Much like Hot Right Now, Cold Right Now will be a weekly Ottoneu feature with a focus on players who are being dropped or who maybe should be dropped in Ottoneu leagues. Hot Right Now will focus on players up for auction, players recently added, and players generally performing well. Cold Right Now will have parallel two of those three sections:

1. Roster Cuts: Analysis of players with high cut% changes.
2. Cold Performers: Players with a low P/G or P/IP in recent weeks.

There won’t be a corresponding section to Current Auctions because, well, there is nothing in cuts that correspond to current auctions.

Roster Cuts

Louie Varland, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 24.36%

Varland is a Stuff+ All-Star, having posted great Minor League Stuff+ numbers and very good MLB Pitching+ numbers. The thing is, he’s also not very good. Through 82 MLB IP he has a 4.83 ERA and an even worse FIP. His xFIP and SIERA are stronger, but still not actually good. He has looked good in 41 Triple-A IP but not-so-good in 105 Double-A IP.

My take on Stuff+ is that it can be a very good early indicator if something is changing for a pitcher or if there is something positive going on that we aren’t seeing in the results. But at some point a bad pitcher with good Stuff+ is just a bad pitcher.

Varland is up to 228 innings between the high minors and the bigs and there it’s been up and down, at best. The limited innings in Triple-A have been great; the less limited (but still, to be fair, limited) innings in Double-A and MLB have not. It’s possible a breakout is coming, but I am not holding my breath.

With Varland sent back across town to St. Paul, plenty of managers are bailing and I can’t blame them. There are still hints of an exciting pitcher here, but if you are contending, you have to assume he won’t help you this year and either move on or, if you can, trade him.

John Schreiber, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 16.99%

Schreiber emerged as a legit bullpen piece last year and more or less picked up where he left off this year. Then in mid-May he hit the IL with a lat strain and he appeared in the May 22 Cold Right Now because, hey, injured reliever, time to move on! The cuts this week are either re-cuts from managers who were paying him more than $2 early in the year and are cutting back cap penalties now or managers who just finally gave up. He had been throwing as of three weeks ago, so you can imagine some managers were hoping to have him back by now.

This week, however, he was placed on the 60-day IL so he no longer takes up a roster spot. So if you still have him, unless you really need salary relief, you might as well sit on him and see what happens. If he’s a free agent in your league and you can pick him up for $1, I would consider it, as long as cap space isn’t an issue.

Seranthony Domínguez, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 16.3%

Dominguez, like Schreiber, is a reliever on the IL, and those are always easy cuts. He also hasn’t been pitching well. So if you did have him on your roster, this injury might be a blessing in disguise. Move on.

Gio Urshela, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 16.03%

Despite tanking in 2021, Urshela put up a .344 wOBA over his three seasons with the Yankees. He followed that up with a solid season in Minnesota (.332 wOBA) but has fallen hard again this year. The issue seems to be a continuation of a problem he has had since that last season in New York.

Urshela has never had a huge issue with strikeouts, nor has he ever been great at drawing walks, but he has flashed some solid exit velocities at times and in his big seasons in New York, hard contact drove him. But those have been trending down, and that trend turned ugly this year.

None of that looks particularly inspiring, does it? You can add one other data point to that. In his two best years in New York and his strong year with the Twins, his average launch angles were 13.5, 12.3 and 11.8. In his rough year as a Yankee his average launch angle was 7.5; this year it is 8.3.

He seems to have lost the ability to hit the ball hard and he isn’t elevating it much, at all, hitting a career-high 48.1% grounders.

Of course, the elephant in this section of the article is that Urshela suffered a season-ending injury, but leaving that for last wasn’t a mistake. Injured or not, Urshela had ceased to be a useful Ottoneu player. The injury just makes it that much easier to let him go.

