Changelog

• 12/22/2025 – First Release
• 1/12/2026 – Projections update
• 1/26/2026 – Bo Bichette signing
• 2/1/2026 – Ha-Seong Kim injury, Projections update
• 2/18/2026 – Willi Castro signing, Injuries to Lindor and Holliday
• 2/27/2026 – Projections and ADP Update
• 3/10/2026 – Spring training overreactions and projections update.
• 3/20/2026 – Ha-Seong Kim injury timeline, projections and ADP update

Ranking Methodology

• Updated ADP data from NFBC Draft Champions to NFBC Online Championships.
• $ Values are based on standard 5×5 12-team league using the FanGraphs Depth Charts and these Auction Calculator settings. They default to a player’s most valuable position, so if the first base list includes a catcher, it will show that player’s value at catcher.
• ADP and $ Values are updated as of the last update date on this post.
• 5-game eligibility was used for these lists to cast the widest net.

Shortstop Overview

The shortstop position is once again the deepest position in fantasy from top to bottom. There is a great mix of talent from old, reliable vets to young up and comers. However, a lot of the position has eligibility at other spots and there are big drop offs through out.

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Today’s Discussion

Added news on Ha-Seong Kim’s injury timeline, moved up the trio of rookies that are trending towards making their team’s Opening Day rosters.

Full Rankings Without Tiers

Chad started off the Ottoneu rankings push with his 4×4 middle infield rankings yesterday and I’m following up with my rankings for Ottoneu points leagues. You can find all the information about the format and methodology for these rankings in Chad’s introduction.

Changelog

• 2/19/2026: Updated projections w/ ZiPS and OOPSY. Added player notes for all players in tier $1-$2 and above. Updated tier placement for 11 players (green = moved up, red = moved down).
• 3/18/2026: Updated tier placement for 16 players based on 2026 draft results.

Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Tiered Rankings for Points Leagues: C | 1B | MI | 3B | OF | SP | RP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Tiered Rankings for Points Leagues: C | 1B | MI | 3B |OF | SP | RP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Tiered Rankings for 4×4: C | 1B | MI | 3B | OF | SP | RP

Here are few more notes about my process:

• Projected points. I’ve been building my own homebrewed projections for the past decade plus, ever since I started playing Ottoneu, and they form the basis for the rankings below. They’re nothing overly complicated; essentially just a MARCEL-esque projection using three years of historical data filtered through a rough aging curve and adjusted for the current run environment. I also include a collection of up to five public projection systems (ZiPS, Steamer, OOPSY, THE BAT, and PECOTA) to provide some additional context. That gives each player a wealth of data sources to form their projection. Currently, the projections below only include Steamer and THE BAT projections. I will update the rankings in February once ZiPS, OOPSY, and PECOTA are released.
• P/G vs P/PA. Points per game played is the gold standard by which you should be evaluating players in Ottoneu. I won’t argue with that. That measure does have some drawbacks, particularly for players who pinch hit, pinch run, or are used as defensive substitutions often. Those limited appearances can skew a player’s P/G lower than what they’re producing when they’re getting three or four plate appearances when they start a game. To provide a little more context for these kinds of players, I’m projecting players using points per plate appearance. That measure should give us a better idea of how a player produces no matter how he’s used by his team.

Just to reiterate a point that Chad makes in his introduction: yes, these rankings are presented ordinally, but the tier a player appears in is much more important than if they’re ranked 16th or 28th. Within tiers, players are generally ranked by their projected Pts/PA but that doesn’t necessarily mean I think one player is significantly more valuable than another in the same tier. I’ve got notes on the top 50-ish players below and I’ll add more notes when I update the rankings next month. Let’s get into it.

The Middle Infield episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Chris Towers

Strategy Section

• League format differences
  • How would your draft strategy change between?
    • Rotisserie (Roto) vs. HTH Points vs. HTH Categories
    • Waiver wire leagues vs. non-waiver wire (Draft Champions / Draft & Hold) leagues
    • Having IL slots vs. no IL slots
    • Large bench vs. small bench
    • Trading vs. non-trading leagues
    • Daily lineups vs. weekly lineups
• Middle Infielders
  • General player pool observations
  • Jacob Wilson as a fantasy starting shortstop
  • Which statistics should you look to draft from the MI position?

ATC Undervalued Middle Infielders

• Jeremy Pena
• Brice Turang
• Trevor Story
• Willy Adames
• Dansby Swanson
• Ezequiel Tovar
• Gleyber Torres
• Xander Bogaerts
• Masyn Winn
• Andrés Giménez
• Other honerable mentions

Injury Update

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast (beat-the-shift): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

As we hit the beginning of draft season, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day. You can read all the Market Reports here.

