One of the most common questions I get is, “Who are you targeting for $1 at the end of auctions?” I find this to be a particularly tough question to answer. The guys I am hoping to get for $1 I am often willing to pay more for. And guys I sometimes think should be more only go for $1. But five of my leagues have completed drafts this season, so now I have data on who is available for $1 and who I like.

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Is your roster a little topsy-turvy? Do you have most of your value standing on the in-field dirt, waiting out in the bullpen, or just about one season away from being in the big leagues? You know you have to fill all of those outfield spots too, right? Maybe you do have an outfielder, literally one outfielder, and he’s a good one. Well, that’s nice, but you’re still going to need at least four more. Part of the challenge of playing Ottoneu comes from the fact that much of your competition is in the same boat, they need cheap outfielders too. You’ll need to be smart about it, but you can find valuable outfielders who cost next to nothing. When it’s time to go to the auction before the season begins, mark these outfielders and hope you can sneak in and out, only paying a few dollars or less.

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There’s no such thing as a playing time lock, but…

Luis Rengifo, LAA
Avg Salary: $5
ATC Projected PA: 533

This switch-hitting 27-year-old had a breakout year in 2022 when he stepped into the batter’s box 511 times and hit 17 home runs while slashing .264/.294/.429. He walked a lot more in 2023. His low 3.3% BB% in 2022 jumped to 9.2% in 2023. He repeated his .264 batting average in 2023 but improved the rest of his slash-line with a .339 OBP and a .444 slugging percentage. His approach changed, he stopped swinging so much and dropped his contact rate out of the zone. That came at the detriment of his in-zone contact rate, but getting on base with more passivity allowed him to score 10 more runs for his team in a smaller amount of plate appearances (445). Rengifo’s ATC projection suggests his slash line could regress (.256/.315/.420), but his playing time looks solid. Angel’s beat writer Jeff Fletcher reported Rengifo could be the leadoff hitter in 2024 and that would certainly bring his production up a tick:

Ron Washington gave us his *current* lineup thinking today…

1 Rengifo/Moniak
2 Schanuel
3 Trout
4 Rendon
5 Ward
6 Drury
7 O’Hoppe
8 Adell/Hicks
9 Neto

He changed his mind on Schanuel leading off because he wants more speed. All of this subject to further change, obviously.

— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) February 22, 2024

Rengifo is one of the more expensive targets in this article, he’s rostered in 76.1% of FanGraphs points leagues. He has positional flexibility (2B/SS/3B/OF) and most of what I’ve written above has been well noticed by fantasy leaguers. If you’re lucky, and you can snag Rengifo for under the $4 average, you will have an excellent value.

Mark Canha, DET
Avg Salary: $3
Projected PA: 508

Canha has been a steady contributor for fantasy teams in the past few seasons. Last season, he finished with 4.32 points/per game and was only rostered in around 33% of leagues. In November, I calculated points league replacement level at 4.33 points per game for outfielders in 12-team leagues. Canha went over that mark in both 2022 (4.64 P/G) and 2021 (5.17 P/G) and finished the season at 5.27 points per game in the 204 plate appearances he accumulated with the Brewers. In each of the last three seasons (2021-2023), he played at least 139 games. Canha is an accumulator, so don’t get too excited about his individual stats. His batting average has outperformed his expected average in the past two seasons, and in the past three seasons, his slugging percentage has outperformed his expected slugging percentage. What can we expect from him in 2024? Regression, but only some. Here’s Canha’s ATC projection below his 2021-2023 stats:

Andrew McCutchen, PIT
Avg Salary: $3
ATC Projected PA: 459

It seems odd to categorize the 37-year-old veteran McCutchen as a “Playing Time Lock”, but who else is going to DH for the Pirates? If he can rebound from last season’s Achilles tear and stay healthy, McCutchen could certainly be a reliable, above-replacement level player in Ottoneu points leagues. Ready to read something crazy? McCutchen has never, not once, slumped below the 4.33 points per game mark that I hold as a replacement-level outfielder. Ok, ok, he did record 4.34 points per game in 2022, but that was a career worst. Last season, in 473 plate appearances, McCutchen turned in a 5.24 points per game season. He’s not a lock for playing time as he heads into his age 37 season, but he certainly benefits from the DH spot and could easily hit 10 home runs while slugging close to .400. I wouldn’t count on anything more than that. The graph below clearly shows what happens to a ball player’s production as they go through the inevitable:

If that graph scares you away, no one can blame you. Smart fantasy players aren’t betting on McCutchen taking a step forward, but holding just above the replacement level line is a realistic expectation. The full picture should be taken into consideration when someone else bids $2 during an auction draft. Going up to $3 might not be worth it.
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Shared Playing Time Puzzle Pieces

Willi Castro, MIN
Avg Salary: $3
Projected PA: 445

The 33 bases Castro stole in 2023 will make him a target in all formats, but if your league-mates are devaluing his uncertain playing time, you can sneak in and take a chance. The Twins have a lot of injury risks and Castro can fill in nearly any position in a pinch. Both his batting average and on-base percentage ticked up between 2021 and 2022 and then again in 2023 and that was fueled by improved plate discipline:

While his hard-hit rate did not change much between 2022 and 2023, his barrel rate did, moving from 3.5% in 2022 to 6.8% in 2023. To recap, Castro gets on base more often than the average hitter, then he steals bases. He has begun finding the barrel more often by finding better pitches to swing at. That sounds good to me. I’m buying in.