Owen Miller, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 15.71%

On May 31, Lucas Kelly covered Miller in his Hot Right Now. Miller was being picked up across Ottoneu, with a hot performance driven by three things:

1. An improved K-rate. That has fallen off. Since May 31, he is striking out in more than 23% of plate appearances. When Lucas wrote him up, Miller had decreased his rate of strikeouts for two straight seasons, but if his current form continues, that won’t be true for long.
2. A sky-high BABIP. That has also fallen off. Since May 31, he has a .250 BABIP, which is a far cry from the .366 he sported before that date. That’s not a huge surprise – guys who don’t hit the ball hard (and Miller does not hit the ball hard) don’t typically sport elite BABIPs for long periods of time.
3. Excess playing time thanks to injuries to Willy Adames and Luis Urías. That has also fallen off. The Brewers have gotten healthy and Miller is back to being a bench bat.

None of this, by the way, is new for Miller. His hot streak in 2023 is just his second-best stretch dating back to last year and the explanation is pretty easy to see when you compare his rolling wOBA to his rolling BABIP.

This is pretty straightforward – you can help your wOBA with home runs, walks, or hits on balls in play. If you don’t walk much or hit for much power like, for example, Owen Miller, your wOBA is going to be very highly correlated to your BABIP. And you should note, that graph does not have two scales. His wOBA and his BABIP tend to be, more or less, the same. He has a career .293 BABIP and projects to have a BABIP between .295 and .307, depending on which line of his player page you look at. There is not a lot to get excited about here.

Cold Performers

To measure cold performers this week, I’m looking for players with low P/G or P/IP in the last 14 days.

Josh Donaldson, 0.55 P/G:

In his first two weeks off the IL, Donaldson smacked 5 HR and posted a 128 wRC+ that could have been much higher if not for a .053 BABIP (no, that is not a typo). The crazy thing is that .053 BABIP represents his best stretch of the season, as he has just a .051 BABIP on the year as a whole. Then he went 0-14 over his next four games. And then he stopped playing.

Friday he was a PH and went 0-1. Saturday and Sunday he didn’t play at all. This stretch culminated with Donaldson and manager Aaron Boone having a conversation Sunday and Boone saying Donaldson would be playing more. Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time a manager said one thing and did another, but let’s take Boone at his word and assume Donaldson will be back in the lineup soon. Should he be back in our fantasy lineups?

I think the answer is probably yes. He has a 22.2% barrel rate this year. His His xwOBA (.355) is exactly .100 points higher than his wOBA (.255). That is the largest such gap for any player with 60+ PA this season. Donaldson has seen an increase in his strikeouts this year, but even that is trending the right direction as he has been better since coming back from injury and even better over the last couple of weeks.

There is no way that BABIP can continue to be so low. While the HR/FB rate will drop, as well, he is hitting the ball with authority and plays his home games at a little league field Yankee Stadium, which can only help. I think he is an interesting buy low and he is available in more than 85% of leagues.

Gary Sánchez, 1.92 P/G:

Sánchez joined the Padres on May 30 and for two weeks set the world on fire. For the last two weeks, however, he has kindly focused on lowering temperatures and undoing the damage he caused. His strikeout rate has bloomed to over 30% on the year. Sánchez is not hitting the ball as hard, he isn’t barrelling it much, and his propensity to swing and miss is well-known.

It is worth noting that the last few games have been better and everything we are looking at here is small sample sizes. He was hot for two weeks! He was cold for almost two weeks! He has been hot for like 3 days again!

I don’t see all the same signs with Sánchez that I did with Donaldson (he shares the same low BABIP, but the xwOBA and other Statcast indicators aren’t as exciting and his strikeout rate is heading the wrong direction). But he has one big advantage Donaldson doesn’t: he’s a C and the bar to being successful at C is low. He is also just CRUSHING lefties. A catcher who you can confidently start a couple of times per week facing a LH starter isn’t a bad thing to have on your roster.

Matt Strahm, 1.11 P/IP:

Strahm looked like a breakout for the Phillies earlier this year. Then they moved him to the pen and he was good, but not great. And now things are going off the rails. Strahm has given up 4 HR in his last 8 IP, and it is awfully hard to be a successful Ottoneu pitcher with that kind of HR rate.

