So, you’ve made the difficult decision to start rebuilding in your dynasty fantasy baseball league. Maybe you’re coming off a competitive window but salary inflation and arbitration have conspired to prevent you from running the same roster back again this year or you had a really unlucky season and need to tear everything down. Whatever the case may be, you’re here now and need to start somewhere. Last week, I walked through that decision-making process and how to start evaluating your roster, now you need to start making things happen.

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At the start of the new year, I was invited to participate in an Ottoneu mock draft with other industry people and I was excited to take on the challenge. We mocked a 12-team, FanGraphs points Ottoneu league. Each team had a $400 salary and a 40-man roster to fill. Chad Young tweeted his analysis of each pick and you can follow each piece of valuable insight here. But, he was being polite when he wrote:

55) Edwin Diaz $25 @DrEephus

Like, within $2, maybe less? Sure. Diaz is the top pen option and if this is top pen price, that makes sense.

BTW, intrigued by what Lucas is doing here. Diaz, Clase, and Hendriks – that is an elite, elite pen. very curious how that would play out.

— Chad Young (@chadyoung) January 6, 2023

The truth is, I didn’t really mean to do it, draft three top closers, that is. I won’t make excuses, but if I did make excuses I’d say that I’ve never actually participated in an Ottoneu first-year draft, both of my Ottoneu teams were inherited and that I had also never participated in slow draft before. I had a hard time keeping track of where I placed bids. Insert emoji of person with hands up in the air here. Yes, I made a rookie mistake and I am not a rookie, I swear. But, mock drafts are mock drafts and if you go into one without some kind of planned experiment, then what’s the point? My experiment? Come out with guns blazing! Pay top dollar for top dollar players. What ended up happening when it was all said and done? Let’s dig in a little and find out.

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Hypothesis: Cornering the closer market will add value to my team.

The elite pen that Chad was intrigued by is projected by Steamer to be worth 1722.6 points. This draft took place prior to the unfortunate news that Liam Hendrick was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, so I used his 2022 points in this calculation. Here’s a pricing break-down:

The crazy part about this is I technically got a discount on Diaz and Clase when assuming FanGraphs auction calculator values. But, what happens when you corner the market? You end up with a surplus of stats and while that’s valuable, it means that you valued it more than everyone else. If this were a real league, I’m sure it would be difficult to trade away one of these closers and get a return that I was happy with. Add to that the fact that Hendriks has more important things to fight through than the bottom of the ninth, and you can see that I’ve placed too many eggs in one basket. Larry Schechter wrote about this exact issue in his book, “Winning Fantasy Baseball”. I’ll change some of the things Schechter wrote to fit my situation, but the idea is the same:

“Suppose [Lucas]…goes over-board on closing pitchers because there are too many great deals (in his opinion) to pass up. Later he needs to try to trade a pitcher for a hitter. He has several [relief] pitchers he can trade…When he offers these pitchers for a trade, he will be offered hitters more in line with the auction price, not his value. In other words, nobody else thought [Clase] was worth more than $23, so he’s not going to receive more than a $23 hitter for [Clase]. He will be forced to trade [Clase] for a $23 hitter, thus negating the gain he thought he had by buying [Clase].”

Lastly, suppose I still was aggressive with closers and took both Clase and Hendriks, but used the $23 I spent on Díaz on a starting pitcher. In hindsight, which is 20/20, I would spend that $23 on a pitcher who actually went for $22. Maybe the bidding would have gone further up, but for this exercise, this logic is all I have. Here are the starting pitchers who went for $22:

Just the points boost alone is enough to show how trading out that third closer for a more dependable stater at the same price makes more sense. Had I drafted Darvish instead of Díaz, I would have had an additional ~200 projected points to add to my total.

Conclusion: Drafting three elite closers is not the way to go, but drafting two and a good starting pitcher seems like a good strategy.

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Hypothesis: Being aggressive and paying for top talent is better than waiting and spreading your money more evenly.

