Ottoneu Cold Right Now: May 30, 2023

Much like Hot Right Now, Cold Right Now will be a weekly Ottoneu feature, primarily written by either Chad Young or Lucas Kelly, 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

Kris Bubic, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 30.77%

Bubic popped up in last week’s Hot Right Now, as all the managers who had cut him 30 days ago added him back to cut him again and reduce his cap penalty. Now he shows up here, as he is being cut again, to complete the cycle. No surprise. This will happen again in another 30 days.

JJ Bleday, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 18.27%

I am sad to see Bleday here, but I get it. When we last discussed him, in the May 10 Hot Right Now, I noted that I was targeting him where I needed OF depth. I cited an improved K-rate (16.1% as of 5/10 vs. 28.2% in his previous MLB cup of coffee) and an increased hard-hit rate (45.8% vs. 33.8%). Since I wrote that, Bleday has been on a mission to make me (and him) look bad. His K-rate is 25% in the last almost three weeks and his hard-hit rate is 31.8%.

Some of this seems to be a simple shift from pitchers. He saw 51.8% fastballs when first called up; since that article he has seen 41.0% fastballs. Pet Baseball Savant, his xwOBA on fastballs is .394 vs. .120 on breakers and .227 on off-speed pitches. While it is typical for hitters to perform better vs. fastballs, his splits are rather extreme. He was a worthwhile gamble, but he’s been exposed. Until he shows he can regularly handle MLB pitches that aren’t fastballs, you can safely let him go and leave him on the wire.

Dominic Fletcher, Leagues with a Cut (7 days) – 17.31%

Fletcher’s journey from Hot Right Now to here was even quicker than Bleday’s, as he showed up in the HRN a week later. In that article, I again said I might pick him up (and I did) but that I was just going to enjoy the ride, as I worried the crowded OF would make him expendable if his production dropped, as I suspected it would.

And that is basically what happened. His plate discipline didn’t change much after that date, but his batted ball quality did, with his BABIP following, and within a week he was ticketed for Triple-A again. A 25-year-old with solid strike-zone understanding isn’t a bad guy to wait on, but Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Corbin Carroll are locked into two spots, Jake McCarthy has reclaimed a third, Pavin Smith has earned some more opportunities, Kyle Lewis still exists, and Alek Thomas is still likely ahead of Fletcher if someone is needed again. His long-term future is far from known, but for this year he appears to be a 6th OF/taxi squad type. I doubt we have seen the last of him, but I also don’t expect him to play regularly at the MLB level.

The problem for Fletcher from an Ottoneu perspective is that the upside isn’t high enough to justify playing these roster games with the Diamondbacks. When he comes back, if it looks like he is going to be up and if you need an OF, I have no problem grabbing him again and then moving on again when he is demoted. But you don’t need to sit on him.

Cold Performers

Player stat lines reflect last 14 days among players with at least 20 PA in that time frame.

Taylor Ward:  38 PA,  .139/.158/.167, -0.73 P/G

No one reading this will be surprised to hear that Taylor Ward is struggling. Posting a negative in P/G over two weeks, though, is pretty bad. But honestly, Ward has just been not good all year. His walk rate is down a bit while his K-rate is up a bit, as he is swinging more often – both in and out of the zone – and making enough more contact that his K-rate hasn’t ballooned. His line drive rate has plummeted, bringing down his BABIP with it.

If you want to be optimistic, I think you can squint at this graph and see some evidence that what is happening right now is a confluence of things that are all bad but not atypical for him:

He has seen K-rate spikes like this. He has seen his LD% fluctuate like this. He has seen his BB-rate drop like this. But that depends a lot on what happens next. He is dangerously close to falling outside his last three-year ranges for walks and strikeouts. And that is where you have to start to question if this is just a slump or if we are seeing a real decline in his skills.

But right now, it looks to me like the line drive rate recovering will cure a lot of ills. His hard-hit rate looks fine, having recovered after a dip earlier in the year.

His barrel rate has fallen in large part because his Sweet Spot rate has fallen, resulting in all those missing liners. Line drive rate is fickle, coming and going as it pleases. If he can start to get those line drives back, the barrel rate will climb with it and he’ll get back to being an effective hitter. I am tempted to buy-low, but I am watching closely what happens with his plate discipline and line drive rate in the next couple of weeks. If the line drive rate doesn’t recover or the walks and strikeouts keep trending the wrong direction, it’ll be time to bail.

