Chad Young’s Ten Bold Ottoneu Prediction for 2023

It’s an annual tradition to sit down to write this and feel like every prediction is either too bold or not bold enough, at which point I adjust them all and then they flip – the “too bolds” becoming too tepid and vice versa. This year I am just sticking to my initial predictions and living with the consequences. So enjoy my ten bold predictions – and feel free to share more in the comments!

1. Will Benson will be 90% rostered at some point this season. Benson is currently rostered in 18.59% of leagues with a median salary of $1. That is to be expected from a former first-round pick who looked like a bust and was just jettisoned from the team that drafted him. Benson (who I, by the way, roster on two of my seven teams), though, is showing the talent that made him such a highly-touted pick in the first place. He put up a robust 7.61 P/G in 401 Triple-A PA in 2022, driven by big gains in his K% and a walk rate over 18%. He hit 17 HR – a 25+ HR pace over 600 PA – and possesses 70-grade raw power. In 42 spring AB he has only 10K, but also has 0 walk and just 1 HR. He’s also played his way into the Reds plans and appears to have a spot in the lineup to start the season. If he can continue to control the strikeouts while tapping into that power, his roster rate will rise dramatically as the season goes on.

2. Sean Murphy is a top 3 Ottoneu catcher by P/G as a starter. I have Murphy higher among catchers than most in my rankings at 6th. Jake Mailhot has him 10th in those same rankings. Per the Surplus Calculator, he is 7th. But even my rankings aren’t bold enough to be bold so let’s push him even higher. Murphy is freed from the pain that is Oakland and that should give him an awfully nice boost. He put up a solid 4.8 P/G last year, but he was at 5.52 on the road. Oakland isn’t a friendly place for anyone and it seemed to take a serious toll on him. He is also moving from a team that put up a league-worst 5,863 PA last year (36.2 per game) to a team that had 6,082 PA last year (37.5 per game) and could have an improved offense with a healthy Ozzie Albies, the addition of Murphy, a rebound from Ronald Acuña, Jr., and more. The move isn’t all good, as he has a stronger backup who will command some time and Roster Resource has him hitting 7th, rather than 3rd or 4th like he did last year. If he continues to post 5.52 P/G away from Oakland, only three catchers (Willson Contreras at 5.69 and William Contreras and J.T. Realmuto at 5.62) outpaced that last year. Murphy is coming for them.

3. Bobby Witt Jr., is not a starting-caliber SS for Ottoneu points leagues. Basically, he won’t be top 12, since there are 12 teams per league and each has one starting SS position. Witt currently has the 10th highest average salary among SS. If you filter to first-year leagues only to get a better sense of his current market value, his average salary is 6th at the position at $26.57. Last year, he was 15th at the position by P/G among players with 300+ PA, sandwiched between Tommy Edman and Amed Rosario. You could pick up Rosario and Edman for just under $19 combined on average in a first-year league. Why the disconnect between price and production? Part of it is managers dreaming on a secondary breakout. Part of it is carryover hype from 5×5 fantasy coverage where he is being touted as a first-round pick (he shouldn’t be a first-round pick there either, but he is certainly more valuable in 5×5 than FanGraphs Points. He could develop further and make a leap, but I think the hype is too high.

4. Kolten Wong is a starting-caliber MI for Ottoneu points leagues. Wong is less than 90% rostered and his average salary in first-year leagues is outside the top 60, which gives you a sense of his market value. But in 2022, he put up 4.51 P/G. That doesn’t sound exciting but it was 28th among MI with 300+ PA, and I think he can do better. He has been hitting primarily second in the lineup vs. RHP, after Julio Rodriguez and before Ty France, which is a nice spot where he should get a ton of plate appearances. That 4.51 was despite a .280 BABIP, but his career BABIP is .294 and 2019-2021 he was at .313. He had a career-high hard-hit rate. His barrel rate (5.4%) was just below his career-high (5.5% in 2021). I don’t think he is primed for a breakout, but I think he can slightly increase his points per PA thanks to BABIP regression (the good kind) and increase his PA/G thanks to lineup, and that should be plenty to make him a reliable starter.

5. Reid Detmers is a top-20 SP by total points. This is like a double-bold prediction because he needs to both pitch really well and throw a lot of innings for this to come true. The SP 20th in total points last year was Kevin Gausman with 942.23 points over 174.2 IP. Only four pitchers cracked the top 30 with fewer than 160 IP and none made the top 20 with less than Shohei Ohtani’s 166. Only two pitchers got into the top 20 with less than 5 P/IP – Merrill Kelly 켈리 and Martin Perez. So that is the path for Detmers – he’ll need to be above 5 P/IP or above 160 IP, and probably both to have a real shot at this. Last year, over his last 10 starts (July 31 through the end of the year), Detmers went 54 IP with 278.8 points. That works out to 5.16 P/IP and puts him at a nearly 150 IP pace. Now we are seeing real improvement and growth from him in Spring Training, culminating with this tweet from Eno Sarris:

Only 90 pitches in front of the machines, but Reid Detmers spent those pitches putting up a better Stuff+ than Edward Cabrera, Lance Lynn, and Chris Sale this spring. That high-nineties fastball and low-nineties slider is going to work.

— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) March 29, 2023

Yeah, I am all in.