In addition to locking in closers and cornering the market like a savage, ruthless entrepreneur who walks out of his apartment building, onto the streets and screams, “Cash rules everything around me! C.R.E.A.M.! Get the money!”, I dove straight into top-tier hitter bidding:

Having a roster with Vlad, Adley, J-Rod, and Soto made me giddier than a Canadian woman at a Shania Twain concert. But, that’s a lot of money spent early on. What we have here is a real “Stars and Scrubs” approach. The roster image above showed what I would consider my starting lineup, but just take a look at my bench:

That’s a long list of $1 players, but there are a few that I believe in. Regardless, how would things have looked had I passed on just one of my top targets, let’s say Julio Rodriguez at $47? Using the same logic as before and adding $1 to a few middle-of-the-pack players, I could have turned Julio Rodriguez into Seiya Suzuki and Jazz Chisholm, for example:

Obviously, the combination of these two players means I get more points, but who would have not been drafted? Well, that would have clearly been Adam Frazier. Here’s a breakdown:

J-Rod (rPTS 952.7) + Frazier (rPTS 445.8) = 1398.5 rPTS @ $48

or

Seiya (rPTS 773.9) + Jazz (rPTS 726.1) = 1500.0 rPTS @ $47

Conclusion: While there are a lot of assumptions being made here, the two middle-of-the-road players look better on paper. I’m saving $1 and generating 100 more points.

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Hypothesis: I can still get a lot of playing time out of $1 players.

Last week I wrote about the value in keeping, or not keeping, prospects on your roster, especially if they are being paid more than $1. This is a tricky part of Ottoneu. First, Ottoneu points leagues have 162-game maximums for all positional players, so you have to be careful with how often you’re setting a full lineup. Maximums can sneak up on you when you least expect it. Having a solid bench is very important, but how much do you want to pay for players who will rarely be plugged into your starting squad? It’s a difficult thing to balance, but I tend to rely on plate appearances when stocking my bench. It’s terrible when you need to plug in a couple of substitutes, but everyone on the bench is in AAA or rarely starting. Here are all my $1 players’ projected plate appearances by steamer:

While many people target upside with their $1 bids, as they should, I chose to go with players who were still available and who can be counted on for plate appearances. I forced myself into this situation because of my aggressive spending from the outset, but I’d rather have players who I know I can plug in when I need to instead of players whose playing time may not be very reliable. The aggravating part about this strategy was that I was out of the bidding for players like J.D. Martinez ($3), Juan Yepez ($3), Jean Segura ($3), Gavin Lux ($2), and Brandon Drury ($2). These players were all taken at great value and I missed out.

Conclusion: Spending early and going after high-value players early forces you to fill your bench with $1 players, but $1 players can still carry playing time.

All in all, I’m happy with my lineup, I think I put together a decent rotation and I locked in the two best closers in the game. Things would have to go right for me to work into the top three at the end of the season, however. I would need a Giolito bounce back, a Morton-like Morton season, Tyler Anderson’s 2022 to be the real deal and for my players to stay healthy. That’s a lot to ask for, but if it all goes wrong, I can always start a re-build, tear down. That’s the fun part of Ottoneu.

This list is a little different than the others. First, RP in FanGraphs Points leagues, where saves and holds have value but are not a category, function fairly differently than in more traditional formats. You don’t need a closer, but having a middle reliever who never gets late-inning work isn’t ideal either. Role matters but it isn’t as simple as “go get the closers to pile up saves.” Second, I value RP differently than the market or any auction calculator. So we are going need a slightly longer intro before I just drop a table on you.
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When doing my rankings by position, I have to make decisions on who makes the cut to be ranked and who doesn’t. Based on projections, current roster percentages and other data, some players get ranked and others get left out. Before the cut deadline tonight, I wanted to provide an update on a set of players who missed that cut but maybe should not have. Six of these players are utility-only, and therefore didn’t go on positional rankings. Others just weren’t on my radar, so to speak.

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The first Ottoneu content appeared on RotoGraphs early in 2011, at the same time the at-the-time-new-to-the-world fantasy game lauched. That September, I became the first RotoGraphs writer dedicated to covering Ottoneu on a regular basis. Over the years, a number of writers have weighed in on Ottoneu strategy and a smaller number have regularly contributed Ottoneu content.

But we’ve never had a dedicated Ottoneu team – until this week.