LaMonte Wade Jr., SFG
Avg Salary: $4
Projected PA: 470

Even with the ultimate tinker-er in Gabe Kapler, Wade still accumulated 519 plate appearances in 135 games. Wade, a left-handed hitter, actually hit better (.269) against left-handed pitching than he did against right-handed pitching (.254) in 2023. However, his OBP and SLG were much better against righties. Last season’s .262/.373/.417 overall slash line was far and wide better than his .221/.305/.359 line from 2022 and seeing more reps likely contributed to the advancement. FanGraphs writer Kyle Kishimoto wrote about potential playing time issues for the Giants in 2024, but it was written before Matt Chapman was signed and J.D. Davis was cut. Now, Wilmer Flores and Wade are likely in a platoon split with Wade on the strong side. 2023’s step forward was good for 4.8 points per game in Ottoneu, above replacement level and worth as much as $2 in 2024.

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Playing Time Gambles

Estevan Florial, CLE
Projected PA: 284

I was excited when I read in Jeff Zimmerman’s late February “Mining the News” that Florial has a chance to become an everyday player:

It might seem obvious, but Guardians hitting coach Chris Valaika was the first to go on record this week and say Myles Straw is competing for his job this spring. Marking him in the lineup every day is no longer a given. Ramón Laureano has plenty of experience in center, but Florial is the one Vogt called “a specimen.”

As of this writing, Florial has a high spring training strikeout rate, of 42.1%, and a high walk rate, of 10.5%. This combination is typical of Florial’s profile as he has an MLB 30.6% K% in 115 at-bats. Still, he’s never been given a chance to gain consistent playing time and I am, at least, interested to see what he can do. It’s probably too little too late as many baseball fans have been waiting for Florial to show off his tools for too long and have given up. It was over three years ago that Eric Longenhagen wrote this in his analysis of Florial as a prospect in the Yankees system:

I’ll gladly eat crow if Florial ends up being a consistent big league hitter for a half decade because that’ll mean we’ll have gotten to see his electric tools (he has one of the best throwing arms I’ve ever seen), but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

However, for $1 wouldn’t you like to see if the raw power Florial has been known for can be tweaked just enough to actually connect with the bat for something like 10 dingers? 10 dingers for a dollar here! 10 dingers for a dollar! It’s a gamble, but it’s certainly within the range of outcomes should Florial out-compete his teammates in spring training.

Aaron Hicks, LAA
Avg Salary: $1
Projected PA: 373

Hicks was a 4.86 points-per-game player last season for the O’s and if he can manage another 90 games in Los Angeles, then he very well could hold that mark. Father time may be coming for his power, but Hicks is still finding the ball in the zone and has shown a resurgence in the past few seasons in both his wOBA and his slugging percentage:

Unfortunately, he’s already had issues with soreness this spring and his projections don’t seem to be buying that he’ll be on the field enough for steady plate appearance totals by the end of the year. To further put a damper on Hicks’ fantasy potential, he outperformed his statcast expected average, wOBA, and slugging percentage in 2023. Perhaps the right approach here is to believe the regression projection systems bake in and hope for a little more. $1 and no more.

I commonly hear people praising active managers in fantasy leagues, and there is good reason for this. Active managers make for a fun league. My favorite leagues are the ones with regular transactions, trades, etc., where every manager is engaged. While activity makes for a fun league, the praise for active managers often assumes active managers are “good” or “winning” managers. Fun is hard to measure, but good we can try to validate.

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If an Ottoneu fantasy baseball team were a race car coming up to the finish line at the season’s end, there would be a whole lot of smoke coming out. The windows would have a layer of filth and film blocking you from seeing the driver inside. Bug guts would be splattered all over the hood, and a few pairs of body-less insect wings would still be twitching on the hunk of hot metal. Duct tape would be holding on semi-important parts and all kinds of unusual noises would be heard. Making it to the finish line is, for god sake, difficult.

