Ottoneu: $1 Steals for the End of Your Auction

This weekend is the last weekend before Opening Day on March 25 which means it’s the biggest weekend for fantasy baseball drafting of the year. If you’ve got an Ottoneu auction draft coming up, you’ve probably already done the work to identify your team’s needs and the biggest targets in the draft. But what happens at the end of the draft when you’ve spent almost all of your salary cap and you’re looking for high-upside players to fill out your roster? That $1 zone is one of my favorite phases of the auction — diving for gold amidst a sea of all the leftover players. To help identify some of those late auction targets, here are 10 players — two from each position group (C, CI, MI, OF, SP) — whose current average auction price is less than $2. And if you’ve already completed your draft this year, you can treat this article as a list of interesting early waiver wire adds before the season gets underway.

The second catcher on your Ottoneu roster is so often an afterthought, especially if you’re rostering a guy like Cal Raleigh or Ben Rice who don’t have the same playing time considerations as other, lesser catchers. If you’re not fortunate enough to roster one of the top players at the position, you’re probably going to have to cobble together 162 starts from two guys who are going to have their warts. Bo Naylor and Victor Caratini are two of my favorite $1 targets for two very different reasons.

I like Naylor because I think he’s on the verge of a breakout season. He tweaked his swing late last year by adding a toe tap as a timing mechanism; during the final month of the season, he slashed .290/.324/.548 (a 136 wRC+), and he’s kept up the hot hitting during the WBC (.353/.353/.588) and spring training (.385/.467/.615). The sample sizes are all miniscule but the underlying batted ball data looks promising.

Caratini might not offer the same breakout potential, but he will be getting regular at-bats as the Twins designated hitter and backup catcher. His production isn’t flashy, but it is consistent, and that’s something that’s valuable for the second catcher on your fantasy roster.

It’s really hard to find cheap middle infielders who are also useful for your roster. Both second base and shortstop are incredibly shallow positions, so you’re really forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel if you’re hunting for a $1 MI towards the end of the draft. Lenyn Sosa improved his wOBA by 33 points last year thanks to a pretty significant improvement in contact quality and a 1 mph increase in bat speed. His aggressive plate approach means that he can be pretty streaky depending on how his batted balls are falling, but the newfound power looks like it’s here to stay.

Instead of building off a hidden breakout, Luis Rengifo is looking to bounce back to his previous levels of production. From 2022–24, he posted a 111 wRC+ with the Angels but slipped to an ugly 73 last year. He’s now out of Anaheim and looks set to take a full-time role with the Brewers as their third baseman. You could do worse than someone with a recent history of success and a path to regular at-bats.

Jake Burger had an extremely rough first season with the Rangers last year, so bad that he was demoted to Triple-A for a few weeks in the middle of the season. Despite his struggles, his excellent contact quality never waned; both his hard hit and barrel rates were in line with his career norms and he massively underperformed his .324 xwOBA. If he can stay healthy and find some consistency with his swing, he could be in for a big bounce back season in 2026.

Speaking of staying healthy, that’s the name of the game for Yoán Moncada. He enjoyed a pretty significant spike in bat speed last year and posted the highest barrel rate of his career and a big leap in hard hit rate. Unfortunately, injuries limited him to just 84 games and 289 plate appearances. Maintaining that bat speed and the resulting contact quality gains in 2026 would be huge, and betting on him staying healthy is a worthwhile gamble for $1.

Brandon Marsh posted the highest contact rate and the lowest strikeout rate of his career, en route to a 116 wRC+ last year. I know he’s essentially a platoon outfielder (his career wOBA split is 85 points!), but his bat-to-ball improvements made him extremely productive against right-handed pitching. If you only had him in your lineup for games he started, he would have put up 4.75 P/G.

Isaac Collins enjoyed a huge rookie campaign in Milwaukee last year but was traded to the Royals this offseason. He’ll have a lot of runway to take a full-time role in the Royals outfield and the new ballpark dimensions in Kansas City might benefit a player like him. He’s got a solid approach at the plate which gives him a high floor, though it might be too much to expect him to repeat his 122 wRC+.

Back in 2023, it looked like Braxton Garrett was the next success story for the Marlins pitching development pipeline. Elbow surgery derailed his ascent and he spent all of last year rehabbing from that injury. He’s healthy and his fastball velocity is a tick or two higher this spring than where it was a few years ago. It’s possible the Marlins will want to be careful with his workload — it’s already been suggested that he’ll start the season on the IL or in the minors — but I think the talent is still present.

Kyle Leahy already won his spring training battle and will be making the leap from the bullpen to the starting rotation this year. He’s got a deep, six-pitch repertoire that grades out above average by Stuff+ and he’s got pretty good command too. His workload might be limited as the season wears on, but I think he’s an overlooked breakout candidate for the Cardinals.