While that early success was super exciting, it’s worth noting that he wasn’t really pitching to a better FIP than he had at many other times in his career.

Doing it as a starter instead of a reliever, made it special, but he isn’t a starter anymore. So what do you do with him? He has been cut in more than 40% of leagues over the last month and more managers should be moving on. He isn’t helping you and there really isn’t reason to believe he will. Even if he gets back into the rotation, I would expect regression from his relief numbers (consistent with most bullpen-to-rotation moves) and not a return to his early season success.

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.

A few general schedule notes:

• The A’s are lined up to face the Yankees and White Sox next week at home. Both of those opponents have been struggling offensively recently and the Coliseum is a fantastic pitcher’s park. This is a pretty good opportunity to start whichever Oakland starters you’re rostering.
• The Blue Jays, Marlins, and Tigers have some pretty rough matchups next week. Both Toronto and Miami face the tough Red Sox offense; the former gets the red hot Giants in their first series of the week and the latter gets the Braves in a huge divisional showdown next weekend. Detroit will travel to Texas to face the potent Rangers offense and then travel to Colorado over the weekend. If you’re rostering any of the Tigers starting rotation, keep them on your bench next week.
• The Dodgers are the other team to visit Coors Field next week, making Clayton Kershaw and Bobby Miller pretty risky starts. Thankfully, they head to Kansas City afterwards, giving the other half of their rotation some really nice matchups over the weekend. It’s also possible Julio Urías will end up making his return from the IL in that series against the Royals.

Notable two-start pitchers:

• Luis Castillo
• Spencer Strider
• Framber Valdez
• Nathan Eovaldi
• Ranger Suárez
• Taj Bradley
• Yu Darvish
• Zac Gallen
• Tyler Wells
• Garrett Whitlock
• Kevin Gausman
• Sonny Gray
• Michael Kopech
• Paul Blackburn
• Gavin Williams

We’re approaching the busiest part of the season as teams who have designs on competing are looking to make their moves to bolster their rosters ahead of the final stretch this fall. A few weeks ago, Chad Young wrote up his process of deciding who to keep and who to sell on one of his Ottoneu rosters. I’d like to go through the same effort for my roster in Ottoneu League 32 – Fantasy Field of Dreams. If you’ve been following along with this series, I’ve covered my process of rebuilding this team, from the initial decision to rebuild, to the draft, to the ups and downs of the regular season.

I’ve already made three moves with an eye towards the future:

1. My $3 Kyle Manzardo for $9 Jazz Chisholm Jr.
2. My $6 Michael Conforto and $3 Luis Garcia (2B) for $12 Ryan Mountcastle
3. My $43 Bryce Harper and $21 Teoscar Hernández for $48 Corey Seager and $3 Taylor Ward (I previously wrote up my thought process for this trade)

Seager has been absolutely phenomenal this year and is looking like he’ll be well worth his $50 price tag next year, assuming he doesn’t get hit with arbitration dollars. Ward has also been hitting well recently, giving me hope that his early season slump was just a bump in the road and that he’ll be a solid keeper at $5 next year. Unfortunately, Chisholm has been sidelined with a toe injury and Mountcastle has continued to struggle despite some promising peripherals.

The first step is deciding who is going to make up the core of next year’s team. No one is untouchable but there are certainly players who are more available than others. Going through the process of identifying and sorting your roster with an eye towards next year is an important exercise for any team, even if you’re towards the top of the standings. Here’s how I view my roster shaking out right now:

These nine guys should form the core of my next competitive roster. It would be ideal if Franco was a little cheaper, but his breakout this season and sky high ceiling justify his salary. I didn’t expect to have two catchers listed in this group, but Murphy and Heim are both slugging the ball and both look like they’ve taken a significant step forward this year. I’ve got a solid little group of pitchers here too headlined by Kirby.

