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 »

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

Luis Urías, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 20.51%

Urías went from underrated to overrated to disappointed to productive player to injured and has now gone back to the minors. After missing more than a month with an injury suffered on Opening Day, Urías simply has not produced for the Brewers, posting a .145/.299/236 slash line and just 2.05 P/G for his Ottoneu managers.

Some of the issue is certainly poor luck – his .179 BABIP and 12.5% line drive rate are both unsustainably low. But Urías just was not making strong contact in his limited time this year. Never a guy with elite contact quality, his brief (so far) 2023 has been a big step back and re-raised concerns from his prospect days that he simply won’t hit the ball hard enough to be an impact player. He showed in 2021 and 2022 that he can hit just hard enough to be a successful MLB hitter, but this year he just isn’t doing it.

You can see in that chart, his HH rate was stuck well below league average until 2021, and has been trending down so far this year. If you want to take something positive from this, his brutal June looks an awful lot like other slow patches for him in the middle of 2021, and a couple of times in 2022. Given still-strong plate discipline numbers, there is good reason to think Urías can play his way out of this.

I don’t mind cutting him now, especially if you are spending $10+ on him (median salary is $6), but watch his minor league performance. A hot week could be more than enough to get him back into the Brewers lineup and producing like he did in 2022.

Kris Bubic, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 16.35%

Just another round of Bubic being auctioned and cut to decrease his cap penalty. And still no other reason to be nominating or bidding on him.

Matthew Boyd, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 15.06%

Boyd has looked so good in flashes, but the performance hasn’t been consistent and now he is going to miss the rest of this year and maybe all of next after having Tommy John Surgery. No reason to stash him. He is still rostered in almost 16% of leagues and that should fade to 0 as the year goes on.

Josh Rojas, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 14.74%

Rojas was an exciting player a couple of years ago, with a decent amount of hype in fantasy circles, and he delivered two decent-ish seasons. But this year has been ugly.

The greater than 10% walk rate that helped give him a high floor has dropped t0 8.6% this year. Always a guy who hit a relatively high number of line drives, Rojas kept that rate up at 25% this year, but his exit velocity on line drives fell from 92.1 in 2021 and 93.4 last year to 90.7 this year. That lower quality of contact has brought down his BABIP and his HR/FB% (to zero, which isn’t ideal) and left him without much value.

There are only 12 qualified hitters with a LD% higher than 25% and none has an xwOBA lower than Ezequiel Tovar’s .292. Rojas had an xwOBA of .268. Hitting a lot of line drives is a good thing, but you still have to hit the ball hard for that to matter.

You’ll notice a lot of past tense in those paragraphs – that’s because Rojas has been sent down to Triple-A. And he really isn’t hitting any better there. There is no good reason not to move on from Rojas if you haven’t already.

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.

Bo Naylor, 2.1 P/G:

When Naylor got the call, I was quick to get him into my lineups and he has not really delivered. He has only had 40 PA since coming up and his P/G is hurt by PH appearances, but not enough to explain away 2.1 P/G. The strikeout rate is high and Naylor is clearly struggling to adjust.

But I want to urge patience on Naylor. His first couple of weeks of Triple-A in 2022 were not good, before he adjusted and took off. His first taste of Double-A in 2021 was not good, before he adjusted a took off.

Naylor has shown a good approach throughout his pro career, drawing a lot of walks and flashing big power. His first MLB HR was no cheapie – a 417-foot shot he hit out the other way in Kauffman Stadium, a notoriously bad power park. There are going to be growing pains, but if you can let him work through them, the prize could be big.

Jack Suwinski, 3.33 P/G:

This is all part of the Jack Suwinski show, as his high K-rate leaves him susceptible to cold streaks. The concern for managers, of course, is what if the league has just figured him out and the cold streak won’t be followed by another hot streak?

