ottoneu Arbitration Update
We are still a few weeks from the arbitration deadline, but owners are starting to get their allocations (and votes, where applicable) in. My three leagues all use the allocation system, and there are some interesting patterns emerging in the allocations so far.
So far, 16 teams have completed their allocations across the three leagues, while three other teams have allocated $11 of their $25 (those teams are all mine, actually, and I can explain why I did that).
Let’s start with a table:
| Player | Allocation |
|---|---|
| Chris Davis | 23 |
| Jose Fernandez | 21 |
| Paul Goldschmidt | 21 |
| Mike Trout | 18 |
| Yasiel Puig | 16 |
| Bryce Harper | 14 |
| Yu Darvish | 14 |
| Max Scherzer | 13 |
| Matt Carpenter | 13 |
| Chris Sale | 12 |
| Carlos Gomez | 11 |
| Adam Wainwright | 9 |
| Manuel Machado | 9 |
| Edwin Encarnacion | 9 |
| Jean Segura | 9 |
| Hyun-Jin Ryu | 8 |
| William Myers | 8 |
| Josh Donaldson | 8 |
| Andrew McCutchen | 7 |
| Craig Kimbrel | 7 |
| Gerrit Cole | 7 |
Those are the 21 players who have had at least $7 allocated to them total across the three leagues, and there are not any major surprises among the bunch. I made the “major” qualification because there are two names on there that I did not expect to see so high.
The first is Yasiel Puig. I thought Puig had a pretty uneven performance this year and there were signs to suggest that he wasn’t as great as the hype. Now, having looked at the numbers, I realize that this is only kind of true. Along with this other-worldly June and great august, Puig was merely very good in July and September. All in all, I don’t think Puig is quite the guy you would expect from all the talk about him – but “overrated” is not the same as “overpriced.” In fact, even if you expect Puig to take a step back next year (perhaps his September line is more what you expect from him) his price in most ottoneu leagues is still rather low and still worthy of arbitration dollars.
The second is Manny Machado. Machado is clearly one of the best young players in the game, having just posted a 6.2 WAR, good for 10th among all position players and fifth among 3B-eligible ottoneu players. Why would I be surprised to see the tenth best player in baseball, especially a guy so young, getting so many dollars allocated to him? Because he derives a large chunk of his value from defense. In fact, if we only take offense into consideration (say using wOBA) Machado (.325) is more Martin Prado (.328) or David Freese (.322) than he is Miguel Cabrera. The fact that Machado is a better real player than a fantasy player does not mean that he is inherently not worth allocating to. And I can certainly see expecting a nice step forward with the bat. But at the end of the day, I am surprised to see Machado this high on the list – he is worth some attention, but top 20 seems a bit much.
Looking at this more generally, there is significant bunching of the dollars. Across these three leagues, 106 players have seen at least a $1 allocation and the average allocation per player is just over $4. The top 21 players (19.8% of the total) represent 59.4% of the total dollars allocated. Basically, once a guy gets hit with $1, there is likely at least $1 more to follow. There are likely a couple reasons for this – one is that there are only so many “good values” in each league, and guys who vastly outperformed expectations (Chris Davis, Paul Goldschmidt, Max Scherzer) are going to attract a lot of attention.
The other is that the allocation system allows for groupthink. Because allocations from others are visible when you go to enter your own, you are given a nudge by every owner who came before. “Hey, check out this guy – I gave him a dollar and you should probably check why!” This is why I put in $1 per team, even though I was not ready to put in my full allocations. In some cases, I felt guys were being overlooked, and by putting in a vote on each team, I was able to have my own small voice in what other players see when they go to allocate.
For me, the other owner allocations have been eye opening. As I said, I was a bit down on Puig, but seeing all the dollars put towards him, I looked closer and came away more impressed than I was before.