I’m a little worried that I don’t have any outfielders in the group above. It’s become increasingly difficult to fill five slots with solid contributors and that was a concern of mine when I moved Harper for Seager. Steer is on track to gain OF eligibility for this year and next but I’d rather use him as a super utility guy rather than locking him into a spot in my outfield.

I’d have to be blown away by the offer to move any of these guys right now.

These five I expect to be keepers but there’s a bit of risk they might not pan out the way I expect. Keeping a $9 Torkelson is probably a bit crazy, but he’s been hitting much better recently and still has his prospect pedigree working in his favor. If he finishes the season strong, he could be a nice fit on my roster. Kelenic’s breakout has slowed down a bit after a very hot start; I think the adjustments he’s made are for real but there’s always a chance he falls back into his bad habits. I thought Ward was a great buy low target at his salary; he should be a keeper if he continues to hit like he has this month.

This group is filled with guys who are fairly priced and I could see myself keeping a handful of them. I’d also be open to moving any of them if the right deal materialized. I’ve already gotten a number of inquiries about Seager but I acquired him for Harper. If I was going to flip him, I’d want to get commensurate value in return which isn’t what other owners seem like they’re interested in giving up. I expect to enter 2024 with Seager and Franco locking down two of my infield positions.

I’ve got a large group of pitchers here who all seem like pretty good values for their salaries. Detmers and Rogers still have something to prove and they’re the most expensive of the bunch. I almost put Gonsolin and Suárez in the top tier of automatic keepers but I think there are enough question marks surrounding them that I left them here.

Here’s where most of my outfielders appear too. Keeping Gurriel at $16 would be pretty tough even though he’s posting career highs in hard-hit and contact rates. De La Cruz and McCarthy have both been up and down during their short careers; if they can finish this year strong, they both become interesting keepers.

If I keep all 26 players in these three tiers, I’d head into next season with $307 in committed salary plus an unknown amount of arbitration that could be as high as $33 or as low as $11. Let’s assume the final total falls somewhere closer to the high end. With 14 roster spots to fill and around $60-$70 of free cap space, I need to move some of these high priced players on the bubble to get my roster in the right shape for next year.

Here’s the list of guys I’d be happy to move or am planning on cutting at the end of the year. Muncy is probably the most valuable player above and I have a standing offer involving him that I’ve been sitting on. I’ve also had a surprising number of inquiries about Baz. At his salary, he wouldn’t be hard to keep, but the injury history is a huge red flag and I think I’d be able to get more value from him in a deal than from keeping him.

Abreu could potentially have some value to a team if his midseason hot streak continues and he’s able to start producing around his career norms over the second half of the season. All of my relievers are listed here too since Romano is really the only one with enough value to realistically keep.

Going through the effort of organizing my roster like this has helped me see that I’ve got too many players on the keep/sell bubble and they’re all a little too expensive to hold onto all of them. I’ll need to find some creative deals to reduce the amount of salary I’m planning on keeping next year to give me more room in the draft to add to my roster. I’ll update my trade block with these guys and hope to move some of them for cheaper pieces.

The 2023 version of Ottoneu Hot Right Now will include three different sections:

1. Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
2. Roster Adds: Analysis of players with high add% changes.
3. Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP in recent weeks.

The FanGraphs 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re nearing the half-way point of the season and teams are aggressively buying and selling to set themselves up for titles (whether those titles are this year or in future years). Identifying trade targets is generally a league-by-league kind of thing, as buyers can only buy players sellers are selling, but you can find targets by looking at broader trends across leagues, as well.

Plus, as a buyer, you can’t always wait for someone to decide to sell – sometimes you need to be proactive and reach out and see if a team is ready to move a bat you need. Today, I am looking to identify hitter trade targets for buyers, by comparing players’ median salary to their 2023 points per game. Read the rest of this entry »

Much like Hot Right Now, Cold Right Now will be a weekly Ottoneu feature with a focus on players who are being dropped or who maybe should be dropped in Ottoneu leagues. Hot Right Now will focus on players up for auction, players recently added, and players generally performing well. Cold Right Now will have parallel two of those three sections:

1. Injuries: Players who are being cut because of IL stints.
2. Roster Cuts: Analysis of players with high cut% changes.
3. Cold Performers: Players with a low P/G or P/IP in recent weeks.

