Last week, I asked you what you wanted to see from my rankings this winter, and the results were pretty interesting. I got a ton of comments, messages on Slack, etc. It was great to hear how much those value those rankings provide (except to the one dude who clearly hates rankings; sorry to you and the anti-rankings community for any harm I cause you with my rankings this off-season) and how much people appreciate the one-line comments on each player. But there were some other pieces of feedback worth noting, and those have all shaped my plan for rankings this year.
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. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be going through a handful of difficult keep or cut decisions at every position group. I’ll start with the four infield positions this week and move on to the outfield and pitchers next week.
While Bryce Harper probably isn’t going to hit like he’s one of the top 5 batters in baseball again, he’s still extremely productive as he enters his age-33 season in 2026. A wrist injury in June cost him about a month of the ‘25 season and he’s averaged a little under 130 games played per season over the last five years. While he might not be an iron man, he’s been productive while he’s on the field, putting up a 146 wRC+ during that same five year period. His batted ball peripherals all looked in line with his career norms; his 47.5% hard hit rate and 12.3% barrel rate both look good and his .368 xwOBA was right in line with his actual results on the field.
While his strikeout and walk rates look good on the surface, there are a few yellow flags in his underlying plate discipline stats. His chase rate has significantly jumped over the last few years and it was up to 36.0% in 2025, the second highest mark of his career. He’s being forced to hunt for pitches out of the zone because pitchers simply refuse to give him anything to hit. Since winning his MVP award in 2021, he’s seen the fewest pitches in the strike zone of any batter in baseball by a pretty wide margin. This year, his zone rate was just 42.9%, the lowest in the majors and three points lower than the guy right ahead of him.
Steamer is predicting a bit of a bounce back season for Harper in 2026, though it’s mostly fueled by a jump in BABIP. He’s at the age where power starts waning a bit and the projections see him essentially holding his power numbers steady next year. I guess that’s what worries me. Harper has already slipped a bit from his peak and he’s not getting any younger (no matter how many weird blood procedures he wants to try). If you’re paying a premium in the hopes that he’ll get back to his MVP caliber seasons, you’re likely going to be disappointed.
Keep or cut?
I think Harper’s current average salary of $45 is reasonable for the projected production you’re hoping to get from him in 2026. Like with any aging slugger, there’s some risk involved in paying that much for the downslope of a career. I’m keeping at $42 and I’m shopping my $49 Harper, hoping to pass the buck for that decision to someone else.
Now that Willson Contreras finally lost his catcher eligibility, he’s lost a ton of his fantasy value. A catcher who can put up 5.2 P/G is quite useful — just six other catchers surpassed that mark in 2025 — but a 5.2 P/G first baseman is quite another matter. Fifteen other first basemen surpassed that mark this year and eighteen are projected to be better than that in 2026. Instead of being a top tier option at catcher, Contreras is now a third or fourth tier option at first base.
To be fair, his batted ball peripherals all looked good during his first full season out from behind the plate. The biggest reason why his overall value took a hit in 2025 was because his walk rate dropped nearly five points, down to 7.8%. There was nothing amiss in his underlying plate discipline metrics; his chase rate, contact rate, and swing rates all looked normal. The biggest difference, then, was a higher rate of pitches seen in the zone — the highest zone rate of his career — and a corresponding increase in called strikes seen.
Steamer sees a bounce back in walk rate next year, but his BABIP takes a hit, leading to an overall projection a little worse than what he accomplished in 2025. I don’t have any qualms with the projection — it seems like it’s pretty reasonable — so my issue is with his positional eligibility. Right now, I’ve got him ranked in the same tier as Kyle Manzardo, Spencer Torkelson, and Christian Walker. Each of those players is useful in their own way, but I wouldn’t be comfortable with any of them as my primary first baseman in 2026.
Keep or cut?
I’m cutting both of my shares of Contreras. Paying up to $10 for him in next year’s auction is probably reasonable, but getting up to the mid-teens seems like an overpay.
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’s the kind of production we’ve been expecting to see from Bohm since his exciting debut back in 2020. The unfortunate thing about his excellent finish to the season is that it wasn’t really fueled by a change in any underlying batted ball metrics. He was the same hitter he’s always been, just really unlucky for the first month of the season and then a little luckier than normal over the next five months.
So which version of Bohm can we count on in 2026? Probably the same one we’ve come to know over the last few years — the same one who posted around 5.0 P/G in 2023 and ‘24. That’s a useful corner infielder, but not necessarily a high quality starting option. That’s what Steamer sees as the most likely outcome. If there’s one thing to latch onto as a source of hope, it’s that he ran the highest contact rate of his career this year. With his above average hard hit rate, putting the ball in play more often should lead to more positive results. Unfortunately, his ceiling is capped by how often he puts the ball on the ground and his correspondingly low barrel rate. Unless he can make a significant adjustment to start lofting the ball more often, his hot streak from the second half of this season will likely be the best version of Bohm we’ll see.
Keep or cut?