6. Julio Urías is not a top-40 SP by total points. He was 26th last year and his average salary in first-year leagues is 22nd among SP, so his value seems pretty firmly tied to being a top-25 guy. I don’t see it. Urías put up 5.01 P/IP in 2022, but had some good fortune with a .229 BABIP, a full .055 points lower than his career coming into the year. So there is regression coming, for sure. He also benefited from the shift, quite a bit, throwing the 15th most pitches in all of baseball vs. the shift. Out of 259 pitchers who threw 1,000 or more pitches, only 30 threw a higher percentage of their pitches with the defense shifted behind them. Only 26 allowed a lower wOBA with the shift. The shift, however, is no more. If regression plus the loss of the shift moves him up to a .280 BABIP – just below where he was in his career pre-2022 – that is 24 more hits and costs him 62.4 points for those hits, plus another 59.2 points for the outs not recorded. That would have knocked him down to exactly 40th in total points. I said outside the top-40, didn’t I? Hmm, ok. Well, maybe he also comes up short over 170 innings pitched. He has missed very little time and every pitcher eventually misses time, right?

7. Kyle Stowers is one of the three top-scoring rookie OF. Here are some rookie or prospect OF with a higher roster percentage than Stowers: Brennan Davis, Evan Carter, Pete-Crow Armstrong, Nolan Jones, Robert Hassell III, George Valera, Kerry Carpenter, Colton Cowser, James Outman, Garrett Mitchell, Sal Frelick, Zac Veen, Esteury Ruiz, James Wood, Jasson Dominguez, Oscar Colas, Masataka Yoshida, and Jackson Chourio. Plus, Joey Weimer is tied with him. Stowers will top them all, except Yoshida. So why top three instead of two? Giving myself some wiggle room for an unexpected breakout. Stowers has good power and made progress with the strikeout rate in Triple-A last year. He seems to be set up to get a real shot in Baltimore, likely as a DH. He was already effective (107 wRC+) in Baltimore last year, albeit in a small sample (98 PA). He isn’t the most talked-about name, but he’ll be the one you wish you rostered. from the jump.

8. Ryan Mountcastle is a top-6 1B. His average salary in first-year leagues is 15th at the position (not counting OF- or 3B-eligible players who won’t be used at 1B). The Surplus Calculator has him as the 15th most valuable 1B. Jake Mailhot has him 15th among 1B in his rankings. You get the picture. But Mountcastle is ready to put up a huge year. Last year, he hit the ball with authority at a rate few others can match. He was 8th in MLB in barrels per PA. The seven names ahead of him are all who you would expect and all had HR/FB rates of at least 21% putting them all in the top 11 of the 205 MLB hitters with 400+ PA in that metric. Mountcastle’s HR/FB rate was 13.3%, putting him 73rd in MLB. Three things kept Mountcastle from hitting more HR. First, his home park got a lot less friendly to power hitters. Especially RH power hitters. Second, he didn’t pull the ball enough. His pull rate was just 33.8%. Of the guys with barrel rates higher than his, only Stanton is below 36% pull% and he was 35.6%. He is also stupid strong so maybe you don’t want to rely on comping to him. Third, he struck out 25.3% of the time, which just means fewer times that he put the full force of his swing onto the ball. There is nothing he can do about the park, but the other two are things he can improve on and there are reasons for optimism. On the pull rate, he was at 39.7% in 2021 and this Spring, as best I can tell via Statcast data, he has 41 batted balls, and 17 were pulled, a 41.5% rate. Getting back to ~40% seems reasonable. His K-rate this Spring is just 14.6%, he was as low as 21.4% as a rookie in MLB and he has a highly-regarded hit-tool. Fewer strikeouts and more pulled fly balls and Mountcastle is on the verge of something big.

9. Michael Massey goes 20/20 and puts up a better first full season for Ottoneu points than his double-play partner did last year. This one is going to cause so many questions. Why are you mentioning 20/20 when that doesn’t matter for Ottoneu? You already beat up Witt earlier, did you really have to take another shot at him again? Does Massey even hold the job all year? The answers: There is 5×5 Ottoneu, so it matters. This isn’t a shot at Witt, it’s a hype piece on Massey. If he goes 20/20 with over 4.71 P/G, then yes, he will hold the job. Massey’s cup of coffee last year was enough to both use up his rookie eligibility and get me excited about his potential. A 13% barrel rate, a 23.7% K-rate (right in line with his high minors numbers instead of a big jump up). He pulled the ball a ton (52.3%) and kept the ball elevated (44.4% fly ball rate). His home park hurts him – per Savant he would have had only three HR (instead of the four he had) if he had played every game at Kaufman – but Statcast data at Baseball Savant had him at 7.5 xHR – that prorates to about 23-25 over a full season. Massey walked less than 5% of the time in MLB, but his track record suggests that number should increase. If he can get that up to about 7%, here is a list of players with roughly 13% barrel rates, roughly 7% walk rates, and mid-20s K%: Julio Rodriguez, Willy Adames, Adolis Garcia, and Marcell Ozuna. That’s a wide range, especially given Ozuna’s struggles last year, but that’s pretty good company.

10. Jacob deGrom leads all pitchers in points in FanGraphs Points leagues. He is the best pitcher on the planet, and it is not particularly close. He just can’t stay on the mound. The top-scoring pitcher in 2022 was Sandy Alcantara with 1,277 points. In 2021, it was Zack Wheeler with 1,273. In 2019, Gerritt Cole (1,343) and Justin Verlander (1,307) both crossed 1,300 points, but honestly, that was a different era. At the absurd 7.91 P/IP deGrom has put up over the last two seasons, he needs to throw 162 IP to cross 1,280 points, and I think that will be enough to get it done. That may seem outlandish, but this is the year it happens.