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The process. Taking a step back. Tanking. However you put it, nearly every team in Major League Baseball has been faced with the decision to rebuild at some point in the recent past. Sometimes it’s a quick retool lasting a year or two or maybe it’s a full tear-down with a multi-year cycle before sniffing the playoffs again. Dynasty fantasy baseball — and Ottoneu in particular — is no different, where the decision to build for the future is one of the core experiences of the format.

When Ottoneu was established, it was designed to try and emulate the job of an MLB general manager as closely as possible within the confines of a fantasy baseball setting. That meant deep rosters, access to the full minor leagues, and the ability to truly build for the future. I’ve played fantasy baseball for over 20 years and have been playing Ottoneu since 2011 when it was first established. It’s my favorite format I’ve played in all those years, and luckily, I’ve managed to avoid a major rebuild in any of my leagues until now.

My very first Ottoneu team was in League 32 – Fantasy Field of Dreams and I’ve held onto this team ever since. I’ve finished as high as second in this league and never lower than sixth until 2021. The prospect of rebuilding was never really all that appealing to me. I preferred to draft and wheel and deal my way into contention every year even if that “always compete” strategy never resulted in any championships. I thought it was more fun to try and push for that top-three finish than to “waste” a year (or years) rebuilding. Unfortunately, without a strong foundation to stay competitive every year, the tank has finally caught up with me.

I thought it would be helpful and instructive to walk through this rebuild to impart any lessons I learn to you, dear reader. My hope is that a guide to rebuilding in Ottoneu should be different enough thanks to the quirks and nuances of the unique format while still having some value for those of you who don’t play Ottoneu. Perhaps it’ll make your decision to start rebuilding a little easier or help you along the way if you’re already knee-deep in your own step-back cycle.

Making the Decision

I finished the 2021 season in seventh place and foolishly tried to run it back again last year. There were tons of holes on my roster but I thought I had enough pieces to be competitive with a good draft. It didn’t work. I quickly fell into last place once the season started as injuries and poor talent evaluation both dragged my team to the bottom. By May, the writing was on the wall — this team stunk and I’d need to do a lot of work to turn it around.

And that’s one of the first lessons I should have learned: you need to be brutally honest with your position. From 2017–‘19, I finished in sixth place for three straight seasons. That should have been a huge warning sign that my strategy of trying to compete every season wasn’t working. Those teams had some nice pieces like MVP-era Christian Yelich, Coors-era DJ LeMahieu, Whit Merrifield, and J.T. Realmuto. What they didn’t have was any sort of keepable pitching what-so-ever. That should have been evident in the final points-per-game (P/G) and -per-innings-pitched (P/IP) each season but I (arrogantly) thought I could overcome that hindrance.

To be fair, I did a pretty good job of building a competitive offense (thanks to the juiced baseball!) but I just couldn’t figure out an answer for my pitching staff. It regularly sat in the bottom half of the league by points-per-innings-pitched and was the downfall of those offensive powerhouses in 2018 and ‘19. A more honest evaluation and reflection after each of those years could have resulted in a decision to start rebuilding a lot sooner.

Evaluate Your Roster and Develop a Plan

These next two steps really go hand-in-hand. Once you’ve decided to start rebuilding, laying out a rough roadmap towards contention is your next step. A rebuild without an exit strategy hews too close to how the Marlins approach each season in the big leagues. It’s too easy to push the goalposts back each year if you’re not making progress so having a concrete plan in place helps you break out of that cycle.

You can’t really build that timeline until you’ve evaluated your roster and figured out who is coming along for the ride and who is dead weight. Rebuilding teams aren’t just deciding to keep players for next year, they have to take into account their timeline back to contention. Because of salary inflation and arbitration, the players you keep today will be that much more expensive down the road. If you’re looking at a quick one- or two-year retool, keeping a player with $1–$5 of surplus value makes a little more sense than if you’re looking to rebuild for multiple years. Those borderline keepers should turn into easy cuts if their salary in a few years prices them out of your roster.

Players with tons of surplus value — $10 or more — make sense as long-term keepers because they’re the players that will be contributing on your next competitive roster down the road. These are your centerpieces to your team — usually young major leaguers who have already established themselves but who have a cheap salary right now.