Here are some numbers for you:

• Suwinski’s average EV on the season: 91.6. Over the last two weeks: 93.4.
• Suwinski’s hard hit rate on the season: 48.6%. Over the last two weeks: 56.5%.
• Suwinski’s strikeout rate on the season: 31.7%. Over the last two weeks: 30.2%.
• Suwinski’s walk rate on the season: 15.5%. Over the last two weeks: 16.3%.

So what is driving this slump? His BABIP (.190) and HR/FB rate (13.3%) are both just extremely low, especially given the continued hard contact.

If you, like me, are getting frustrated, take a deep breath and wait for him to start mashing the ball again. It’s coming. And if you don’t enjoy the roller coaster, the next time he hits four homers over a four-game stretch (a feat he has accomplished twice so far this year), get him on the block and sell. I’m holding, enjoying the peaks, and accepting that the big picture is still very good, even if the valleys prevent it from being great.

Johan Oviedo, 2.89 P/IP:

This guy is maddening. He looked quite good to start the season before running into a tough start against the Dodgers. And he actually fared kind-of-okay, giving up 5 R (4 earned) over 5.1 IP against LA. And you had to feel good starting him against the Nats next time out and he got LIT UP. The he had another rough go against the Jays, before he settled back in.

After that run, from May 12 until June 25, he made 9 starts and posted 4.70 P/IP. Things looked good and if you are like me, you weren’t too worried about Milwaukee on July 1. But he threw another stinker, giving up 8 ER on 9 H and 3 BB over 5 IP, good for -5.70 points. Brutal.

The nice thing is things are easy on you for the moment. He gets the Dodgers next and there is no way I am risking that. Then he hits the All-Star break. But when he gets back, he should get either the Giants or Guardians at home in Pittsburgh and both of those are tempting.

For now, I am in wait-and-see mode with Oviedo. There are some really intriguing signs, but the season numbers are just a bit above replacement level. If you need pitching, he is an acceptable arm, but you have to play matchups and be okay with the risk that comes from a guy who has given up big games to the Nats (23rd in wRC+) and the Brewers (28th).

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:

• Not many teams get a double helping of cake matchups next week. The Giants will head into the All-Star break with a homestand against two weaker offenses in the Mariners and Rockies. The Orioles also have a couple of easier matchups on paper next week, but they’re on the road and face a tough divisional matchup in the Yankees.
• The Brewers, Nationals, and White Sox have rough matchups in both their series next week. Lucas Giolito has a two-start week but I’d be pretty hesitant to start him against the Blue Jays and Cardinals at home. Depending on how you feel about Corbin Burnes this year, he looks like a pretty risky start against the on-fire Reds.
• A couple teams have wonky schedules next week. The Astros and Rangers wrap up a four-game series on Monday; Houston will host Colorado for two and the Mariners for four while Texas travels to Boston and Washington for a pair of three-game series. On the other end of the week, the Dodgers and Angels play a two-game series the weekend before the All-Star break with both teams taking Sunday off.
• It looks like there are a handful of starters slated to come off the Injured List next week, including Carlos Rodón, Tarik Skubal, Johnny Cueto, and José Quintana. I’d recommend waiting to see how they fair after their injuries, though Skubal’s start at home against the A’s looks really enticing.

Notable two-start pitchers:

• Joe Ryan
• Logan Webb
• Braxton Garrett
• Tyler Wells
• Cristian Javier
• Logan Gilbert
• Clayton Kershaw
• Blake Snell
• Shane Bieber
• Zach Eflin
• Miles Mikolas
• Bryan Woo

Each team shall during the regular season maintain a roster of 22 major-league players that can fill out a starting lineup as defined below. The remaining 18 roster spots can be used for reserves, consisting of both major and minor leaguers.

That is the text of the very first rule on the Ottoneu Rules page and it is also probably the most debated text passage in all of the Ottoneu universe. And yet, I am not sure we have ever discussed why it’s so hotly debated or what you can or should do about it. Today we address Rule 1a.

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 »

After taking a break from the pitching beat last week to write about my Ottoneu rebuild, I’m back with a look at a few under-rostered starters who have been performing particularly well the past few weeks. I’ve split the article into pitchers rostered in more than and less than 60% of all Ottoneu leagues to give a good spread of shallow and deep options.

