Chad Young’s RP Tiered Rankings for 4×4 Ottoneu

We flipped the script this week, with Jake Mailhot posting his FanGraphs Points reliever ranks before I posted my 4×4 ranks, but I still wanted to provide my ranks. I am also going to make this article – the last of the ranks before the keeper deadline this weekend! – pull double duty. In addition to my 4×4 tiers, I am going to share my thoughts on Points and 5×5 leagues, as well as head-to-head, rather than doing a full follow-up article. All the same great taste now packed into a single bite.

(If you want, you can skip the intro and my thoughts on the position, and go right to the rankings. As a reminder, my process and a long FAQ on my rankings can be found in my rankings preview. One note on these rankings: there are no player notes on relievers – this was done due to time, as I wanted to get these out before the deadline.)

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

Anyone who has followed/read/listened to me over the years knows how I feel about relievers, but there has been some evolution in my thinking that is worth discussing.

Historically, my position has been that relievers – especially in 4×4 – are a dime-a-dozen. That’s an over-simplification, but it is somewhat accurate, and that position is borne of two basic facts:

1. There are a lot of MLB relievers and when you take leverage out of the equation, there are far more reliever supply than demand. In a 4×4 league, where teams don’t need to push for as many IP as possible (which you should do in points leagues – more on that later), you might only need to roster 50-70 relievers across an entire 12-team league. That’s just about two per MLB team, and there are more than two good relievers per MLB team (on average – some don’t have any, some have a few). Why pay for the stud when the last reliever off the board is still really good?
2. Relievers are volatile. This isn’t even really their fault or more true of relievers than other players, but they play so much less that any variations can create significant swings in results. If a starter throws three bad pitches in an inning and gives up three homers, they have probably ruined their stats for that start. A reliever might have ruined their stats for the season. That sounds like an exaggeration, but if you take a good reliever (say 65 IP, .97 HR/9, 2.91 ERA, and 1.00 WHIP) and give them that one very bad inning, they are now pretty bad for 4×4 (66 IP, 1.36 HR/9, 3.41 ERA, 1.05 WHIP).

Where my thinking has evolved is that I have become more cognizant of how these two things interplay with each other and with the value a true stud reliever can have.

The interplay here is that while all relievers are volatile, some are less volatile. The better a reliever is, the less likely they are to suffer that one bad inning. This is pretty straight forward, but it means that churning through relievers is a risky strategy. And as fantasy players have gotten more savvy about identifying and picking up intriguing relievers, the harder it is to beat the market. A decade ago, I felt like I could play reliever roulette and come away with a strong bullpen by mid-season, if not sooner. That’s harder than ever.

As for the value a stud reliever can have, take a look at these two lines:

These are 2025 final lines. One of these two is an elite reliever; the other is widely considered an ace. Pitcher A cost a lot more going into 2025. He will cost more going into 2026. He should cost more going into 2026. But in 2025, Pitcher B was more valuable. It’s impressive that the starter (Pitcher A) managed to post better ERA and WHIP in more innings, but his HR/9 was a lot worse and the additional strikeouts look good, but over the 34 innings that Pitcher B didn’t use, you can easily make up for the gap (and then some).

This really only works because the innings-pitched gap is so small, but that is becoming more and more true. This isn’t news to anyone, but in 2015, there were 79 starters who threw over 160 innings. A decade later, there were only 53. Over that same stretch, the number of relievers going 70+ innings went from 21 to 30. The gap is closing and we need to adjust.

Pitcher A is Hunter Greene; B is Cade Smith. I am not here to tell you Smith is better than Greene. But I am here to tell you that I am increasing the value I place on pitchers like Smith, even in 4×4. And this extends to any reliever I see as reliable and steady. I still like betting on raw skills with $1 relievers, but I am more willing than ever to keep or spend on relievers I think can move the needle. That’s reflected in my rankings below.

But before we get to the rankings, a quick trip around the other formats.