In addition, there are a number of dollars allocated to prospects or near prospects (Byron Buxton, Danny Salazar, Kevin Gausman, etc.) which is coloring my perception of how prospects are valued in ottoneu leagues. I’ve been vocal in the past that I think allocating to unproven players makes no sense. Sure, Buxton may be a star – but you will have time to allocate to him if and when that happens. In the meantime, you are letting Buxton’s owner keep much better, much more valuable players at lower prices, which I cannot understand. But, I am realizing now that owners will do this. I am going to take one major lesson from this – overpay for top prospects in the auction. When I have the cash, I can overpay for a guy like Buxton, essentially use him as a shield for my more valuable players, and then cut him loose, effectively removing allocation dollars from my roster. I haven’t employed this strategy yet, but I will this off-season and we’ll see how it plays out.
The last note I want to make is that across these leagues, there is only one player who is among the top five most allocated to in all three – Paul Goldschmidt. Jose Fernandez, Yasiel Puig and Chris Davis each make two top fives, but only Goldy hit the trifecta. The reason? Even though the same players outperformed expectations across all three leagues, rosters vary tremendously. The team that owns Davis in the FanGraphs staff league also has Machado and Mike Trout, who are attracting attention and keeping Davis’s numbers down. Keep this in mind when you are doing your allocations – your league may look very different than another and values are all relative.
A long-time fantasy baseball veteran and one of the creators of ottoneu, Chad Young's is the Managing Editor for RotoGraphs, and can be heard on the Keep or Kut Podcast. You can follow him on Bluesky @chadyoung.bsky.social.
Most owners will probably still keep Buxton unless he gets into the mid teens, so what’s the difference as long as you stick the owner with an extra dollar. If the goal is to make sure the owner keeps the allocated money, buxton is as good a target as anyone.
My argument with prospects is that, in general, your goal should be to hamper a players LONG TERM value rather than short term. If you make Buxton $10 instead of $5, and Buxton is a bust, the owner basically saves that $5 – he cuts Buxton when he flops and those dollars no longer impact him. If Buxton pans out, you are going to be allocating to him again in the future anyway. Basically, as a Buxton owner, a path of $5-$12-$35 is not significantly or meaningfully worse than $5-$7-$30. And if that path ends up being $5-$12-$0 or $5-$7-$0, the former is actually much better for me because my other cheap players are now $5 cheaper than they otherwise would be.
Expanding on this, imagine a team with 2013 salaries on $5 on Buxton, $10 on J. Fernandez, and $20 on Bryce Harper. If as a league, you assign $10 each to Fernandez and Harper and $5 to Buxton this year, the path forward for those three looks something like $35 in ’13, $65 in ’14 and $93 in ’15 if Buxton pans out; $35-$65-$58 if he does not. If you do not give anything to Buxton this year and instead split that $5 among the other two, that pattern is $35-$65-$93 or $35-$65-$63. Basically, the max amount of money on that roster due to allocations is unrelated to who it is spent on, but the minimum amount (or minimum likely amount) is higher if you give them money to the less risky players.
I actually think Matt Harvey is the best allocation target. Make the owner absorb a huge sunk contract soaking up salary for a year plus without contributing.
Depends how much you allocate. As I mention to Cardinology below, if you aim to raise salaries such that the players and dollars are kept by the owner you give them to, having a $15 Harvey and a $20 Harper is 100% the same as a $10 Harvey and a $25 Harper. In the meantime, who knows how Harvey will recover. If I spend $35 on Harvey/Harper in 2014 and Harvey has a set back, doesn’t come back at all, or whatever, then I cut him. And in the $15 for Harvey, $20 for Harper scenario, I have now saved $5. In the $10 for Harvey, $25 for Harper scenario, I a) have to keep the extra five dollars instead of getting out from under it and b) you can always hammer Harvey in arbitration a year later. You have not impacted my team at all by putting that money on Harvey (at least not compared to putting it on anyone else I keep) and have denied yourself and other owners the long term flexibility to inflict the greatest possible damage on my team.
