Ottoneu Hot Right Now: September 17, 2025

The 2025 version of Hot Right Now will typically include three sections:

1. Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
2. Roster Adds: Analysis of players with high add% changes.
3. Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP in recent weeks.

The FanGraphs Ottoneu team plans to run this feature weekly, updating fantasy managers on the biggest movers in Ottoneu leagues with an analysis of how these players could or could not help your roster.

Current Auctions

Zach Cole – 45 current auctions

When I read about Zach Cole, I see a poor man’s Bradley Zimmer. Just some examples but in July, James Fegan wrote that Cole is “lithe and long-levered” and has “the range to play a passable center field and the cannon to be a defensive asset in right.” He praised his eye and commented that he has enough loft in his swing “to leave the yard in any direction.” He also called it a “long swing” and pointed to a concerning K-rate. He called Cole “too toolsy not to be intriguing.”

Way back in 2016, Dan Farnsworth wrote of Zimmer that he “is a long-limbed toolsy dude.” “He has a good eye at the plate,” wrote Farnsworth, “and has the swing and quickness to hit just about anything you can throw at him.” He called out a conerning K-rate, though he also expected Zimmer to develop through that.

They are also both left-handed bats who throw right handed. Both are 6’2″ and needed to grow into their frame (Cole is listed at 190, Zimmer was 215 last FanGraphs updated his bio).

When Farnsworth wrote about Zimmer, he was 23, coming off a high-K year in Double-A, and – unbeknownst to us at the time in the early stages of a decline that combined an increasingly problematic strikeout rate and a bunch of injuries.

Now, I don’t mean to saddle Cole with Zimmer’s baggage – that isn’t fair to him at all – but I went back to search out early Zimmer reports because the similarities struck me. And they don’t favor Cole. Cole’s K-rate is worse (36.3% this year in Double-A; Zimmer’s was only 25% at the time of that article) and he is already 25, meaning there is a lot less room for projection and growth.

The auctions are happening because he has been brilliant since his call-up, with two HR and a 235 wRC+ in his first 19 PA. It goes without saying that 19 PA is a small sample, but in that small sample, the overall stats are boosted by a .500 BABIP. He has 6 K in those 19 PA, which is both a lot of K’s in MLB and very much in line with what we would expect given his minor league track record. He can hit the ball hard, but he looks like a guy destined to be exposed.

I have no issue with anyone picking him up now to ride the hot streak and see where it ends, but if he ends 2025 looking good, I would be shopping him hard in the off-season – I just don’t buy the profile at all.

Daylen Lile – 32 current auctions

Lile is now basically half a season into his career (82 games and 318 PA) and has a 124 wRC+ and is putting up just under 5 P/G. That’s pretty impressive production. The question, I think, is if he has another gear or if he’s likely to take a step back.

The case for the step back is both a high BABIP (.331) and limited power (just 6 HR and low expectations from prospectors). There is a bit of Luis Arraez in here, as he doesn’t walk much, doesn’t hit for much power, and succeeds by putting the ball in play. But his bat-to-ball skills are not nearly at the level of Arraez, so the K-rate sits much higher (though not high).

If the BABIP corrects, the performance is going to drop, as he doesn’t have the power or the walk-rate to sustain much value. He does have 8 steals, to supplement his value, but he has been caught six times – so his base running is hurting you in points leagues and might not be reliable in 5×5.

The thing to watch with him this off-season is if he can add muscle, increase bat speed, and start hitting the ball harder. He has a good sense of the zone and makes contact at a high rate – if he can do that while increase the quality of contact, he could get interesting.

Roster Adds

Connelly Early – Add% Change (7 Days) – 77.7%

That is an absolutely wild rate for a player to be added to rosters. It’s the kind of number you don’t even see when new players are added to the Ottoneu universe of players, because most draftees simply don’t get rostered at that high a rate that quickly. It takes a special confluence of a guy who was off the prospect radar and then explodes into relevance. And boy does Early fit the bill.

After his start Tuesday, he now has 10.1 MLB IP with 18 K, 1 BB, 10 H and just 1 ER. You couldn’t ask for more.

Is Early this good? Probably not – his minor league track record doesn’t scream “low walk rate” and MLB hitters will learn and adjust. But the K’s seem legit, he keeps the ball on the ground, such that even when he has had a high HR/FB rate in the minors, his HR/9 has stayed reasonable. That’s enough to be successful even without the absurd walk rate. And if he really did figure out a way to avoid walks?

Yeah, I would be thrilled to pick him up.

Hot Performers

Stats reflect the last 14 days for both hitters and pitchers. Players selected are usually rostered at lower levels.

Mookie Betts – 10.7 P/G

Betts isn’t the typical type of player to show up here, but after a really rough go of it early in the season, he has absolutely taken off in the second half. And these two graphs are pretty telling:

This isn’t quite the best we have seen his bat speed, but the exit velocities are returning to what we had come to expect. Given we know he started the year coming off an illness that sapped him of strength and weight, it’s hard not to see this and wonder if the All-Star Break, plus just further distance from the illness, has provided him with a chance to get back to being himself. That’s a hard think to know for sure, but the data looks good.