens at the end of the draft when you’ve spent almost all of your salary cap and you’re looking for high-upside players to fill out your roster? That $1 zone is one of my favorite phases of the auction — diving for gold amidst a sea of all the leftover players. To help identify some of those late auction targets, here are 10 players — two from each position group (C, CI, MI, OF, SP) — whose current average auction price is less than $2. And if you’ve already completed your draft this year, you can treat this article as a list of interesting early waiver wire adds before the season gets underway.
Earlier this week, on the Keep or Kut podcast, I discussed (among other things) how all Spring Training news is bad. The good news (Jac Caglianone hit a ball a million miles per hour! Shota Imanaga has added velocity!) is all interesting but we immediately get into small-sample-size, how-much-does-it-mean debates. But the bad news is a lot of injuries and suspensions and that stuff you can act on right away.
It’s bold prediction week here at RotoGraphs. Last year, I got 3.5 of my bold predictions correct which was a really strong showing. Maybe I need to go bolder — or maybe I just got lucky.
Here are five pitcher predictions and five hitter predictions; hopefully they’ll be of some use to you as the season starts up. Alongside the predictions, I’ve also included some draft data from the current offseason to get a better sense of how these players are being valued by the Ottoneu community right now.
1. George Kirby is a top-15 SP (by P/IP among pitchers w/ 100+ IP) Ottoneu Average Salary: $21.1 Ottoneu Average Draft Price: $27.5
Upon first glance, this might not seem like such a bold prediction based on George Kirby’s reputation. I think the market perceives him as an ace thanks to his phenomenal strikeout-to-walk ratio and clear top tier value in 5×5 leagues. But consider his record in Ottoneu points leagues: he’s never broken 5.0 P/IP in a single season and he topped out as the 22nd ranked SP by P/IP in 2023. His current Depth Charts projections have him at 4.9 P/IP, an exact match for what he accomplished during his first three seasons in the league and 22nd among all SP.
To break into the top-15, Kirby is going to have to figure out how to either boost his strikeout rate or cut back on his home run rate. Probably a mix of both. Last year, Kirby dealt with a spring shoulder injury that cost him two months of the season. Once he returned, his arm angle was eight degrees lower and his trademark pinpoint command was a little compromised. One hidden benefit of the lower arm angle was a flatter fastball and some additional arm-side movement for his secondaries. Both his slider and curveball had career-high whiff rates last year and if he can maintain and improve on those changed mechanics, maybe his strikeout rate can steadily tick upwards again in 2026.
As for his home run rate, Kirby actually ran the best xFIP of his career last year. His home run rate was about 2.5 points above his career norm and the culprit was likely poorer command of his two fastballs. His four-seamer has always been a little home run prone since he likes to elevate it up in the zone so often, but he allowed six homers off his sinker last year after allowing six total across his first three seasons in the big leagues.
2. Ryne Nelson is a top-25 SP (by P/IP among pitchers w/ 100+ IP) Ottoneu Average Salary: $4.2 Ottoneu Average Draft Price: $3.8
When you open up the Baseball Savant pitch arsenal leaderboard, Tarik Skubal’s changeup leads the way with a +25 run value. That checks out as it’s an absolutely devastating pitch. The next most valuable pitch in baseball is Ryne Nelson’s four-seam fastball and I can’t say I expected to see that. The whiff rate on the pitch is a little below league average for a four-seamer so Nelson is racking up all that run value by limiting the amount of damage done on contact off the pitch. There are some caveats to think about here. Run value is a counting stat and Nelson threw his heater a lot — about 61.9% of the time. By RV/100, it was the 54th best pitch at 1.5 RV/100, which is still very good but not an extreme outlier.
The problem for Nelson is that he doesn’t have a great secondary pitch to pair with his hard fastball. He made some improvements to his slider and curveball last year but one of those breaking balls needs to take another step forward to raise his overall profile. To break into the top 25, he’d essentially need to break 5.0 P/IP — he landed at 4.8 in 2025. I think he’ll continue to suppress damaging contact with his heater and find a way to earn a few more whiffs with his secondary pitches this year.
3. Janson Junk is a top-30 SP (by P/IP among pitchers w/ 100+ IP) Ottoneu Average Salary: $3.3 Ottoneu Average Draft Price: $1.1
Ok, this one might not be so bold because Janson Junk was already a top-30 SP last year, sneaking in at 26th with 4.8 P/IP over 110 innings. But 22.2 of those innings came as a reliever; Junk posted a 4.4 P/IP over 87.1 innings as a starter which would have ranked somewhere around 50th. From there, maybe this prediction seems a little more bold.