For my team in League 32, those centerpieces are probably these four guys:

Even though Wander Franco doesn’t necessarily have a projected surplus value in 2023, the potential in his bat is off the charts. Even if he ends up not hitting for as much power as expected, if he’s healthy and continues his upward trajectory, he should be worth the large hit to my salary cap. The other three players all have plenty of surplus value and would likely fit on nearly every roster around the league at their price, even if their projections aren’t that gaudy.

Making those keep or cut decisions with a two- or three-year outlook can be pretty tricky. It’s hard enough projecting for next season, let alone a few years into the future. Luckily, ZiPS projects three years into the future so you can at least get an idea of how your roster might look in 2024 or 2025. Those long-term projections aren’t perfect, but they’re a good baseline to start from when determining which players to keep and which to cut.

On the other hand, if you’re just starting your rebuild, you’ll need valuable pieces to trade off during the season to continue replenishing your roster. This isn’t as important as determining who the long-term core of your team is, but they’ll be a critical part of moving your rebuild forward. Think of them as the MLB veteran signed to a one- or two-year deal to be used as trade bait during the summer. For my roster, that’s someone like my $25 Max Muncy or $21 Teoscar Hernández. Those two are projected to be solid contributors, and if they have a strong season in 2023, they’d both make fantastic trade pieces during the summer for a team looking to upgrade for the stretch run. They’re cheap enough to be keepers in 2023 and good enough to be a significant upgrade for a team during the summer.

Determining which players are long-term keepers and which players are sellable keepers might seem like they’re at odds. It depends on where you’re at in your rebuilding process. Since my team is still towards the beginning, I’ve still got sellable pieces on my roster that I can keep this year with the intention to move them for more valuable pieces later on.

Now we need to talk about prospects. For a rebuilding team, you’d expect that prospects are the bread and butter of the process. While that might be true to some extent, I’m here to argue that prospects are a trap. Yesterday, Lucas Kelly did a great job breaking down much of my argument in his piece on keeping minor leaguers. With prospects, you’re hoping that their development path and introduction to the majors is as smooth as Juan Soto’s while trying to keep them on your roster with a low enough salary if/when they hit snags along the way.

For example, Marco Luciano has an average salary of $5 in Ottoneu right now (and I happen to currently roster him in League 32). His ETA on his prospect profile says 2024, but he hasn’t played above High-A yet. Even if he does hit that ETA, it’s unlikely he’ll make an immediate impact until a year or two later. At that point his salary will be at least $7 and maybe higher if he gets any major league playing time. Will he be worth that salary then? Maybe, but it’s a risk you have to weigh and Luciano’s timeline might not line up with your own cycle. Lucas made the same argument with Jack Leiter in his article yesterday. With prospects that are multiple years away, are they even going to be contributing in the major leagues when you’re aiming to break out of your rebuilding cycle? I’m choosing to keep Luciano at $3 because the salary is low enough I can take the risk to see if he pans out and he might even make an enticing trade piece this summer if his minor league season is more successful than last year.

With that said, there are some prospects who do make sense to try and build around. With the new CBA incentivizing teams to promote their top prospects earlier in the season, it’s easier than ever to figure out which prospects are going to be given a full-season opportunity in the big leagues. These MLB-ready prospects are usually deep into their development process and can usually be trusted to return some modest value now while hopefully bringing back even more value later on. My team in League 32 has four guys like that: George Kirby ($10), Ezequiel Tovar ($3), Grayson Rodriguez ($3), and Shane Baz ($3). I’m betting that these guys will develop enough to become centerpieces on my roster in a few years and they’re close enough to the majors that I can make a call on whether or not they’ve developed sufficiently fairly quickly in my rebuilding process.

That’s it for now. My next installment in this series will examine my opening moves of this rebuild from last summer and dive into a potential draft strategy.