Read the rest of this entry »

As we hit the beginning of draft season, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day. You can read all the Market Reports here.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Ottoneu keeper deadline is quickly approaching. There’s about a month and a half left to make your roster decisions before the January 31 cut deadline. I’m going through a handful of difficult keep or cut decisions at every position group to give you a transparent look at my decision making process and hopefully help you with theses specific cases for these specific players. I started with the corner infielders last week and will have outfield and pitchers after the holidays.

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Carlos Correa, SS/3B
Salary: $26, $15
Average Salary: $15
2025 P/G: 4.42
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.19

Carlos Correa’s capacity for greatness still resides somewhere within him. Just a year ago, he posted a 154 wRC+, though he was limited to just 86 games thanks to a significant foot injury. He played through that same issue this year and it’s likely that it seriously affected his ability to perform for most of the season. He limped to a .267/.319/.386 slash line (97 wRC+) through the first half of the season, though he improved on that after being traded back to the Astros at the trade deadline.

The most concerning yellow flag in Correa’s peripherals was a groundball rate that jumped 4.5 points from 2024. He was still hitting the ball with authority, but all that additional contact on the ground meant that his barrel rate fell to 6.8%, the second lowest mark of his career. His top level plate discipline metrics were a little out of whack too; his strikeout rate was mostly stable but his walk rate fell by more than three points. There was nothing really amiss in his underlying metrics; he was a little more aggressive at the plate because he saw more pitches in the zone than ever before but that doesn’t fully explain the drop in free passes.

The projections are a little more pessimistic than I’d expect based on his history, though his excellence in 2024 seems like the outlier when looking at his down seasons in ‘23 and ‘25. It all boils down to how his foot is fairing. If he’s truly healthy heading into next season, it’s reasonable to expect him to beat his projections. There’s also the matter of his position switch. Correa will retain shortstop eligibility next year, but he’ll probably lose it the year after unless something surprising happens in Houston.

Keep or cut?

I’m happy to keep Correa at $15 and I’d probably be comfortable up to $18 or $20 just based on his history of production. There’s a risk that he won’t be healthy, but he was valued around $25 during his abbreviated 2024 season. That’s the upside, even if he misses some time next year. But that same health risk means that I’m probably not keeping my $26 share.

–

Xander Bogaerts, SS
Salary: $9
Average Salary: $13
2025 P/G: 4.49
Projected 2026 P/G: 4.76

At this point in his career, Xander Bogaerts is a much more valuable real life shortstop than a fantasy one. There’s been a steady drop in offensive production over the last three years, though the good news is that his 2025 was an improvement on his dismal ‘24 season. Even though he’s likely well past the era of posting wRC+’s in the 130s, he’s only a couple of years removed from putting up a 119 wRC+ in 2023. While that first season in San Diego was a step back from his time in Boston, his fantasy value still sat around $20 for his efforts.

Despite the league average results on the field, there were some encouraging signs in Bogaerts’s underlying metrics. Never one to post outrageous batted ball peripherals, his hard hit rate was the highest it’s been since 2022 and his barrel rate, air contact rate, and pull rate the highest they’ve been since 2021. The main reason behind all those improvements? A 1.5 mph increase in his bat speed this year. Those gains in those specific metrics should have resulted in better outcomes but his actual wOBA trailed behind his expected wOBA by 12 points.

Steamer sees a bounce back season in Bogaerts’s future and I think I can see what the computer is picking up on. His down season in 2024 was marred by a serious shoulder injury and the improvements to his bat speed and batted ball peripherals tell me that his body has mostly returned to normal.

Keep or cut?

I’m going to keep at $9 and I think I’d be comfortable keeping up to $12 or $13. There’s some risk of age related decline, but he showed he was healthy last year. Don’t pay for his name recognition or the production you’d expect if he still played in Boston, but he still can be a useful middle infield option for your fantasy squad.

–

Jackson Holliday, 2B/SS
Salary: $9
Average Salary: $14
2025 P/G: 4.26
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.08

How do you properly assess a 21-year-old phenom who hasn’t lived up to the sky-high hype across his first two seasons in the majors? The scouting reports were so glowing, I imagine plenty of fantasy players paid a pretty penny for Jackson Holliday, hoping that they were getting a future star to anchor their lineups. Holliday could certainly still turn into that star, but he didn’t make the immediate impact many were expecting.

The good news is that Holliday is still exceedingly young and he improved by leaps and bounds during his second taste of the big leagues.His overall batting line was a hair below league average but he made some strides to elevate the ball more often and improved his contact rate by more than eight points. You can still dream on the ceiling because he still has so much more growing to do — both from a physical standpoint and just learning how major league pitchers will approach him — but he could be a year or two away from realizing that potential.

