Ottoneu 2026 Keeper Deadline in Review
Last Saturday night was the Ottoneu keeper deadline. If you’re like me, you might have spent too much time the last few months weighing which players deserve a spot on your 2026 roster. A handful of last minute offseason trades ahead of the deadline got things in order and then came the chopping block. For better or worse, everything is locked in until draft day arrives for your league.
Before looking ahead towards your draft this spring, let’s take a look at what happened at the keeper deadline. There isn’t much immediately actionable information here since rosters are locked until your league’s draft, but I found it interesting to dig into the players who were cut the most and how average salaries have changed over the course of the offseason.
| Player | Post-Arb Roster% | Post Cut Roster% | Roster% Delta | Post-Arb Avg Salary | Post-Cut Avg Salary | Avg Salary Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ronny Henriquez | 91.7% | 12.7% | -79.1% | $4.82 | $3.98 | -$0.84 |
| Mookie Betts | 89.0% | 18.1% | -70.9% | $56.86 | $48.40 | -$8.46 |
| Lars Nootbaar | 87.2% | 16.6% | -70.6% | $10.92 | $10.11 | -$0.81 |
| Triston Casas | 86.9% | 17.5% | -69.4% | $9.05 | $8.38 | -$0.67 |
| Shota Imanaga | 91.1% | 22.9% | -68.2% | $22.77 | $21.58 | -$1.19 |
| Austin Hays | 90.8% | 22.9% | -67.9% | $4.50 | $4.00 | -$0.50 |
| Tanner Scott | 84.4% | 16.6% | -67.8% | $8.46 | $7.80 | -$0.66 |
| Ha-seong Kim | 78.3% | 11.7% | -66.5% | $5.12 | $4.49 | -$0.63 |
| Marcell Ozuna | 78.3% | 12.0% | -66.2% | $11.61 | $10.30 | -$1.31 |
| Christian Walker | 89.0% | 22.9% | -66.1% | $12.31 | $10.22 | -$2.09 |
There aren’t a lot of surprises on the list of most cut players. It’s mostly populated with guys who were either injured in 2025 or who struggled mightily last season. When looking ahead towards this season, the uncertainty surrounding all of these players made them all easy cuts at the deadline.
A spring illness caused Mookie Betts to lose nearly 20 pounds in two weeks and forced him to miss the Dodgers’ two-game series in Japan to start the season. His conditioning never really caught up once the season got underway and he struggled for nearly the entire season. He did finish on a high note, posting a 128 wRC+ in August and September, but the early season damage was already done. As one of the most expensive players in the Ottoneu universe, a lost season from Betts was bound to have repercussions, and he wound up being the second most cut player at the deadline. Still, if we chalk up his struggles in 2025 to his spring illness, then a bounce back season in ‘26 is more than likely. The projections see a wide range of potential outcomes — ZiPS is projecting him at a 131 wRC+ while OOPSY is all the way down at 118 — but his history of production is good enough that you should expect to pay top dollar for him in the draft. His average salary after the cut deadline is nearly $50, though I’d expect that to fall a bit once he’s drafted in all those leagues where he’s available.
I really want to believe in Lars Nootbaar’s skillset. He’s got an excellent approach at the plate and his contact quality is fantastic. He lowered his groundball rate by nearly 15 points in 2025, but despite a hard hit rate of 50%, he didn’t see a big improvement in results on contact. A lot of that added air contact was hit at too high launch angles or hit to the opposite field. In other words, despite embracing “elevate and celebrate,” all that elevated contact wasn’t optimized for damage. To make matters worse, he played through a rib injury for some of the season and then had surgery to correct issues in both of his heels this offseason. I want to believe in Nootbaar, but between the injury issues and the difficulty translating his contact quality into real results, I’m not sold on a bounce back from him.