If you are rostering a player in the minor leagues who has yet to debut, how are justifying it? I don’t write that to be critical, I’m rostering a few myself and I ask myself the same question whenever I look over my roster. If your answer is something like, “They could be really good in the future!”, then you are also thinking like me and everyone else who is rostering young, yet-to-debut minor leaguers. Who are some of these players? Here are just a few hand-selected examples with high average salaries in Ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues:

Hitters
– Marco Luciano, $5.08
– Anthony Volpe, $4.88
– Jasson Domínguez, $4.37

Pitchers
– Jack Leiter, $5.52
– Grayson Rodriguez, $5.47
– Eury Pérez, $4.29

A player like Grayson Rodriguez can be found on the auction calculator because he is expected to join the O’s rotation either out of camp or early in the season. Using Steamer projection and the auction calculator’s FanGraphs points pre-settings, Rodriguez projects as a $1 player. Technically, he’s not worth rostering with a projected value of $-13.4, but you can usually treat any player with negative value as a $1 player. Regardless, he’s not expected to be worth the $5 plus he’s averaging in Ottoneu leagues, but his rookie season is not the reason you would roster him. You would roster him in hopes that he will be worth much more than $1 in 2024, 2025, and on. If you’re paying $5 now, he’s worth $1 now, but you’ll be paying him $7 next year when he’s worth $10, and maybe you’re doing alright. That statement probably deserves a much deeper dive, but for now, I’ll stay out of that rabbit hole.

This is the fun part of rostering yet-to-debut minor-league players. It’s literally prospecting. It’s fun to do with Bowman autographed baseball cards and it’s fun to do in fantasy baseball leagues. This prospecting becomes more exciting as the player gets closer and closer to success. But, what about a pitcher like Jack Leiter? Technically he edges out Grayson Rodriguez ever-so-slightly in average salary, but here’s a bold prediction; Jack Leiter will not return $5.52 in FanGraphs points leagues this season. Ok, maybe not so bold. No one can predict the future, but this one seems like a gimme. Last year (2022), Corey Kluber returned $5.70. If Leiter were to do the same in 2023, he’d have to be around Kluber’s 2022 numbers:

First of all, Kluber only walked 21 batters in 2022!? That’s the lowest total among all starters with at least 160 innings pitched and seven less than second-place Kevin Gausman. That’s what you can or should get for around $5.00 in FanGraphs points leagues. Kluber’s current average Ottoneu salary sits at $6.66. Second, I included Leiter’s Steamer projection tongue in cheek, he basically has no projection. His player page does have a 2023 MLB ETA, but who knows? So, we can’t realistically project Leiter’s 2023 value. I suppose we could compare his minor-league stats. That’s also unfair but at least it gives us some semblance of what he can do. Luckily, Dan Szymborski does the good work of projecting player performance a few years ahead with ZIPS:

I tossed in the HBP projections myself, thinking that maybe Leiter will gain a little more control over time, and I projected no holds, the rest is provided by ZIPS. Before you start going crazy over this projection remember that volatility in projections for players who have never played in the major leagues is very high. So, let’s get even more volatile! Let’s imagine that ZIPS is being very conservative and that Leiter’s 2024 season looks more like a combination of 2023 and 2024. This is a big assumption, I know, but stick with me. Here’s where Leiter would be in 2024:

I tweaked the HBP and BB totals to reflect a more realistic total, but the other categories are the sum of 23′ and 24′ ZIPS. If this turned out to be true, what would his value be in 2024? In FanGraphs points leagues, this projection would be worth approximately 725 points (rPTS on the table below). Now, we have something to work with. The auction calculator has the following pitchers in that realm for the 2023 season:

Remember my bold/not-very-bold prediction from earlier? I’m prepared to apply that to the 2024 season as well. Jack Leiter’s current average salary of $5.52 may not be what he’s worth until beyond 2024 even if he ends up being Nestor Cortes, which is a huge if. Up until this point, I have written nothing about arbitration, but it’s very possible that someone in your league could bump his salary up a few dollars and you would no longer be making smart decisions by rostering him. Could I be wrong about all of this? Yes! I have no doubt that Leiter will be a successful major league pitcher, but Ottoneu FanGraphs points fantasy leagues roster-able? Now? No. Why did I write all of this? Well, because I’m rostering a $6 Jack Leiter and had a theory about why that was a bad decision. Finally, just before the January 31st keeper deadline, I’m ready to let him go. Farewell my friend. I hope to pick you up for $1 in the draft and start this prospecting process all over again, but at a much more reasonable price.

There are two things that jumped out at me looking at 3B. First is that there are 6 really good, exciting bats at the top, and then a big tier drop. Second is that I run out of starters I really trust before I get to 12. I’ll be pretty focused on getting one of those top six via trade or auction this offseason.

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