The projections see a small step forward from him in 2026 which is pretty reasonable given his pedigree and age. Still, those improvements only get him to the level of a replacement level middle infielder in fantasy baseball. Could he blow past those projections with a post-hype breakout? Absolutely! Do I want to bank on that happening next year? Eh…

Keep or cut?

I’m probably keeping at $9 though I think that’s probably the highest I’d be comfortable going at this point. Any higher and I’m buying his potential ceiling without any real indicators he’s about to breakout in a meaningful way. I also recognize that your place in your team’s competitive window will have a huge bearing on your willingness to keep Holliday. If you’re in win-now mode, keeping Holliday with a double-digit salary is a tougher pill to swallow than if you’re still rebuilding your roster and looking to compete in a year or two.

–

Bryson Stott, 2B/SS
Salary: $6, $4
Average Salary: $9
2025 P/G: 4.20
Projected 2026 P/G: 4.49

From July 23 through the end of the season, Bryson Stott posted a .307/.376/.508 slash line, good for a 143 wRC+ and 5.5 P/G. That hot streak corresponded with a pretty dramatic change to his swing mechanics. He was able to improve the quality of his contact while still maintaining the excellent plate discipline that buoyed his value as a batter throughout his career. With a solid approach now enhanced by more hard contact, Stott has all the underlying indicators of a potential breakout in 2026.

The projections aren’t yet picking up on those mechanical changes — to the silicon circuits, his hot streak to end the season was just that, no real signal to affect next year’s projection. But if his improved swing carries over to 2026, there’s real reason to believe he’ll be able to beat those projections easily. The risk is that he falls back to his previous career norms and remains a replacement level middle infielder for fantasy purposes.

Keep or cut?

I’m willing to pay $6 (and $4) to see if his swing changes carry over to next year. Those salaries are low enough that it’s easy to cut bait if he’s the same old Stott next year, but the potential for a huge breakout is real enough that it’s not a problem to carry him on my rosters to start the season. I’m not sure I’d go into double digits to keep him but I do think the ceiling is a lot higher than the projections think it is.

Shortstop Overview

Shortstop is a fun position with a lot of big drop offs. The top of the tiers make up half of the first six picks in the ADP and there are 10 shortstops in the top 100 pick. While there are a lot of interesting players at the position that present a lot of upside, the drop offs are pretty severe and in deeper leagues you can find yourself pretty weak at the position if you wait too long.

Changelog

• 3/10/2025 – Gunnar Henderson injury and projections/ADP Update
• 2/18/2025 – Projections and ADP Update
• 1/29/2025 – Projections and ADP Update
• 1/13/2025 – Projections and ADP Update
• 12/12/2024 – Adames signs in San Francisco
• 12/5/2024 – First Release

Ranking Methodology

• ADP is based on 30-day rolling NFBC Draft Champions Leagues.
• $ Values are based on standard 5×5 12-team league using the FanGraphs Depth Charts and these Auction Calculator settings. They default to a player’s most valuable position, so if the first base list includes a catcher, it will show that player’s value at catcher.
• ADP and $ Values are updated as of the last update date on this post.
• 5-game eligibility was used for these lists to cast the widest net.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Middle Infield episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Mike Gianella

Strategy Section

• 3rd & 4th Rounds
  • Should you continue to avoid [downside] risk in the 3rd and 4th rounds?
  • Is it too early to take a closer in rounds 3 & 4?
•  When should you shift your emphasis from being risk averse to risk indifferent to risk seeking?
  • Health Risk vs. Performance Risk vs. Playing Time Risk
• How to handle position runs mid-draft?
  • Are position runs a factor in pre-draft KDS selections?
• Middle Infield strategy
  • Player pool
  • Which position gets a bigger replacement level / positional scarcity bump – 2B, SS or 3B?

ATC Undervalued Players

• Middle Infielders
  • Luis Arraez 1B/2B
  • Luis Garcia 2B
  • Xavier Edwards SS
  • Jeremy Pena SS
  • Zach Neto SS
  • Bryson Stott 2B
  • Gleyber Torres 2B
  • Tyler Fitzgerald 2B*/SS
  • Brendan Donovan 2B/OF

Injury Update

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast (beat-the-shift): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

As we hit the beginning of draft season, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day.

You can read all the Market Reports here. Read the rest of this entry »

After starting off with the largest position group last week, Chad and I are back with tiered Ottoneu rankings for the second largest position group: the two middle infield positions.

Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: MI | OF
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: MI | OF

You can find all of the information about the format and methodology in Chad’s introduction to these rankings. I’ve matched his tiers so that it’s easy to compare across rankings and to provide a common language to discuss these rankings.