As someone who allocated to Buxton, I think It makes a lot of sense even if Buxton doesn’t help him next year. My goal is not to push players’ prices to where their owners will drop them. Instead, I want to add money to players they’ll keep anyway so they have less to spend on free agents. Buxton’s owner has him in our league for $2 or $3 and he’s not dropping him if I add a dollar or two to that. Now he’ll have to absorb his higher price to keep him.
I think the argument I made above (my reply to LarryA’s first comment) still holds in this case. Assuming you use the philosophy you subscribe to (raise the prices so that the owner gets stuck paying more, but doesn’t cut the guy), then the impact you need to focus on is 2015 not 2014. In your case, every dollar you assign will be kept in 2014, so the impact you have will be judged best by looking at how much of a difference you make in their salaries in 2015. Every dollar allocated to a prospect is a dollar with a relatively lower likelihood of impacting the team in question beyond the next season, because that prospect is far more likely to flame out and get cut ANYWAY, compared to a guy with at least some amount of big league success behind him.
If an owner’s team is more or less devoid of values, Buxton is as fine a target as any, but if they have other, proven players, allocating to Buxton is effectively giving the owner a 50-50 shot to get rid of those dollars in 2015 without any cost to them. If Buxton turns into Harper or Trout, then this is fine, but you are going to allocate to him the next year anyway. If he turns into Delmon Young or Andy Marte or Matt Laporta (ah the plight of an Indians fan…) you have given this owner a gift by letting him get out from under your allocation.
We’re missing a key reason why it can make sense to allocate to top prospects: trade value. Sure, where there are extreme values intact on proven players (Chris Davis is just $5 in my league, so he’s an easy target), it probably makes the most sense to allocate to the proven MLB player. However, where that extreme value isn’t as obvious, top prospects can make great targets if the allocations are done correctly.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say a competitive owner has both Paul Goldschmidt @ $32 and Byron Buxton @ $7. Goldy is probably “worth” $45+ and is going to play a much greater role in this owner’s championship run than Buxton. In fact, for 2014, it’s probably more likely that Goldy scores 1,100 points than Buxton scores > 0 points. However, using my $3 on Goldschmidt has no bearing on how his performance this year. In fact, if five owners each add the full $3, he’s still going to score 1,100 points at $47 (let’s assume $47 is the perfect price where the owner still chooses not to cut him). In other words, this still isn’t really a hard decision for this owner – he’s keeping Goldschmidt at $47 or $32, and at either price he nets 1,100 points. But, unlike those other four allocators, I choose to put my $3 on Buxton, taking him to $10. Now the owner has a tough choice: Is $10 too expensive to keep the best prospect in the game? I’d bet most owners still hang onto Buxton at $10 hoping he really is the next Trout. So what?
Well , the difference between Buxton @ $10 and Goldy @ $43 is that a $10 Buxton may be harder to trade at the deadline than a $7 Buxton. That’s important, because, if this owner is competitive, his biggest decision in-season could be whether to move Buxton for the reinforcements needed to win the title. I’d love Buxton at $7, but he’s right on the edge of the risk fence at $10. If a trade partner for Buxton is willing to up much less for him at the deadline because he’s right on the edge of value, that helps me if I’m competing with the Goldy owner for the title myself. In fact, it may force that owner to give up Buxton+ for that big piece, thereby giving me a possible advantage.
Is this cherry picking a specific example? Yes, probably, but the two types of teams I see getting the allocations are those that a) were very competitive last season, and b) those that rebuilt well enough that they look primed for a run in 2014. Those teams in between seem to be dodging the bullet for the most part. It’s great to say you want the owner you allocate to to feel the “burden” of the dollars for as long as possible, but the reality is that I can really only forecast potential contenders one year at a time because rosters can change so much from draft to draft. Yes, I want a competitive owner to pay the price as long as possible, but I want to do everything I can to prevent them from winning this season, the season I think I can win myself. Lowering the value of their largest trade chips may in fact be one of the better ways to weaken their team.