There won’t be a corresponding section to Current Auctions because, well, there is nothing in cuts that correspond to current auctions.

Injuries

Mitch Haniger – fractured right forearm (RotoWire)

Lance McCullers Jr. – Transferred from the 15-day injured list to the 60-day injured list by the Astros on Saturday (forearm) (RotoWire).

Yoán Moncada – Placed on the injured list Thursday due to his nagging back injury (RotoWire).

Roster Cuts

Matt Strahm, Add% (-) Change (7 days) – 12.50%

The Phillies lefty has given up four home runs in his last four appearances with a total of six earned runs. He only has one save and two holds on the year, and in the last 14 days, he has accumulated -22 points. He is a setup man among setup men in the Phillies pen and does not have the hot hand among José Alvarado, Gregory Soto, and Craig Kimbrel.

Max Kepler, Add% (-) Change (7 days) – 10.26%

Kepler has four hits in his last 30 plate appearances. With Alex Kirilloff getting more and more reps in right field and switch-hitter Willi Castro able to play the outfield as well, Kepler is getting crowded out of playing time. He’s only hitting .100 against lefties and .203 against righties and his power hasn’t made up for those low averages just yet. You might think Kepler has to break out of this slump sooner or later, but his SLG and wOBA marks have been slowly declining and he is in his age 30 season:

Zach McKinstry, Add% (-) Change (7 days) – 8.98%

Once “Hot Right Now” McKinstry ends up being written about in the opposite “Cold Right Now” as some may have predicted. Here’s what I wrote at the end of May:

.318/.478/.439 in the month of May. Compare that with a career .232/.311/.401 and you could hypothesize that regression will come. His season .351 BABIP supports that hypothesis.

His slash line currently stands at .246/.336/.372 and his wOBA has fallen off a cliff:

After staying hot through the first week of June, McKinstry went 0-16 but he has three hits in his last three games. His decreased O-Swing% is what caught my eye when he was having success and that has started to go up:

Caleb Ferguson, Add% (-) Change (7 days) – 8.33%

In his last few appearances in May and his first few in June, Ferguson went through a really rough stretch as he gave up eight earned runs in less than five innings (4.2). It seems like he has corrected somewhat as his last three appearances have given up no hits, no walks, and no runs. His 2023 K/9 (10.38) is right in line with his career mark (10.77) and RosterResource’s “Closer Depth Chart” still lists him as part of a closer committee. Hopefully, the rough patch was just that and Ferguson will start making Ottoneu managers happy again. I wouldn’t be cutting based on this little hiccup, but I would be paying close attention to his next few appearances.

Paul DeJong, Add% (-) Change (7 days) – 7.37%

DeJong’s home run on Sunday (June 18th) fell into the realm of Murphy’s Law for managers who cut him before that game. I understand why, DeJong is either hitting a home run or not hitting at all. Though he does have a four-game hit streak rolling right now, his batting average sits at .228. RosterResource doesn’t have him listed as a platoon hitter, but he is seeing more success against lefties (.263) than he is against righties (.218). I don’t think anyone should be surprised as DeJong’s current slash line of .228/.298/.444 is very similar to his career line of .232/.305/.429. If you’re willing to wait for a few home runs every once in a while and pay close attention to matchups, DeJong is a fine player to roster in Ottoneu formats.

Cold Performers

To measure cold performers this week, I’m looking for players with low P/G or P/IP in the last 14 days.