Roster > 60%

Between this section and the section below, I’ve got three different Pirates starters listed; Johan Oviedo is the best of the bunch. He’s leaned into his two breaking balls as his primary weapons, while using his mediocre but hard fastball to set up those bendy pitches. He allowed three home runs in his first start of the season but has allowed just four across the 15 starts since. That alone tells you exactly how valuable he’s been in Ottoneu. xFIP thinks he’s been a bit lucky with his home run rate but batters are having all sorts of trouble putting his breaking balls in play with any authority; he’s running a .289 and .254 expected wOBA on his slider and curveball, respectively.

Taijuan Walker is in the middle of a very impressive stretch; across his last four starts, he’s allowed just two runs while striking out 26 in 26 innings. This hot streak coincides with a two-tick increase in velocity across his repertoire. He’s also reduced the usage of his four-seam fastball in favor of his sinker and cutter. Along with his excellent splitter, he’s focusing his efforts on his best pitches and is paying dividends. As long as this bump in velocity sticks around, Walker is a worthwhile target if he’s still on the waiver wire in your league.

Seth Lugo was recently activated off the Injured List and has made a pair of solid starts against the Giants and Nationals. In his transition back to the rotation this year, he had exceeded expectations with a decent strikeout rate and a fantastic walk rate. His xFIP is right in line with his actual results and he should continue to be an unexciting innings eater with decent ratios this summer.

The knock on Luis L. Ortiz was a lack of a third offering to pair with his excellent slider and hard fastball. He’s throwing a changeup around 14% of the time this year, almost exclusively to left-handed batters, and it’s been a nice addition to his repertoire. It’s got a bit of swing and miss to it and it’s producing a .308 expected wOBA. The thing to monitor will be his ability to command his pitches; his walk rate is pretty high and he hasn’t counteracted those free passes with a high strikeout rate. The whiffs should come, especially with his slider continuing to dominate, but it seems like he’s still a work in progress.

Roster < 60%

With Yusei Kikuchi, you know you’re getting a ton of strikeouts offset by lapse in command and a penchant for allowing a ton of home runs. That’s not a great combination, particularly in a format like Ottoneu points leagues. Still, when things are going right, he can be a useful option in your rotation. Over his past five starts, he’s walked only five batters while striking out 33. That’s a phenomenal strikeout-to-walk ratio. Of course, he’s also allowed five home runs in that timeframe so all his woes haven’t been solved, but he’s still managed to accumulate 5.2 points per innings pitched during this stretch.

Matthew Boyd is another pitcher who’s home run problem has prevented him from truly succeeding in Ottoneu. That hasn’t really changed this year; his home run rate isn’t as bad as it has been in the past, but it’s still an issue. Over his last four outings, he’s racked up seven or more strikeouts in three of them while walking just three batters total. He’s currently generating whiff rates higher than 30% on three of his pitches, giving him an impressive collection of weapons.

Paul Blackburn missed most of the first two months of the season due to a spring finger injury. He returned in late May and has struck out more than a quarter of the batters he’s faced in his five starts this season. That’s easily a career high strikeout rate for him and it looks like he’s building on the breakout that he enjoyed last year. The biggest change for him so far is an increase in the number of sliders he’s throwing. That pitch was re-introduced to his repertoire last year and it’s been a huge swing-and-miss pitch for him this season.

Every once in a while, a pitcher will come out of nowhere to make a big splash in the majors. This year, that guy is Osvaldo Bido. He’s never been ranked on a Pirates prospect list and his minor league track record is spotty at best. He reached Triple-A as a 25-year-old in 2021 and finally made his major league debut this season. Across his first three starts in the big leagues, he’s allowed just six runs with a perfectly acceptable 3.60 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Something must have clicked for him because he’s always run high walk rates. If he can keep avoiding the free passes, he’s a name you could try speculating on.

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.

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