James Outman: 39 PA, .114/.179/.200, 1.1 P/G

Outman was the new hotness not that long ago over the last couple of weeks he is living up to his name. He is the Out Man, creating 33 outs in 14 days. And that is being kind, as he was 0-9 in the four days before that.

What has gone wrong for the young breakout star? The strikeouts, for one thing. He is at a 44.7% k-rate since May 12. We knew that was a risk – even while going well he was over a 32% strikeout rate – but that jump from “boy this isn’t a great strikeout rate” to “goodness maybe that need to send him down” happened quickly. To make matters worse, his average exit velocity, hard-hit rate, and barrel rate (all stats that are unaffected by K-rate) have plummeted, as he has simply stopped making good contact.

Like Bleday earlier, Outman has seen a shift in pitch types, but in a maybe-unexpected direction. He is seeing more four-seam fastballs. As of May 10, he was facing four-seamers 42.3% of the time; since that has increased to 55.7% of the time. Why? He can’t hit the heat.

His xwOBA vs. four-seamers is .295, which is the 15th worst out of 160 players with 50+ PA. He has a 40.7% whiff rate against four-seamers and that is dead-last among those 160 players. The highest rate of four-seamers for any hitters is Mike Trout, who sees the, 47.2% of the time, which suggests that the 55.7% Outman has seen the last few weeks isn’t just random fluctuation.

The result (beyond the awful results noted above) is that Outman has found himself riding the bench more often. The Dodgers have not been shy about moving young players up and down in their system and they have guys who are hitting (Chris Taylor has been very good lately; Jason Heyward has been resurgent) and prospects who could use a shot (Andy Pages and Michael Busch come to mind). Outman is already falling down the depth chart and there is plenty of room for him to fall off it entirely.

If I roster Outman, I am selling if I can. An inability to hit four-seam fastballs – and especially to swing through them at such a high rate – is a real concern. If you can’t or don’t want to sell, I can understand holding and treating him like a prospect. But for now, he can’t be in your lineup and I’d rather not have him on my roster.

Yu Darvish: 14 IP, 20 pts 1.43 P/IP

Two weeks ago, Yu Darvish was a 5.23 P/IP SP, looking like the reliable front-line guy you drafted. Today, his season line is down to 4.29 P/IP. While you may be tempted to write that off as a result of a rough day (-6.77 in 2.2 IP) at Yankee Stadium (and a rough day at Yankee Stadium is an utterly forgivable offense for a starting pitcher), the two starts before that weren’t so hot either, at just 2.36 P/IP combined.

And it honestly dates back further than that. After looking great almost through the end of April, he gave up his first three HR of the season in a single start on 4/30. With the exception of one brilliant start against the Dodgers, he’s been homer-prone and watching his K-rate continue a multi-year downward trend:

That’s not a great look. I have been down on Darvish for a while, mostly because he has been so up-and-down since 2016. He was great that year (and the years before it), but since then he has been:

• Mediocre
• Bad in just 8 starts
• Mediocre, but maybe bad?
• Brilliant in the shortened 2020
• Not good
• Very Good
• And now this year, suddenly looking pretty bad again

When you look at that track record (and feel free to quibble with it, if you want), the fact that he is continuing to decline in his age 36 season isn’t particularly surprising. I don’t think he is done and I don’t think you need to rush to cut him – when I said I have been down on Darvish that is relative to the market, not a statement that I think he sucks. But I don’t think you should expect much more than him providing 4.5-4.6 P/IP. That isn’t a bad SP, at all, but it is not an ace or even a guy you really want to rely on at the top of your rotation.

If you are not contending this year, I would sell Darvish after his next good start, regardless of his salary, to recoup your costs and get a piece or two for the future. If you are contending, I still might shop him (especially if you have the SP depth to swap him for a bat), as I think his market value still outpaces his production. But there is nothing wrong with keeping him, starting him everytime and enjoying the brilliance mixed in with the poor performances, leading to an overall decent line.