Rowdy Tellez, -0.36 P/G:

FanGraphs writer Chris Gilligan wrote earlier in the month about Tellez’s plate discipline and his taking of strikes. He has 12 home runs on the season but he hasn’t put one out of the yard since May 22nd. He’s still been getting his hits but they aren’t coming that often. He’s five for his last 21 plate appearances. Tellez is the type of hitter who can suddenly hit six bombs just like that, so stay patient and plug him back into your lineup if you see his xwOBA on the rise.

Byron Buxton, -3.25 P/G:

Buxton returned from injury on the 15th of June and hasn’t had a hit or a walk in his first 13 plate appearances. Let’s give him some time to settle in and get his timing down before we start making any big claims. You just have to hope that the rib injury that had him on the IL isn’t the culprit.

Max Scherzer, 0.11 P/IP:

Here’s a quote from Max Scherzer that I pulled from an SB Nation’s Amazin’ Avenue article:

“This is simple: I struggled with my slider. Every time I was throwing my slider, it was hanging. I wasn’t executing it the way I needed to. I can’t believe I was hanging that many sliders in all those situations.”

Mad Max struck out only two, gave up two home runs and six earned runs in his last appearance against the Yankees. All of Scherzer’s breaking pitches (slider, curveball, changeup) have accumulated negative pVals this season. The veteran clearly knows what the issue is and you can bet he is working on it.

Spencer Strider, -2.33 P/IP:

I’ll come right out with it, Strider has a home run issue. He’s given up 10 home runs in his last six appearances. That’s not good in points leagues. Sure, he also has 48 strikeouts in that time, but hitters are starting to do damage on his fastball. Take a look at his pVal accumulation between his first eight starts of the season to the last six:

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.

A few general schedule notes first:

• The Cubs and Cardinals play in the MLB London Series next weekend which means they’re both off on Friday for travel. The last time teams played in England, the Yankees and Red Sox combined for 50 total runs across two games. The dimensions of London Stadium are particularly small — it would be the shortest center field fence in the majors — so avoiding the four pitchers scheduled to start this series would be prudent.
• They aren’t the only team with a weird travel schedule next week. The Nationals and Diamondbacks are scheduled to play a make-up game on Thursday. That means Arizona will play in Milwaukee to start the week, head to Washington for a single game, and then fly all the way across the country to San Francisco for their weekend series.
• Teams with more traditionally tough schedules include the Angels, Braves, and Dodgers. Shohei Ohtani manages to avoid pitching in Coors Field but he still has to face the Dodgers offense in his start next week. Based on his struggles recently, you’re probably better off sitting Spencer Strider in both of his starts next week. Atlanta plays in a couple of hitter friendly venues against teams who are playing particularly well recently.
• I’ve only been calculating these matchup scores for a few weeks now, but the Reds somehow managed to pull a zero in their series against the Braves. That’s pretty incredible. Just for reference, that means they’re facing the best road offense and the best offense over the last two weeks in the worst venue for home runs in the majors.
• Teams with easier schedules include the Pirates, Tigers, and Twins. All of Minnesota’s rotation has been a must-start for practically the entire season, but they’ve all got pretty cushy matchups next week. Detroit’s and Pittsburgh’s rotations are a little hit-or-miss, but there are some key contributors who should be easy starts next week.

Notable two-start pitchers:

• Tyler Glasnow
• Gerrit Cole
• Pablo López
• George Kirby
• José Berríos
• Garrett Whitlock
• Merrill Kelly
• Michael Wacha
• Alex Cobb
• Framber Valdez
• Max Scherzer
• Corbin Burnes
• Clayton Kershaw
• Bailey Ober
• Johan Oviedo
• Ranger Suárez
• Aaron Civale
• Michael Lorenzen

This article was inspired by Ezequiel Tovar. I was excited about Tovar before the season started. I wasn’t alone in that. But he started cold, his value tanks, and now I can’t get anything useful for him off my trade block in Ottoneu League 1.