Here are few more notes about my process:

• Projected points. I’ve been building my own homebrewed projections for the past decade plus, ever since I started playing Ottoneu, and they form the basis for the rankings below. They’re nothing overly complicated; essentially just a MARCEL-esque projection using three years of historical data filtered through a rough aging curve and adjusted for the current run environment. I also include a collection of three public projection systems (ZiPS, Steamer, and PECOTA) to provide some additional context. That gives each player six data sources that form their projection. Currently, the projections below only include Steamer and the ZiPS25 projections that were posted last year, not the updated 2025 projections that Dan Szymborski is currently rolling out.
• P/G vs P/PA. Points per game played is the gold standard by which you should be evaluating players in Ottoneu. I won’t argue with that. That measure does have some drawbacks, particularly for players who pinch hit, pinch run, or are used as defensive substitutions often. Those limited appearances can skew a player’s P/G lower than what they’re producing when they’re getting three or four plate appearances when they start a game. To provide a little more context for these kinds of players, I’ve also included points per plate appearance below. That measure should give us a better idea of how a player produces no matter how he’s used by his team.

The two middle infield positions are really interesting beasts to tackle. They’re both extremely top heavy with some of the best players in the game populating the top of these ranks. There’s a very steep cliff down from the top to the middle class and then the positions get really deep in the bargain bin section. You’re very likely to find a replacement level MI on the waiver wire if you look hard enough, which is important if you didn’t secure one or two of those top options on your roster. Because these positions are so top heavy, I think I’m willing to invest a little more budget to ensure I get one of the top options which is reflected in my rankings being a little higher than Chad’s pretty much across the board.

Rather than give notes on every player like Chad, I’ll give my general thoughts on each tier below and discuss the outlier players I like more or less than his rankings. Let’s get into it.

There are exactly six players with a points per game played projection higher than Witt and he’s younger than all of them. If I was starting a brand-new Ottoneu league today, Witt might be my number one target to build around. You’re going to pay a premium to get Betts’s positional flexibility, but it might be worth it to roster one of the best players in baseball and be able to line him up wherever you want. I went back and forth on ranking Betts and Witt number one, but ultimately decided on Witt’s youth as the separator.

I have Marte a tier higher than Chad because he’s clearly the top 2B in baseball now (if you’re playing Betts at shortstop) and all of his contact quality peripherals took a huge jump in 2024. This isn’t a repeat of his 2019 “breakout” with the rabbit ball; this is legit improvement across every significant batted ball metric fueling a dramatic increase in production.

This second group of middle infielders all have their warts, though they’re still clearly a step above the pack. Whether it’s age (Altuve, Semien), injury (McLain, Correa), or inconsistent production (De Le Cruz, Cruz), it’s a lot harder to predict what you’re going to get from this cohort.

Turner is a tricky one to peg. He had the hiccup in 2023 in his first season in Philadelphia and then rebounded a bit in ‘24 thanks to a 20 point increase in his BABIP. Worryingly, his power output fell quite a bit and his contact quality wasn’t as sterling as it’s been in the past. The track record speaks for itself, but he just hasn’t been the same player as before since joining the Phillies.

I was really tempted to put Edwards in a higher tier because his projection is so rosy. So much of his success in 2024 was BABIP fueled, but he rode high BABIPs to great success as a minor leaguer. He’s got a great knack for squaring the ball up, even if he doesn’t have much oomph behind his swings, plus he’s got a great eye at the plate. It’s a volatile profile, but I think there’s value here.

Jordan Westburg has a weirdly low projection but his contact quality metrics are all solid. You’d obviously like to see a little higher walk rate from him, but he’s aggressive enough in the right counts to make the approach work. I originally had him in a tier lower, but I think his talent will push him into this higher tier once he gets a full season in the majors.

Finally! Some guys I’m lower on than Chad! Torres gave back all the gains he made with his strikeout rate in 2023 and posted a disappointing final season in the Bronx. Now he’s in Detroit and I really don’t like that park fit. Tovar has the ideal park fit but his hyper aggressive approach is going to produce some really low slumps to go along with his altitude fueled production. I really like the improvements Garcia has made over the last few years, but I just don’t see the ceiling to pay double digits for him right now.

My perspective on prospects is pretty starkly shown in my ranking of Jackson Holliday. Yes, he has a very high ceiling and he only just turned old enough to drink last month, but his debut season in the big leagues was a disaster all around. There were a few encouraging things under the hood, but he really needs to prove it before I’m comfortable investing a significant portion of my budget on rostering him. Could I regret that stance in a few years when he’s established himself as a superstar? Maybe.