FanGraphs and SABR Points

I am back to combining these two because, for relievers, they are very similar. The differences I noted for starters still exist, but on the smaller number of innings, they matter less, to the point that my rankings for these two formats are very similar. I am not going to post my reliever tiers for points leagues – go look at Jake’s, because we are almost in lockstep anyway – but I will quickly note how my ranks differ from my 4×4 ranks below:

• I generally try to break relievers into five groups – Capital-C Closers, possible closers/committee closers, locked in holds/late innings guys without a clear path to saves, and the rest. For 4×4, those groups don’t matter at all. Give me high volume and strong skills. For FanGraphs Points, there is a big penalty for being in that fifth group. If they aren’t getting saves or holds, even a reliever with elite skills is leaving too much on the table. Those four and five point bonuses for saves and holds are game changers. If you aren’t getting saves or holds, I am probably not going to roster you. Once you get into those first four groups, there are small bonuses as you move up, mostly because of volume. Elite closers get more saves than top set-up guys get holds (and saves are worth more). As you move down the groups, they get fewer opportunities and those opportunities are worth less on average.
• I specifically called out FanGraphs Points in the bullet above because I wanted to mention that in SABR Points, the save and hold bonuses are more valuable. As discuss in the starting pitcher follow up article, pitchers score less in SABR points, in large part because innings are worth less. That makes every point more valuable. A reliever throwing a perfect inning with 2 Ks gets 11.4 points in FanGraphs Points. They get 9 points in SABR Points. That makes a save a 44% bonus in FanGraphs Points and a 56% bonus in SABR Points. If the inning is less impressive, the bonus gets bigger and the gap between the formats gets bigger, too. If that inning is just one strikeout, plus a walk, the FanGraphs Points pitcher gets 6.4 for their performance plus 5 points for the save, making the save a 78% bonus. The SABR Points pitcher gets 4 for the performance and that save bonus is now 125% bonus. The saves and holds are worth more in SABR.

5×5

Usually I go to head-to-head next, but we are going to mix it up, because I want to build on that last point. If saves are worth nothing in 4×4, and a decent amount in FanGraphs Points, and even more in SABR, they are worth their weight in gold in 5×5. Remember when I called out how in 4×4 leagues, there is more supply of relievers than there is demand? That is flipped completely in 5×5.

Ottoneu 5×5 leagues have 60 relief pitcher spots. MLB teams have 30 total closers. Yes, there are committees, you can just consider each committee member to be a partial closer. Every time a team gets a save opportunity, they can only give it to one pitcher.

As a result, the fight for saves in 5×5 auctions can be fierce. Fierce enough that in my 5×5 league, I am (for now) thinking very seriously about holding a $27 Josh Hader. He’s a very good closer, but there are questions there and he isn’t in the elite tier of closers. He’s the 8th reliever off the board in NFBC leagues, which have a similarly fierce battle for saves, and that seems like a fair enough valuation on him. I am still debating keeping him at a price I wouldn’t even consider a reliever in any other Ottoneu format.

I am also debating keeping a number of other relievers – $7 Jojo Romero, $7 Jordan Leasure, $6 Calvin Faucher, $5 Will Vest, $5 Andrew Saalfrank – because they might have a path to saves. I probably won’t keep them all. I am definitely keeping $14 David Bednar and $3 Daniel Palencia. But I a not sure Hader, Bednar and Palencia are enough. I guess I have a day or so to figure that out.

Head-to-Head

Head-to-head leagues add another wrinkle to the reliever puzzle: volume is king. If in 4×4 leagues the measure of a reliever is their raw skills, and in season-long points leagues it’s points per inning pitched (P/IP), and in 5×5 it’s saves, then in head-to-head, it’s points per week.

Because of the structure of Ottoneu head-to-head leagues, you are capped on games started, but not on relief appearances or innings. If you built a nice deep bullpen, got a little lucky, maybe had a follower or two, you could throw 40 relief innings in a week (and probably win your matchup easily). You probably aren’t going to get to 40, but you should try.

Because these are points leagues, having a high-leverage role still matters, but you need to look for volume, as well. A closer getting two innings a week at 10 P/IP gives you 20 points that week. A middle reliever giving you four innings at 6 P/IP gives you 24. That second pitcher gave you a better week. A bulk reliever giving you two appearances in a week, at three innings each only needs to be at 4.1 P/IP to be more valuable than either of the other two.

Anyone likely to follow, pitch in bulk, or pitch predictably (a bulk guy who throws 2-3 innings every few days, always paired up with the 4th or 5th starter, but can otherwise be left on the bench) gets a big jump in value. These players are often almost worthless in season-long points leagues, but are very valuable in head-to-head. You just have to figure out who they are.

Chad Young’s Tiered RP Rankings for 4×4