But Tovar has quietly put up a strong first half. I am getting excited again! But if no one wants to acquire him from me, maybe his value is low and I should be buying. Which got me wondering if there were others like him – players whose overall lines look pretty bad, but have actually been quite good for most of the year. So I set out to find out.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2023 version of Ottoneu Hot Right Now will include three different sections:

1. Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
2. Roster Adds: Analysis of players with high add% changes.
3. Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP in recent weeks.

The FanGraphs 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Keeping track of the machinations of 30 major league bullpens is pretty tricky. In standard leagues, it’s hard enough trying to discern which relievers are earning save opportunities, especially since more and more teams are using a committee approach in the ninth inning. In Ottoneu, with both saves and holds earning points, that search for high leverage relievers becomes even more of a challenge. There are plenty of resources out there — the Roster Resource Closer Depth Chart is one of my favorites — but even the most vigilant fantasy player can’t keep track of everything going on across the majors.

Here are a few relievers who have been seeing high leverage usage over the last two weeks, who are also rostered in less than 60% of all Ottoneu leagues:

Chris Martin is currently the primary setup guy ahead of Kenley Jansen in the Red Sox ‘pen. His strikeout rate isn’t as high as it was last year with the Cubs and Dodgers but his walk rate is still a tidy 2.6%. Nothing has really changed in his profile; his swinging strike rate is right in line with where it was last year and his CSW% is up to a career high 30.7%. I’d expect his strikeout rate to bounce back towards where it was, giving him a bit more ceiling than his surface-level stats would indicate.

I wrote up Josh Sborz the last time I looked at under-rostered relievers and his roster rate barely ticked up from 0.3% to 1.9%! He’s definitely taken hold of the eighth inning duties in the Rangers bullpen ahead of closer Will Smith and his FIP is currently the lowest among this group. He currently has a career-high strikeout rate at 36.8% and his walk rate has come down two points from his career norm. More importantly, he’s only allowed a single home run this year, something that had plagued him in the past. Grant Anderson was called up by the Rangers at the end of May and has already inserted himself into the late inning picture. He dazzled in his debut, throwing 2.2 innings and striking out seven.

Justin Lawrence has taken over closing duties for the Rockies. He’s using his big sweeping slider to earn swings and misses, though his overall strikeout rate is held back by a sinker that’s used to get weak contact on the ground. Still, that’s a benefit for a reliever pitching in Coors Field and he’s only allowed a single home run this year and a 95th percentile barrel rate.

Sam Hentges missed more than a month of the season with a spring shoulder injury but has come back strong and has converted a number of high leverage opportunities for the excellent Guardians bullpen. He’s collected seven holds and has been used for multiple innings a handful of times as well. His command has been uncharacteristically off, though that might just be him still shaking off the rust after his injury. He’s throwing in the zone as often as he was last year, but his chase rate has fallen by nearly eight points.

Lucas Sims missed most of last year and some of this year with a back injury, but he returned in late-April and has taken his place as the primary setup guy in Cincinnati. He really struggled with his command after being activated off the IL, though he’s only walked two batters over his last six outings. Back in 2020, it looked like he had taken a big step forward as a lockdown reliever and the slider that drove that success is still intact. Opposing batters are whiffing 45.7% of the time they offer at his breaking ball, right in line with the whiff rates he ran in 2020 and ‘21.

After bouncing around three different organizations over the last three years, it looks like Chris Devenski has finally rediscovered the changeup that made him one of the best relievers in baseball all the way back in his debut season in 2016. His FIP across the last six seasons has been an ugly 4.27 with a decent 3.71 strikeout-to-walk ratio. This year, he’s throwing his changeup more often than ever, it’s returning a whiff rate close to 40%, and he only walked the first two batters of his season yesterday. He’s taken hold of the eighth inning role in the Angels bullpen.

With Ben Joyce sidelined with an elbow injury, another young relief arm for the Angels has stepped into high leverage opportunities in his place. José Soriano was called up in early-June and has picked up holds in three of his first four appearances in the big leagues. The flamethrowing righty had been a starting prospect in the past but command issues forced him into the bullpen for Los Angeles. He’s currently unrostered in Ottoneu.