What I like about Junk is that he managed to harness his command to an elite level in 2025; among all pitchers with at least 100 IP, his 2.9% walk rate was the lowest in baseball by a pretty wide margin. The downside is, like Nelson above, he doesn’t really have a secondary pitch to rack up tons of swings and misses. That’s why his strikeout rate was just 17.2% despite an elite strikeout-to-walk ratio that approached six.
The Roster Resource depth charts have Junk penciled in as a long reliever in the Marlins bullpen, but there’s enough injury question marks in Miami’s rotation that I think Junk will eventually get a shot at starting again. The command improvements he made last year provide enough of a solid foundation that he can build off of. For a $1 flier at the end of your auction, that’s not a bad bet to make.
4. Joey Cantillo scores the most total points among Guardians starting pitchers Ottoneu Average Salary: $4.3 Ottoneu Average Draft Price: $4.4
The Guardians starting rotation is filled with a ton of promising young pitchers; Gavin Williams, Tanner Bibee, and Logan Allen로건 are all already well established in the big leagues, but Slade Cecconi, Joey Cantillo, and Parker Messick are all vying to make a bigger impact in the majors in 2026. Of that group of six youngsters, I think Cantillo has the best shot at actually breaking out in a big way this year.
It all starts with his changeup. That pitch returned a whiff rate of nearly 50% in 2025 thanks to a huge velocity differential from his heater. His breaking balls are decent — his curve got better results last year but he’s testing out a new grip on his slider this spring that could help that pitch take a step forward. The knock against him is his command, which is below average at best. He was able to cut his walk rate slightly once he was inserted into the Guardians rotation in July last year. With just a little improvement to his command and maybe a better breaking ball, Cantillo has an opportunity to take a big step forward this year.
The other half of this prediction requires Williams, Bibee, and the rest of the Guardians starters to stumble a bit — or at least fall short of Cantillo’s breakout. I think there are enough questions about each of them that I’m willing to bet that Cantillo rises to the top of the pile.
5. Chad Patrick scores the second most total points among Brewers starting pitchers Ottoneu Average Salary: $3.4 Ottoneu Average Draft Price: $2.2
I hedged this prediction just a little because there should be a lot of moving parts to the Brewers rotation this year, but I think Chad Patrick will stick in the big leagues through the whole year. Because here’s the thing, this prediction was already proven correct during the first half of last year; Patrick scored 420 points before the All-Star break, second most on the Brewers behind Freddy Peralta. Then he was pushed out of the rotation and back to Triple-A for a significant portion of the second half of the season once the Brewers pitching staff got healthy.
For his part, Patrick has a really strong repertoire. By Stuff+, he has three above average pitches and his cutter is one of the best in baseball. He had a fantastic 3.2 strikeout-to-walk ratio last year and a 3.53 FIP that exactly matched his top line results by ERA.
As for the rest of Milwaukee’s rotation, I’m not sure Brandon Woodruff can make it through an entire season, Jacob Misiorowski still has to overcome his command issues, and the rest of the rotation is young and unproven. Some of those youngsters have brighter prospect pedigrees than Patrick ever had, but they still need to establish themselves in the big leagues and Patrick has already done that.
6. Mookie Betts scores the most total points among all SS
Ottoneu Average Salary: $35.7
Ottoneu Average Draft Price: $32.9
This is as much a bet on Mookie Betts as it is a bet against Bobby Witt Jr. — although Witt wasn’t even the top scoring SS in 2025, Geraldo Perdomo was. It’s no secret that Betts’s entire season last year was derailed by the mysterious illness he caught right before the team’s spring trip to Japan. There was about a month and a half during the late summer where Betts was producing like he had at his peak which gives me some hope that he’ll be able to bounce back in a big way this year now that he’s had a full offseason to get healthy. I have some lingering concerns; namely, his contact quality dropped off pretty significantly, though that could be explained away by the loss of strength that stemmed from his spring illness.
To reach the top of the pile at shortstop, Betts will probably need to score at least 1,000 points or more. He’s done that four times in his career, and if you give him credit for the 16 games he played at short in 2023, he actually led the position in scoring that season. I have nothing against Witt but he struggled to match his otherworldly production from 2024 last year and I think that’s more in line with his true talent than his outrageous line from that breakout season.
7. Alec Bohm is a top-5 3B (by P/G among batters w/ 300+ PA) Ottoneu Average Salary: $8.3 Ottoneu Average Draft Price: $5.7
Alec Bohm was one of the guys I was on the fence about keeping this offseason. I quote, “An abysmal first month of the season is bringing down Alec Bohm’s overall numbers from 2025. From May 1 through the end of the season, he posted a .308/.356/.453 slash line, good for a 124 wRC+ and 5.4 P/G.” That P/G over those five months would have landed him ninth among all 3B last year.
