Ottoneu: Jake’s Keep or Cut Decisions at MI

Earlier this week, Lucas Kelly and Chad Young ran though their tough keep or cut decisions at middle infield for their Ottoneu teams. Now I’ll join in on the party and run through three players on my bubble and where I think the keep line could be for each of them. All P/G projections are from the 2024 Steamer projections.

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Ryan McMahon 2B/3B
Salary: $6 and $10
Average Salary: $11.4
2023 P/G: 4.71
Projected 2024 P/G: 4.95

Ryan McMahon’s career trajectory has been anything but a straight line. A breakout season in 2019 was followed by an extremely disappointing pandemic-shortened season. A second breakout in 2021 made it seem like he had gotten things back on track but he took some significant steps back the next year and followed that up with another step back this year.

It all comes down to his strikeout rate. In 2021, he struck out a career-low 24.7% of the time while continuing to hit for power and draw a decent amount of walks. The strikeout rate stayed low last year but his power dried up a bit despite similar looking underlying batted ball peripherals. His quality of contact stayed mostly the same in 2023 — a good thing — but his strikeout rate suddenly shot back up above 30%. It’s pretty easy to see why.

His ability to make contact on pitches in the zone absolutely cratered last year. His walk rate was actually a career-high 10.8% which indicates he still had a decent idea of which pitches to swing at. Unfortunately, his ability to consistently make contact with those right pitches eluded him. For a player with his offensive profile, making the most of every single ball he puts in play is paramount, but when those below-average bat-to-ball skills take a turn for the worse, the whole house of cards collapses.

Keep or Cut?
The good news is that his quality of contact is still present. He posted career bests in barrel rate and expected wOBA this year and will continue to play in the most hitter friendly environment in baseball. His profile will always be a little risky thanks to his below average contact skills even if his power and discipline give him a solid floor in this format. Steamer projects a bit of a bounce back in his strikeout rate at the cost of some power leading to an overall wOBA right in line with what he’s done the last two years. That puts his value somewhere between $8 and $11 based on the Auction Calculator. I’m rostering him in two leagues and I’m definitely keeping him at $6. In the other league, he’s still on my bubble since that team desperately needs cap space and I’m not sure keeping McMahon at essentially market value is the best use of resources there.

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Jeff McNeil 2B/OF
Salary: $8 and $13
Average Salary: $10.9
2023 P/G: 4.35
Projected 2024 P/G: 5.14

A year ago, Jeff McNeil was coming off a phenomenal season in which he won the NL batting crown, was an All-Star, and received down-ballot MVP votes. Fast forward a year and McNeil’s star looks a lot less bright. It’s not hard to figure out the issue that sank his season this year: it’s all about the BABIP. In many ways, his offensive struggles this year look a lot like the mediocre season he put together in 2021. Unfortunately, there are a lot more red flags this year than there were two years ago.

It’s important to note that McNeil’s full season stats hide the ebbs and flows of his season. He actually started off fairly strong, posting a 139 wRC+ through the first month of the season, but a prolonged summer slump dragged his production into a crater that even a late season surge couldn’t salvage.

For the most part, his wOBA followed his BABIP, which makes sense for a player so dependent on his high-contact approach. The weird thing was the gigantic spike in strikeout rate that occurred in the middle of the season. It’s almost as if he tried to swing his way out of his slump which only exacerbated his issues. Despite that huge mountain of strikeouts during the summer, his overall strikeout rate ended up at nearly a career-low by the end of the season. His ability to make contact isn’t in question.

I am a little more worried about his quality of contact. McNeil has never really hit the ball all that hard, relying instead on an ability to spray his contact from line to line while never really producing all that much weak contact. Unfortunately, his hard hit rate fell three points to 27% and his sweet spot rate dropped seven points to 32.1%. It all culminated in a ghastly .281 expected wOBA on contact, easily a career-worst for him and one of the worst marks in baseball among qualified batters. For a batter who relies so heavily on putting the ball in play, to have such a dramatic drop in contact quality is a serious red flag.

Keep or Cut?
McNeil now has almost 2700 career plate appearances with a .346 wOBA and Steamer projected a nice bounce back from him in 2024. Still, the drop in contact quality is a big concern which clouds his future a bit. During his down year in 2021, his hard hit and sweet spot rates were right in line with his career norms indicating that much of his struggles were simply rooted in bad batted ball luck; that’s not the case this year. Despite his up-and-down year, he was still worth $8 according to the Auction Calculator in 2023. Like McMahon, I’m rostering McNeil in two leagues and one is priced as an easy keep ($8) and the other puts him on the bubble ($13). There is certainly a universe where McNeil returns that higher value or even more but it now feels a little more risky than it did a year ago.

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Carlos Correa SS
Salary: $27
Average Salary: $27.4
2023 P/G: 4.45
Projected 2024 P/G: 5.40

A year ago, if you told me I had the option of keeping a $27 Carlos Correa, it would have been a no-brainer decision. One season long bout with Plantar Fasciitis has completely changed his fortunes. Health has always been an issue with Correa; he’s topped 150 games played in a season just once back in 2016 and has had major IL stints for a variety of ailments in nearly every other season. The production is obviously elite when he’s on the field, but you have to bake in some risk that he’ll miss significant time each season into your evaluation calculus.

While his foot injury sapped a lot of his power, he also underperformed many of his underlying metrics based on his batted ball quality. His hard hit and barrel rates were right in line with his career norms, but all of his expected stats outpaced what he actually produced at the plate this year and his BABIP fell from .339 to .272. That one-two punch of bad luck combined with bad health meant that he was a shell of his normal self in 2023.

The amount you value Correa in 2024 seems entirely dependent on how much you think he’ll play. If you believe he’ll be healthy and ready to play a full season, a $27 salary could be close to market value with the potential of becoming a steal if Correa is truly firing on all cylinders. As it is, $27 feels like too much of a risk for a player who had yet to prove he can stay on the field for an entire season.

Keep or Cut?
The team that has to make a decision about Correa also has Gunnar Henderson to cover shortstop if I end up cutting the former. Steamer projects a pretty significant bounce back campaign for Correa next year and the projection even accounts for around 20 games missed next year. Because I have Henderson to step into the full-time shortstop role and they’re priced around the same, I’ll be cutting Correa in favor of the younger option.