Ottoneu Cold Right Now: May 8 2025

Cold Right Now (CRN) is a weekly Ottoneu feature focused on players being dropped or who should be dropped in Ottoneu leagues. In this feature, we will break down players into three sections:

1. Roster Cuts: Analysis of players who have been cut in a high percentage of leagues.
2. Recent Injuries: A look at the implications of recent injuries (not all, just some high-profile ones).
3. Cold Performers: Players with a low P/G or P/IP in recent weeks.

This article will typically run once per week and will help fantasy managers keep track of players that need to be given extra attention to improve rosters.

Roster Cuts

Alexis Díaz, Add% Change (7 days): -25.7%

Michael Baumann recently wrote about Alexis Díaz’s demotion and pointed out the downward trend in his velocity over the course of multiple seasons. He also pointed out that Díaz began the season on the IL with a hamstring injury, and it seems likely that without proper ramp-up time, Díaz was not set up for success in the first place. In Jeff Zimmerman’s The Process 2025 Appendix Edition, he suggested in his study on Starting Pitcher Injury Grades that:

Spring training innings matter a ton. If a starter doesn’t throw over 10 IP (preferably 15 IP)
in Spring Training, they should be dropped a letter grade. That information isn’t available until the last
minute but is extremely valuable.

In the case of relief pitcher Alexis Díaz, 3.1 IP probably wasn’t enough. Interestingly, the 2025 Stuff+ measure on Díaz’s four-seam fastball was the second-best of his career at 95, behind 2022’s 106. But his slider has declined significantly over his four seasons in the majors. In 2023, Díaz’s 37-save season, his slider earned an 18.7% K% and was hit for a .233 wOBA. This year, those marks are 4.5% and .609 respectively.

Whether you keep Díaz should be dependent on his salary. Over the $7 average? That feels like a fairly easy cut. Below it by $1 or $2, and you may have to ponder it a little further. Díaz is a two-pitch pitcher who has lost the feel for one of his pitches and may still be able to find it in AAA.

Jake Burger, Add% Change (7 Days): -19.3%

The offseason touting of Jake Burger’s prodigious power likely led to overpaying in many Ottoneu leagues. His average salary sits at $7, but his K% sits at 29.6%. That’s not particularly high for the 29-year-old with a career K% of 27.7%. While he’s still hitting the ball hard and putting it on the barrel, his 9.7% HR/FB rate is lower than the league average of 10.9% and even lower than his career 19.8%. You may wonder if he’s putting the ball in the air less often, and that’s not the case. In fact, his 44.3% FB% is the highest of his career. But, he has lost a few percentage points in his pull rate, dropping down to 35.7%. Could that be part of the issue?

While 2024’s spray chart (above, left) shows a lot of fly balls all over the outfield, he certainly had more home run success to his pull side. All of Burger’s three 2025 home runs have been more centered than they have been pulled. That may, at the very least, help explain the power outage. Whether or not Burger can fix it in AAA is a completely different thing. He certainly seems to have run into bad luck in 2025, as his true versus expected stats can point out…

AVG: .190, xAVG: .219

SLG: .330, xSLG: .402

wOBA: .248, xwOBA: .291

…but those expected stats still place him below average. Lastly, by pVals Burger has struggled against fastballs in 2025, posting a -2.4 run value on four-seamers. These are all things that can be worked on in the minor leagues.

Craig Yoho, Add% Change (7 Days): -19.0%

The rush was on to add Craig Yoho a few weeks ago. Yoho grabbed fantasy attention with a 2024 minor league (three levels) ERA and WHIP both of 0.94. He was added to the Brewers’ major league roster at the end of April. That minor league ERA was backed by a 42.4% K% and a 9.7% BB% (32.8% K-BB%). Things went well in Yoho’s first four appearances as he produced a 1.93 ERA (3.30 FIP) and a 22.2% K% through 4.2 IP. But two walks in that time brought his small sample BB/9 up to 3.86, and in his last appearance, he walked four batters in one inning and gave up a home run, swelling his BB/9 to 9.53. None of his pitches (four-seam, changeup, slider, cutter) were in the zone at league-average rates, indicating Yoho played around the edges too much and got burned by big league hitting. He’ll head back down to AAA to work on control, and if you’re rostering him for anything more than his $2 average, you may want to consider why that is.