After a very successful first year in the US, Shota Imanaga took a pretty significant step back in his second season in Chicago. The twin culprits were a strikeout rate that dropped by nearly five points and a groundball rate that fell eight points. With all that extra elevated contact allowed, he saw a corresponding jump in home runs allowed that shot his FIP up by more than a run. Homers are a death knell for any pitcher in Ottoneu and so it’s no surprise to see Imanaga on the chopping block. I think it’s probably reasonable to expect a bit of a bounce back — his SIERA and xFIP were both well below his actual FIP in 2025 — but getting back to his outstanding ‘24 season is probably out of the question. As a fly ball heavy pitcher, his success will wax and wane based on his home run rate which gives him a pretty volatile profile.
| Player | Roster% Delta | Post-Arb Avg Salary | Post Cut Avg Salary | Avg Salary Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mookie Betts | -70.9% | $56.86 | $48.40 | -$8.46 |
| Ozzie Albies | -61.9% | $21.07 | $15.08 | -$5.99 |
| Aaron Nola | -58.5% | $19.72 | $14.83 | -$4.89 |
| Zack Wheeler | -49.2% | $31.61 | $27.25 | -$4.36 |
| Jose Altuve | -61.6% | $28.89 | $24.76 | -$4.13 |
| Mike Trout | -58.3% | $30.92 | $26.81 | -$4.11 |
| Freddie Freeman | -55.0% | $42.93 | $38.85 | -$4.08 |
| Austin Riley | -45.7% | $33.53 | $29.93 | -$3.60 |
| Marcus Semien | -35.8% | $16.03 | $12.44 | -$3.59 |
| Zac Gallen | -58.6% | $19.81 | $16.25 | -$3.56 |
The table above lists players who saw their average salaries drop the most after the cut deadline. As you’d expect, there are a bunch of aging stars and once-great players who suffered a sudden dip in performance in 2025.
Man, what happened to Ozzie Albies? You could chalk up his power outage in 2024 to a broken wrist suffered in July of that season. But then he didn’t bounce back in ‘25; his ISO dropped to a career-low .124 and he blasted only 16 home runs. Even though we only have limited bat speed data, Albies’s average bat speed dropped a full tick from 2023 to ‘24 and it didn’t bounce back last year when he was supposedly healthy. His contact quality has never really been all that great but he made the most of it every season until last year. He’s still only 29 years old, but unless he rediscovers an extra gear with his bat speed, I’m afraid his best days are already in the past.
Oh look, another Braves hitter who really struggled last year. At least with Austin Riley, you can point to a hand injury in 2024 and three separate core injuries in ‘25 to explain his struggles. Then again, his production at the plate had already started to decline slightly in 2023, and really reached fever pitch when his plate discipline started slipping in ‘24. It deteriorated further in 2025 when he got more aggressive at the plate while running a slightly higher whiff rate. The good news is that his contact quality was still elite which means the only thing he needs to work on is his approach. Of all the guys on the two lists in this article, Riley is the one I’m most confident in predicting a bounce back this year.
Finally, here’s a long list of players cut in more than 50% of all Ottoneu leagues.