I’ve always wondered how many of those theoretical race cars that are Ottoneu teams got a little extra help in the form of loans, allowing them to finish the season over the $400 salary limit allotted to each team. To be specific, I have data on 137 Ottonue Prestige League-eligible points leagues. Take a look at the average salary among those who finished with hardware in 2023:

This graph may lead you to believe all first-place finishing teams are over-budget. That’s not the case. But the majority of first-place finishers were over budget. Out of the 137 first-place finishers in this dataset, 80 finished the year over the $400 mark. That’s 58% of teams. Let’s look at the distribution of salary among the top three finishers:

This graph above is interactive. Click on “2” and “3” in the legend to isolate the distribution to first-place finishers. Hover over the bar to the left and you’ll notice that some impressive soul out there won their league with only a $234 budget. Who knows what the heck was happening in that league? But focus your attention to the right and you’ll notice that there are plenty of leagues where the first-place finisher either came very close to maxing out their budget or went over. In some cases, first-place finishers were over their 400-dollar budget by 100 dollars or more.

If you’ve ever been in a competition where you tried to work within a framework that you thought was the rules, only to find out you were wrong about that framework, you’ll know anger. But, let’s be clear, going over your $400 budget is plainly within the rule of the Ottoneu law and legal what-have-you. So, either “wake up stoopit, everyone’s doing it”, or hold to your rebuild and birth a dynasty.

That’s really what’s going on here, isn’t it? Maxing out your salary and agreeing to lopsided deals and loans at the end of the season makes for some really difficult decisions in the offseason when it’s time to get below the cap. It’s a double-edged sword. You may have won your league but you did it in an unsustainable way. Here’s an example of how this can work:

Team A is in the running for a first-place finish. Team F is barely staying out of last place. Team A is stacked and if they were to add Zack Wheeler for the final month of the season, they would surely win the league. Team F actually has Zack Wheeler and realizes Zack Wheeler is their only good player and that this instance of fantasy Zack Wheeler is being paid too much already. Team F decides to trade Zack Wheeler. Team A, who could really use Zack Wheeler, is nearly maxed out on budget so they couldn’t possibly be a good trade partner. But, Team A can be a good trade partner for Team F because Team F can loan Team A the money they need to roster Zack Wheeler.

Do you see? Now, will Team A keep Zack Wheeler for next year? No. They won’t be able to afford it. But, they won a championship and that is hard to do. Thus, the double-edged sword.

Now, don’t go running around telling everybody your strategy is to overpay all your players and max out your budget. It’s a true, season-long, reputationally built game that you must play to max out your budget at the right time. But, if you think your team is in a place where you could win your league this year, don’t be afraid to pay at the draft. Good players make good teams. The managers who won first place in my dataset paid. Here’s a look at how many players on average each rank finish (one through three) rostered at $40 or more:

While the edge is small, first-place finishers roster more players at $20+ players, more $30+ players, and more $40+ players than second and third-place finishers. So go out there and spend, spend, spend! Or don’t. But, whatever you do, know that in 2023, teams that finished the season over budget had a better chance of winning first place than teams that finished with money to spend.

As draft season ramps up, one of the most common questions I get is how to get started with Ottoneu. It can, admittedly, be overwhelming if you don’t know what you are looking at. Starting a new league is a challenge – you need 12 managers committed to a long-term venture together. Building a roster from scratch can be a challenge. And so I recommend people start by claiming a team.

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I talk a decent amount about inflation. It comes up in my rankings intro, I have discussed in on the Keep or Kut podcast, and it is a regular topic of debate in the Ottoneu Slack community. But that is hardly the only thing that impacts player prices and it is not the only factor I consider when preparing for an auction.

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Below replacement level. Worth zero dollars. Heck, worth negative dollars if you roster the player. At least replacement-level players are worth $1. But, below replacement-level? That’s a tough sell. Some players are expected, projected even, to do worse than any other player available at any point in time during the season. So why write about them here?

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Fellow league mate: Are you interested in J-Ram?

Me: Yes, of course. J-Ram rules!

With the cut deadline looming (January 31st, 11:59 PM) many Ottoneu managers are probably in similar situations. Rather than cutting players to slim down maxed-out budgets, some are looking to make trades that will bring back the players they want without having to compete at the auction. This is one of the many beauties of Ottoneu. As all other fantasy leaguers are only focused on drafting, Ottoneu managers can wheel and deal all through the winter.  This article will detail a few ways the player organizer can be useful when analyzing your team going into the keeper deadline.

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As we move into draft season, I will be updating these rankings occasionally, when there is news to justify changes. The original rankings will stay at the bottom of the article to maintain my player notes. The original SP rankings were posted 1/31 and the most recent update is 2/28.

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As we move into draft season, I will be updating these rankings occasionally, when there is news to justify changes. The original rankings will stay at the bottom of the article to maintain my player notes. The original outfield rankings were posted 1/30 and the most recent update is 2/28.

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