Injuries

Triston Casas, Add% Change (7 days): -51.4%

Casas’ 2025 season appears to be over as he underwent knee surgery on Sunday. In keeper leagues like Ottoneu where his average salary sits at $12, managers must consider cutting him. Through 251 games, Casas has proven to be a .241/.348/.452 hitter. While it’s promising to see that he doesn’t necessarily struggle against opposite-handed pitching, he has not yet proven that he can repeat the 20+ home run season of 2023. Injuries just plain suck and they have been the reason Casas hasn’t had the chance to prove it. It would make much more sense to keep him through this injury in hopes of a return to form in 2026, had he showcased some real signs of being worth that $12 average in 2025, but he did not in the 29 games he played. While his K% did come down to a near career best, and he was likely BABIP’d (.217) out of a higher batting average, his zone contact rate was an all-too-low 79.2%, and he didn’t barrel the ball up enough (9.7%) to make up for a lack of contact.

Luke Raley, Add% Change (7 days): -18.7%

The dreaded “oblique strain” has placed Raley on the IL. He’s played in 24 games so far this season and has a .206/.345/.324 slash line. It’s only the middle portion of that line that stands out in his OBP, as it’s higher than league average, and much of that is due to his 11.9% BB%, well above his career average of 6.8%. Hopefully, Raley wasn’t in your everyday starting lineup with only two home runs and two stolen bases. If he gets healthy and returns to the Mariners lineup, he’ll probably still be Luke Raley. That is, he’ll have good batted ball metrics but low contact rates. It seems pertinent to drop him and add him if he catches fire when he returns.

Cold Performers

Cold performers are marked by measuring low P/G or P/IP in the last 14 days.

Michael Conforto, -0.6 P/G

In his last 51 plate appearances, Conforto has displayed a walk rate of 13.7% (good) and a K% of 37.3% (bad). In that time, he’s hit two home runs. While he has been striking out at an alarming rate, he’s also been putting the ball in play. In his 51 PA’s, he has 25 batted ball events and a BABIP of .080. His xSLG (.332) and his SLG (.231) are markedly far apart, but .332 still leaves you wanting more.

Trevor Story, 0.2 P/G

Story is hitting the ball hard (50.0% HardHit%), but he’s not making contact often enough (81.8% Z-Contact%). He’s always been a high-strikeout hitter; his career K% is 28.3%, and in 2025, he’s striking out 29.8% of the time. There’s some indication that Story has been lucky thus far, his HR/FB rate of 15.6% is well above the league average 10.9% early in the season and he’s putting the ball in the air significantly less often than he has in his career; 32.7% 2025 vs. 44.2% career FB%. He’ll need to start lifting the ball more often to provide fantasy managers the power metrics they’re looking for.

Bowden Francis, -3.2 P/IP

Pitchers are susceptible to falling into this section of the “Cold Right Now” article if they have two poor performances in a row, and Francis falls into that category after giving up five home runs against the Red Sox on April 29th. He only made it three innings and struck out only one. If there’s a silver lining, Francis did not walk a single batter in that outing, and while he didn’t follow it up with a better performance against the Guardians (4.1 IP, 4 ER, 2 K), he only walked one batter. His 2025 6.7% BB% is promising, but his stuff hasn’t been good enough to play in the zone. His sinker has been walloped for a .895 wOBA, and he’s putting it in the zone 85.7% of the time. Granted, he’s only thrown 7 of them, but they aren’t fooling anyone. His splitter, on the other hand, looks great with an above-average 18.6% SwStr%, but he rarely throws it in the zone, and hitters are likely sitting on his lesser offerings. Francis is an intriguing player if he can develop a little further in approach, but at this point, he’s 29 years old.

Logan Allen로건, 0.7 P/IP

Over the start of the season, Allen’s K% has dropped, his BB% has increased, and his ERA has swelled. None of his pitches have an above-average SwStr%, and he’s struggled to find an offering for left-handed hitters.