I’m really on the fence about Bohm. He fits better as a third baseman where the pool is a lot shallower than at first base but the roster where I have him rostered for $9 already has third base covered by José Ramírez. I’m not sure I want to keep him at $11 either, but that’s probably about what he’s going to be auctioned for if I end up cutting him. I think it’ll ultimately come down to my salary cap situation on both teams — if there’s room to roster a premium bench CI, then Bohm seems keepable. If not, he’ll end up a casualty of being good enough without a high potential ceiling to boost his value.
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Adley Rutschman, C
Salary: $30
Average Salary: $21
2025 P/G: 3.79
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.03
I have no idea what to do with Adley Rutschman. To be fair, I don’t think the Orioles know what to do with him either. He had such a promising start to his career and then suddenly collapsed partway through the 2024 season. There was some hope that an offseason would help him get healthy for this year and he’d find a way to bounce back. That obviously didn’t happen. He suffered through two separate oblique strains, and even when he was healthy, he wasn’t producing at the plate.
The weird thing is that his underlying batted ball metrics aren’t out of whack, his plate discipline is still excellent, but he simply isn’t seeing the results that he enjoyed during his first two seasons in the big leagues. Some of that is a dramatic drop from his BABIP but it’s also a deterioration of his plate approach. His strikeout and walk rates aren’t affected, but his ability to hunt for pitches to do damage against has diminished over the last two years — his SEAGER dropped from 21.1 during his rookie campaign to 11.6 in 2025.
Steamer sees a pretty significant bounce back from Rutschman in 2026, but the projection has hedged against his ceiling based on his struggles these past two years. Like I mentioned with Contreras above, just seven catchers crossed the 5.0 P/G threshold this year. If Rutschman can get back to that level of production, he’ll be one of the best hitting catchers in baseball. There’s so much risk in paying for that projection knowing that he’s been a below average catcher for a season and a half now.
Keep or cut?
I’m obviously cutting at $30. That’s simply far too expensive for any catcher unless his name is Cal Raleigh. I’d be open to keeping Rutschman around $15, but even at that high a salary, you really need him to figure things out next year and hit his projection.
With arbitration behind us, trade season upon us, and cut decisions looming, it is rankings season for your favorite team of Ottoneu writers. The last couple of seasons, you have gotten tiered rankings for Ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues both from Jake Mailhot and from me. We’ve focused on FanGraphs Points because it is the most popular Ottoneu format, and because the combination of our rankings and 5×5 rankings from other writers are enough to create a decent set of rankings for 4×4, 5×5 and SABR Points Ottoneu leagues. But you know what we haven’t done? Asked you what you want?
This one should be pretty quick. Chad has done all the heavy lifting analyzing how Ottoneu players handled the arbitration deadline last month; he presented a high-level recap and broke down arbitration by position. I was interested in taking a different approach: I wanted to confirm what my gut assumed to be true about which teams get allocated the most dollars during arbitration.
When I start the process of allocating dollars during the arbitration period, I usually begin by allocating a dollar to every team. You have to allocate at least a dollar to every team anyway, so I get that out of the way first. It’s also a good first step because I’ll often be torn between a number of players which tells me those roster deserve more dollars when I come back to allocate the rest of my funds. After that’s complete, I take a look at the final standings from the season and start allocating dollars to the top teams. Logically, the teams who finish higher in the standings should have rosters filled with players who have plenty of surplus value and need the help of the market to correct their salaries.
Do other Ottoneu players share this same inclination? The data says yes!
Ottoneu Arbitration by League Standings
Rank
Average Allocation
1
$27.9
2
$26.1
3
$26.1
4
$24.8
5
$23.8
6
$23.3
7
$22.0
8
$21.3
9
$20.8
10
$19.9
11
$18.0
12
$17.2
The shape of that scatter plot shouldn’t be all that surprising. The best teams in every league get allocated nearly $28 on average (with a maximum of $33) while the worst teams in every league get allocated more than $10 less. There are some clear breaks between third and fourth place and sixth and seventh place, and the placement of those gaps makes sense too. The top three teams in every league are probably loaded with talented players with lower than market value salaries and the top half of every league should have competitive teams while the bottom half of every league is likely filled with teams who are building for the future.
Is there anything actionable you can do with this knowledge? Probably not. If you’re finishing in the top three of your league, you’re probably expecting to get hit with a bunch of arbitration dollars at the start of the offseason. It might be a handy guide for planning if you’re trying to work out what your offseason budget is going to look like during the summer — you could toss in an expected allocation amount into your projected budget based on where you think you’re going to finish.
What if we flip the question around and ask if league standings tell us how many dollars a team will allocate.
Ottoneu Arbitration by League Standings
Rank
Average Allocated Dollars
1
$24.9
2
$24.0
3
$24.2
4
$23.8
5
$22.9
6
$23.3
7
$22.0
8
$22.9
9
$22.3
10
$21.3
11
$20.5
12
$19.0
Again, not many surprises. The best teams — probably the most engaged teams in your league — allocate the most dollars to other teams during arbitration. This data really isn’t actionable, it’s more a reflection of league engagement. The better your team performs, the more incentive you have to ensure your team retains every ounce of competitive advantage over your rivals. That means making sure every one of your arbitration dollars are allocated to their maximum impact.