Sure, you can make the argument that taking Goldy up to $43 does the same thing: it straps that owner from adding other pieces in the draft, but the fact is that if Goldy gets traded in-season, he’s absolutely going to a contender willing to go all in on 2014. Few teams are going to rebuild around a $45 Goldschmidt. That can’t necessarily be said of Buxton, who could be traded to a future rebuilding team where his price is just as much a factor in establishing his value as Goldy’s production is in establishing his.
Not sure if that makes sense, but I’m seeing a lot of allocations to top prospects in my league and that appears to be the thinking. It’s not always clear cut who to allocate too, but if it’s not clear, allocating to top prospects could make some sense.
The big assumption in your argument, Lucky, is that a $10 Buxton is a meaningfully different value than a $7 Buxton – and I don’t think that is true. I mean, clearly it SHOULD be true, but I thin in reality when ottoneu owners trade for prospects, they focus on the potential they are acquiring, not on the value. At $7 or $10, Buxton will likely be the hottest value on the prospect trade market, at least until he a) goes Mike Trout on us and becomes untouchable or b) goes Delmon Young on us and becomes untradable.
In the allocation league I’m in, Matt Carpenter is so far the leader (at $11), which I found very surprising. As you note, context matters a lot, but still. The only thing I can figure is that he has position flexibility, which seems to go at a premium (cf, Prado). Also, just in terms of strategy (I haven’t played in an allocation league until this year) I am biased towards allocating $$ to players who I think are teetering on the brink of being kept/dropped, but who I like. So, for example, if David Wright is at $30, I might put some dollars on him rather than piling on the Puig (who is held at $3). Any thoughts on this?
Re: Carpenter – the guy put up an elite season and has 2B/MI eligibility for at least another year. Unless you are projecting a steep drop off, he is a top-tier 2B for 2014 and not a bad allocation target seeing as he was likely dirt cheap in most leagues.
Re: Wright – I don’t like this strategy, but if you check out Brad Johnson’s column today you’ll see he sees a use case for it. Here is my thinking: Wright costs $30 right now. If you make him $33 and he gets cut, you have no way of ever knowing if your $3 made the difference or if you just wasted $3 on a guy who was getting cut anyway. My guess is an owner planning to keep a $30 Wright will keep a $31, $32, or $33 Wright too. $35 or $36? Maybe not, but I just don’t think $2-$3 is enough to overcome the fact that the owner was likely already planning on keeping Wright. So if I am “successful” in allocating $2-$3 to a player and getting him cut, my assumption is that he was likely getting cut anyway.
On top of that, if the owner cuts the guy at that price, but would have kept him at $30, you have to assume the owner will pay at least $30 to get him back, since he will now be in the market for a 3B. Which means you are going to have to pay at least the price you allocated him up to if you want to get him. Probably more. So your prize for maybe (but probably not) getting a player cut, is the right to overpay that player. I just see too much downside, and too much opportunity to let another owner off the hook, and effectively improve their salary situation by letting them duck the allocation.
Adam Wainwright is a good example of that last paragraph. $7 of the $9 allocation shown above is to the team I inherited, which is quite bad. Wainwright’s probably the only guy on the roster who had anywhere near $10 of excess value so he made an easy target. I’m hoping some of those owners bump their allocations down once the other 6 owners submit their bids.
I’m surprised to see that Machado is being targeted in other leagues. There’s a specific use case for bidding him up in the league we share that shouldn’t be present with a more competitive ownership group.
Yeah, definitely surprised by Machado. But there are worse allocations out there. Dylan Bundy? Really? The guy is a pitching prospect which immediately makes him more high risk than normal AND we have no idea when he will be back on the mound. How does it make any sense to allocate to him? You know how? It doesn’t.
As for Waino…sorry 🙂