I also noted that Bohm’s hot finish to the season wasn’t driven by any improvement to his underlying contact quality, but simply a career-high contact rate. More balls in play led to more positive results, even if he continued to pound the ball into the ground at too high a rate. Instead of embracing the uncertainty in his profile, I’ve decided to bet on the improvements he made to his contact rate. That’s a pretty significant change to his profile, and if he’s able to figure out how to elevate his contact just a little more often, a huge breakout could be in the cards.
8. Bryson Stott is a top-5 2B (by P/G among batters w/ 300+ PA) Ottoneu Average Salary: $8.4 Ottoneu Average Draft Price: $6.8
The argument for Bryson Stott goes a lot like the argument for Bohm above. During the second half of the season, Stott posted a 135 wRC+ and 5.1 P/G in Ottoneu. Across a full season, that would have landed him around seventh among all 2B. That late season improvement stemmed from a pretty dramatic swing change. He was able to improve the quality of his contact while still maintaining his excellent plate discipline.
Assuming the new swing mechanics carry over to this year, Stott looks well positioned for a breakout in 2026. Plus, Michael Baumann also identified Stott as a potential breakout when looking for players with similar characteristics to Geraldo Perdomo and Maikel Garcia prior to their own breakouts.
9. Spencer Horwitz is a top-12 1B (by P/G among batters w/ 300+ PA) Ottoneu Average Salary: $4.1 Ottoneu Average Draft Price: $2.8
I really liked Spencer Horwitz as a sleeper last year because he had 2B eligibility and looked like he was going to have a shot at full-time at-bats after an offseason trade to Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, wrist surgery derailed the start of his season and it took a while for his bat to get going once he made it back to the majors. During the second half of the season, he posted a 154 wRC+ and put up 5.8 P/G in Ottoneu. That would have ranked 10th among qualified 1B across the full season.
His contact quality doesn’t stand out that much but he does have an excellent approach at the plate. That gives him a solid floor and I think a fully healthy wrist will help him take a big step forward this year. The potential risk to this prediction is that he’s absolutely atrocious against left-handed pitching — his career platoon split is nearly 100 points of wOBA. If he’s relegated to the strong side of a platoon and makes a bunch of pinch hit appearances in games that he doesn’t start, his P/G will likely take a pretty big hit. Practically, you can just stash him on your fantasy team’s bench whenever the Pirates are facing a lefty, but for this prediction to come true, he needs to improve his production against same-handed pitching and figure out a way to stay out of a platoon situation.
Just like my bold prediction about Roman Anthony and Kristian Campbelllast year (which I got half right), I’m throwing some cold water on the hype surrounding these three top prospects. I did hedge a little bit because I didn’t want to be too much of a downer, but it’s really hard to make the jump from the minor leagues to the majors. It certainly seems like the Pirates, Tigers, and Cardinals are going to give these three a shot to break into the big leagues this year, probably right out of spring training, but their success should not be simply assumed to be a guarantee. Griffin is only 19! McGonigle only has 206 plate appearances above High-A! Wetherholt only has a little over 600 total plate appearances as a professional! The odds are that all three of these guys will end up being very good ballplayers eventually, but it might be a lot to ask of them to be among the best at their position right off the bat in 2026.
Bold prediction season is my favorite sub-season within draft season. Way ahead “we are drafting way too early season” and just barely edging out “prospect ranking season.” The worst sub-season within draft season is “pitchers and catchers reported two days ago and now every news alert is an injury” season. I hate that season.
But bold prediction season is the best. It brings out the absolute best of the baseball world. Everyone is putting a stake in the ground for the players they love. People are being wildly optimistic, because it is spring and it’s getting warmer out and the season hasn’t started yet so anything is possible. It just doesn’t get more fun than this.
The FanGraphs Auction Calculator is an incredibly useful tool, that can model auction prices based on your preferred inputs (league settings, budgets, etc.) and assumptions (projection system). Like any model, the outputs of the Auction Calculator (AC) are neither inherently good or bad, but a reflection of those inputs and assumptions. If you get them right, you can export a spreadsheet that can drive your auction strategy; get them wrong and things get ugly.
Ottoneu players haven’t always viewed the Auction Calculator as an effective tool, but mostly that comes down to the challenge of finding the right settings. Today, we have updated the preset settings for Ottoneu on the Auction Calculator, making it easier to use and more effective for Ottoneu leagues. The preset settings might look a little odd, but they all serve a purpose.