| Player | Post-Arb Roster% | Post-Cut Roster% | Roster% Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ronny Henriquez | 91.7% | 12.7% | -79.1% |
| Mookie Betts | 89.0% | 18.1% | -70.9% |
| Lars Nootbaar | 87.2% | 16.6% | -70.6% |
| Triston Casas | 86.9% | 17.5% | -69.4% |
| Shota Imanaga | 91.1% | 22.9% | -68.2% |
| Austin Hays | 90.8% | 22.9% | -67.9% |
| Tanner Scott | 84.4% | 16.6% | -67.8% |
| Ha-seong Kim | 78.3% | 11.7% | -66.5% |
| Marcell Ozuna | 78.3% | 12.0% | -66.2% |
| Christian Walker | 89.0% | 22.9% | -66.1% |
| Coby Mayo | 92.4% | 28.0% | -64.3% |
| Jesús Sánchez | 84.1% | 19.9% | -64.2% |
| Luis Arraez | 86.5% | 22.6% | -64.0% |
| Trevor Larnach | 82.6% | 19.0% | -63.6% |
| Lucas Giolito | 89.9% | 26.8% | -63.1% |
| Nick Castellanos | 71.3% | 9.3% | -61.9% |
| Ozzie Albies | 88.4% | 26.5% | -61.9% |
| Jose Altuve | 92.4% | 30.7% | -61.6% |
| Kodai Senga | 80.1% | 20.8% | -59.3% |
| Cedric Mullins | 73.7% | 14.5% | -59.2% |
| Bryan Reynolds | 90.5% | 31.9% | -58.6% |
| Zac Gallen | 90.2% | 31.6% | -58.6% |
| Aaron Nola | 81.3% | 22.9% | -58.5% |
| Anthony Volpe | 79.5% | 21.1% | -58.4% |
| Mike Trout | 90.5% | 32.2% | -58.3% |
| Justin Verlander | 64.8% | 6.6% | -58.2% |
| Gavin Lux | 74.6% | 17.2% | -57.4% |
| Josh Lowe | 84.7% | 27.7% | -57.0% |
| Luke Weaver | 84.4% | 28.0% | -56.4% |
| Brandon Pfaadt | 75.8% | 19.6% | -56.3% |
| Mark Vientos | 91.7% | 35.5% | -56.2% |
| Tyler O’Neill | 72.2% | 16.3% | -55.9% |
| José Berríos | 68.5% | 12.7% | -55.9% |
| Wenceel Pérez | 71.9% | 16.3% | -55.6% |
| Yusei Kikuchi | 70.6% | 15.4% | -55.3% |
| Adley Rutschman | 87.2% | 31.9% | -55.2% |
| Luis Castillo | 85.9% | 30.7% | -55.2% |
| Isaac Collins | 83.8% | 28.6% | -55.2% |
| J.T. Realmuto | 77.4% | 22.3% | -55.1% |
| Freddie Freeman | 93.9% | 38.9% | -55.0% |
| Grayson Rodriguez | 96.9% | 42.2% | -54.8% |
| Jeremiah Jackson | 67.0% | 12.7% | -54.3% |
| Tommy Edman | 67.0% | 13.0% | -54.0% |
| Shawn Armstrong | 65.4% | 11.7% | -53.7% |
| Taj Bradley | 71.9% | 18.4% | -53.5% |
| Teoscar Hernández | 93.3% | 40.1% | -53.2% |
| Spencer Steer | 91.1% | 38.0% | -53.2% |
| Max Scherzer | 59.0% | 6.3% | -52.7% |
| Bryce Harper | 96.3% | 44.0% | -52.4% |
| Christian Moore | 76.8% | 24.7% | -52.1% |
| Josh Jung | 71.6% | 19.9% | -51.7% |
| Bailey Ober | 67.0% | 15.4% | -51.6% |
| Clayton Kershaw | 53.5% | 2.1% | -51.4% |
| Tyler Freeman | 67.9% | 16.6% | -51.3% |
| Nick Gonzales | 61.8% | 10.5% | -51.2% |
| Michael Kopech | 59.0% | 7.8% | -51.2% |
| Yu Darvish | 55.0% | 3.9% | -51.1% |
| Royce Lewis | 93.9% | 43.1% | -50.8% |
| Dalton Rushing | 84.4% | 33.7% | -50.7% |
| Chris Bassitt | 70.6% | 20.2% | -50.5% |
| Matt Strahm | 89.3% | 38.9% | -50.4% |
| Sean Manaea | 77.4% | 27.1% | -50.3% |
Jake Mailhot is a contributor to FanGraphs. A long-suffering Mariners fan, he also writes about them for Lookout Landing. Follow him on BlueSky @jakemailhot.
Hey, I cut some of those players! Good for me.