So this might not have been the most exciting dive into arbitration, but it’s good to have my instincts confirmed by the data.
Last week, with Ottoneu Arbitration complete, we looked at where and how dollars were allocated, who was voted off, and more in an arbitration recap. Today, we’ll go deeper in another area, looking at arbitration by position.
How many Ottoneu managers out there woke up Saturday morning to sadly see their favorite players suddenly more expensive? Or maybe you stayed up Friday night to check in, despite the risk of nightmares caused by seeing your $5 Nick Kurtz now voted off your roster? Yes, Ottoneu Arbitration has come to an end and all those dollars are locked and all those vote offs are complete. The good news is, that also means the off-season is really underway and you can start making trades. But before we walk away from arbitration, let’s take a look at what happened.
Since the end of the season, I have been looking at playerswhose first– and second-halves were starkly different based on either points per game or points per inning pitched. We’ve covered one pitcher going each direction and a hitter who fell off a cliff, so today we turn our attention to a bat that broke out in the second half: Daylen Lile.
The theme of this offseason for the Ottoneu wing of RotoGraphs is self-reflection and accountability. I’ve already gone through some of the lessons I learned from the big mistakes I made this year and reviewed my bold predictions. Last week, Chad Young reviewed his weekly Hot/Cold Right Now column to see if the advice he was giving throughout the season was useful and actionable.
Following in Chad’s footsteps, I’d like to review my semi-regular Ottoneu Drip articles. The goal of this column is to identify under-rostered pitchers who might be able to help your team in both the short- and long-term. By its very nature — limiting analysis to pitchers owned less than 60% across all Ottoneu leagues — the hit rate on my advice is pretty low. These pitchers aren’t rostered for good reasons. Still, I was able to uncover a handful of very valuable pitchers who produced excellently over the long-term and there were a few more short-term wins that could have helped throughout the season.
I wrote eight Ottoneu Drip articles during the season with a bonus article written for the final weekend of the season that I opted not to include in my analysis. I identified 64 pitchers in these articles — 54 of them unique — and I graded my advice along the same 1–5 scale that Chad used in his Hot/Cold review:
Bad advice, this pitcher was bad over the short- and long-term.
Didn’t work out, but there might have been some short-term value there.
Neutral, there might have been some short-term value or the possibility of long-term value if you squint.
Good advice that had some strong long-term value or extended short-term value.
Solidly good advice that had excellent long-term value.
Here’s what I found:
My average score was 2.53. If you ignore the article posted after the first weekend of the regular season on April 1, the average is slightly boosted to 2.70.
That April 1 article was a disaster. All eight of the pitchers were busts; the average rest-of-season FIP in that group was 4.85 and the average rest-of-season P/IP was a ghastly 2.91. Two of pitchers identified in that article — JP Sears and Mitchell Parker — returned some slight short-term value over the next few weeks but they eventually turned into pumpkins. I guess the lesson there is to not jump to any conclusions based on a single start and wait for a bit of a bigger sample before making any recommendations.
It shouldn’t surprise, then, to see that my average score from June through August was 2.74, half a point higher than it was in April and May. Making recommendations with a larger body of work to reference is a lot easier than taking a shot in the dark.
There was one outlier article in April posted on the 16th. In that piece, I identified Tyler Mahle, Matthew Liberatore, Randy Rodríguez, Phil Maton, and Gabe Speier as pitchers with plenty of short- and long-term value. Mahle and Liberatore eventually succumbed to injury and fatigue, respectively, but they were solid pitchers for most of the spring and early summer. Rodríguez was one of the best relief pitchers in baseball this year but Tommy John surgery will keep him from providing any value next year unfortunately.
If you had somehow managed to follow every single one of my recommendations, you would have added 3.28 P/IP over the following 30 days after the article was published. And you would have added 3.46 P/IP over the rest of the season.
I have no idea what any of these results mean in context. That amount of analysis will have to come next year with this year as a baseline. I do think I need to be a bit more careful about recommending players so early in the season. It’s easy to take one strong start with some interesting velocity readings and assume the pitcher is about to breakout — I’m looking at you Jordan Hicks. I also think I need to follow Chad’s lead and evaluate fewer players more deeply. A deeper dive into some of these early season picks would have likely revealed that nothing under the hood had really changed.
What’s your feedback? Is this column useful? Is my 60% rostered threshold too low (or too high)? Any changes you’d like to see?
Calling people losers seems unkind, but they did, in fact, lose positional eligibility. Is there a better word to use? Position Eligibility Forfeiters? Decliners? I dunno. I am rolling with losers. It was just yesterday that we looked at players who gained positions in 2025; today we turn our attention to players who lost eligibility.
Every year, some player gains or loses eligibility and I totally miss it. Sometimes it’s because I didn’t have that player on any of my rosters and so I never noticed when they gained a new position. Sometimes it’s because I had a guy locked into a position this year and didn’t realize they weren’t playing their for their real team. To make sure I am caught up, I spend a little time pulling a positional eligibility change report – a list of all players who gained or lost a position (or both) in 2025.
