Ohtani and the New Ottoneu Two-Way Rule

If you haven’t seen it, in 2023 there will be a change to how Ottoneu treats two-way players. You should read that post, but the summary is this: if you have a two-way player who is both hitting and pitching on the same day, you will have the option to use that player that day as a hitter, as a pitcher or both. And this has implications for the Ottoneu value of Shohei Ohtani.

I suppose, in theory, it has implications for the value of any two-way player but there really is just one, and so I want to look at how much this impacts Ohtani’s value for the 2023 season.

Let’s start with a baseline assumption that you view Ohtani the hitter as a $30 value and Ohtani the pitcher as a $30 value. It doesn’t actually matter if you agree with this; we could use $40 and $40, $20 and $50, whatever you want – we just need something to start with. And we’ll come back to those other valuations later.

Under the 2022 rules, if you roster Ohtani, you would not view him as a $60 player, because you can’t actually use him as a $30 util and a $30 SP. You have to make a choice every time he is pitching – are you slotting his bat in as your util or using him as a SP.

That puts the floor on his 2022 Ottoneu value at $30. If you set him and forget him at util and never let him be a starting pitcher, you get all $30 of util value and $0 of pitching value.

If, on the other hand, you use him at SP every time you can, you would initially value him at around $55. You get a full $30 for his SP value by using him every start, but you lose some hitting value, since you don’t get his offense those days. Ohtani appears to be on pace to make about 27 starts on the hill and start at DH in about 152 games. If we dock him 17.8% of his hitting value (27/152), that takes roughly $5 off the $30 of offensive value. Hence $55.

That, however, assumes Ohtani’s offense is equally valuable when he pitches and when he doesn’t, but that isn’t true. In 2022, Ohtani has put up 7.33 P/G when he is only hitting and 4.94 P/G as a hitter when he is the starting pitcher. Part of that might be noise, but he had a similar pattern last year (105 wRC+ as a pitcher, 155 as a DH). He also gets fewer PA when he pitches (4.22 per game vs. 4.62). The lower production may be due to fatigue or divided focus. The smaller number of PA is likely be due to being pulled from both halves of the game on occasion.

The result of this is that when you slot Ohtani in at SP instead of util in about 18% of his games, you aren’t actually losing 18% of his offensive value – you are losing something less than that. How much less? That gets complicated. His 4.94 P/G when he pitches might be below replacement level for the utility spot, in which case you are actually gaining value by not using him as a bat on those days. If Ohtani is worth something like negative $1 across those 23 games, that means the rest of his offense is actually worth $31, and you would be getting $61 of value from using Ohtani at SP when he starts and at util the rest of the time.

I am hesitant to think that is the case, so let’s go with something more reasonable. Let’s assume Ohtani gets 82% of his games at DH, but accrues 90% of his offensive value when he is not pitching. That would mean that using him as we described – slotting him at SP for every start and at util for every other game – you would get all of his pitching value and 90% of his offensive value, or $57 total.

If you don’t think that is a fair assumption, the table below looks at how his value shifts depending on how much of his offensive value you think comes from games he pitches.

The question then is how much does Ohtani’s value change next year?

Well, in 2023 you won’t have to make the decision to use him at util vs. SP – you can slot him into both spots. That first depends on one big question: Do you think your team will have better util options on days Ohtani pitches?

The data we have suggests you might. If he again puts up <5 P/G as a hitter when he is pitching, your best bet is likely to use him as a SP-only on those days, and get the same $57 of value you got from him this year. So that is the floor – there is a strong case that Ohtani the Pitcher shouldn’t be your util bat and therefore this rule doesn’t change his value at all.

But let’s assume you think you won’t have a better util option. In that case, you would use him in both spots and get the full $60 of his value, rather than the $57 you got this year, an increase of $3, or 5.3%.

Using these assumptions you are basically left with this equation for how much more value Ohtani has with this new rule:

(Ohtani’s Offensive Value] + [Ohtani’s Pitching Value]) – (0.9*[Ohtani’s Offensive Value] + [Ohtani’s Pitching Value])

Or, simplified: 10% of Ohtani’s offensive value. The table below shows how this plays out for different starting value assumptions:

Personally, I think this slightly overstates the impact. I think the assumption above that he gets 90% of his offensive value when not pitching is too low; I think the real number is closer to 95%, maybe more. The difference between his 7.33 P/G as a DH vs. his 4.94 P/G as SP is huge. That assumption creates the table below:

My takeaway is that the impact is relatively small – smaller than I would have initially thought. I think if I roster Ohtani, I would strongly consider benching his bat when he pitches, in which case his increased value is $0. At the high end, the increase could range as high as $5 if you believe this value as a hitter is relatively high, which could be as much as 7% if you think his value as a pitcher is relatively low. More realistically, I would assume an increase of around $2 or 2.5-3%.

Plan your bids (and arbitration accordingly).