Ottoneu Cold Right Now: August 28th, 2023

Much like Hot Right Now, Cold Right Now will be a weekly Ottoneu feature with a focus on players who are being dropped or who maybe should be dropped in Ottoneu leagues. Hot Right Now will focus on players up for auction, players recently added, and players generally performing well. Cold Right Now will have parallel two of those three sections:

1. Roster Cuts: Analysis of players with high cut% changes.
2. Cold Performers: Players with a low P/G or P/IP in recent weeks.

There won’t be a corresponding section to Current Auctions because, well, there is nothing in cuts that correspond to current auctions.

Roster Cuts

Joey Votto, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 15.34%

Votto is one of the most likable players in the game and is one of the best offensive players of his generation, but he is also turning 40 in less than two weeks and hurt. He actually hasn’t performed poorly, though that is hard to see from the surface-level stats. A .328 wOBA from a 1B is nothing to write home about, but he had 13 HR (better than a 40-homer pace over a full season) and a .206 BABIP is severely hampering his OBP. His line drive rate is just 10.4% and he is hitting way too many grounders, but there is good reason to think that is unsustainable (in a good way) and he’ll hit more line drives (pulling up his BABIP and with it his AVG and OBP) when he comes back. He is expected to be activated in “early September.”

That all sounds like an endorsement to hold Votto, but I will probably end up cutting the one share I have as soon as I need a roster spot. He hasn’t been good or reliable enough to be a regular 1B or Util bat in Ottoneu, which means he is languishing on my bench even when healthy. If you are in need of a 1B when he comes back, he could be useful, so I could see adding him to a watchlist if he is a FA in your league, but there is no need to rush out to grab him.

Jake Cronenworth, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 14.06%

Cronenworth fractured his wrist when he was hit by a pitch and Tim Stebbins of MLB.com reports that “he will be in a cast for several weeks and get imaging done after that.” That doesn’t bode well. Several weeks is basically the rest of the season. Which means the only reason to hold Cronenworth is if you think you have him cheap enough to justify keeping him for 2024.

You don’t. Cronenworth has been a pretty poor performer for fantasy this year and really was not much better last year. After his excellent 2021, he showed enough in 2022 to justify hope for this year, but that is gone now. Beyond the fantasy performance questions, it’s unclear to me if he’ll even have a starting job next year. He has a contract that you would think would keep him in the lineup, but the Padres infield is crowded and this offseason should be an interesting one for them. I think he is an easy cut and I don’t expect him to be a priority come 2024 auctions, either.

Stone Garrett, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 13.10%

Garrett’s season is over, as he was placed on the 60-day IL with less than 60 days before the Nats wrap up their 2023 campaign. Like Cronenworth, that means the only reason to hold him now is to keep him for 2024. Unlike Cronenworth, he is on the 60-day IL so he isn’t using up a roster spot, and the only reason to cut him is to save cash.

I liked Garrett before 2023 as a weak-side platoon OF. That role (and the lack of clarity on whether he would even have a chance to fill that role regularly) limited his value, but there was potential there for 40-60 really strong starts against LHP. And Garrett has delivered that, with a .354 wOBA vs. LHP. But he has surprised me with a .333 wOBA against RHP – not nearly as good but enough to be a viable back-end Ottoneu OF. If he keeps that up and has an everyday job, he is a nice bench option – start him against every LHP and have the option to use him when needed against righties. Not bad! But that line vs. RHP is inflated by a .387 BABIP. He still draws walks against righties, but he shows almost no power (2 HR in 129 PA and a .125 ISO).

If you don’t need the cap space, there is no harm in holding (or even adding) him to see what happens in the off-season, but the chances are he’s just a $1 guy.

Luis Medina, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 13.10%

Medina is the first of these players that I am pretty sure I don’t want to cut. The overall numbers are ugly, but he had an absolutely brilliant July. Ben Clemens dove into what drove that impressive run back on August 3, and while the results since then haven’t been as good, that article shows you there is a lot to like. He has a shot to be back from the IL as soon as this coming weekend and that would give him time to make a few more starts this year and provide us more data heading into the off-season. But right now, I think he is better than a lot of other options out there and there is good potential for him to be the kind of guy you can keep for $3-$6 instead of paying $8-$10 on him at auction when the hype machine starts up. It’s also possible he stinks in September and is an afterthought in January, but unless I really can’t afford to hold him on my roster, I would prefer to wait and see.

Emerson Hancock, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 12.78%

Hancock is a somewhat maddening prospect, as scouts love his stuff and he has flashed some really impressive performances but he has yet to consistently produce in the high minors (or the majors). He also skipped Double-A and is in a pitching-rich org that may not have a need for him in their April (or May, or June) rotation next year. In leagues where cap space is not at a premium, I am happy to hold him (or pick him up) and stash him, since he is on the 60-day. If we find out in January that he is slated for a rotation spot (either in Seattle or with another org following a trade), I think I will be happy to have held him and there is basically zero risk since you can just cut him in the off-season anyway.

Cold Performers

To measure cold performers this week, I’m looking for players with low P/G or P/IP in the last 14 days.

Travis d’Arnaud, -1.67 P/G:

TdA was on fire early in the year, part of the most feared offensive catching tandem in the game. But he has been down since June 1, bad since July 1, and awful recently. It’s a challenge to know when to move on from any player, but that gets even harder for a part-time catcher, as it takes so long for any slump to become a meaningful sample of data to draw conclusions from. This two-week stretch looks awful, but it is just six games and 24 PA! But we are now at more than a two-month run where, if you were using d’Arnaud for every start, you haven’t been benefiting. If you haven’t moved on already, I would.

Francisco Alvarez, 0.45 P/G:

NL East catchers are all tanking, I guess. Alvarez has really been struggling ever since the calendar turned to August, and I wondered if he is maybe just hitting a wall in his rookie year. But, he hasn’t reached some crazy PA or games played milestones – he got plenty of minor league playing time in the past – and in some ways his stats are improving. His August K-rate is better than his season-long K-rate. Same for his walk rate. Same for his exit velocity and hard-hit rates. His barrel-rate is down, his BABIP is way down, his ISO is down, and his line drive rate is down. All of those “downs” are related, but they are also all numbers that are hard to trust in small samples, in part because they are so related to each other. I don’t think there is much to see here and even if there is, he is too talented to do anything other than live with the slump and be glad you have him for the future.

Hunter Greene,  -9.45 P/IP:

Greene looks like such a special pitcher, at times, and then he comes back from injury and gives up 5 HR and 8 walks over 6.2 IP in two starts. Greene had some big homer blow-ups in 2022 but managed to avoid those this year, never giving up more than two in a start until the five-homer barrage against Toronto last week. The walks, though, have been a real issue, and even without any other big homer days, he was still fairly homer-prone. This just seems like it will be the Hunter Greene experience – the walks will come with a lot of strikeouts, he’ll often give up a homer or two, and there will be occasional implosions when the ball is just sailing out on him. The overall package is still worth it, but unless he finds a way to rein in the BB and HR, he is going to be more good than great.