Ottoneu Position Eligibility Changes – The Gainers

As the calendar turns to October and we turn our attention to the playoffs, Ottoneu quietly moves on to 2025. Niv Shah will keep us updated on off-season activity in his annual MegaThread (which is also a great place to ask him questions) and you can see there that the first step includes positional eligibility being updated.

At this time of year, those updates are all bad news. The season ends and anyone who had eligibility from 2023 and didn’t earn it back in 2024 has lost it for 2025. As a reminder, to be eligible at a position, a player must start five or appear in 10 games at that position in this year or the previous year at the MLB level. They can also earn eligibility by playing 20 games at a position in the minors (which does not include Spring Training of the Arizona Fall League or any winter ball).

As an example of how this can play out, look at Michael Busch. He came into 2024 with 2B/3B eligibility, thanks to his time with the Dodgers in 2023. Having moved to the Midwest, Busch became the Cubs regular 1B, making 130 starts (and 12 more appearances) at that spot. He also made three starts at 2B and one appearance each at 3B and OF, but 1B was his spot. As a result, by April 3, he had added 1B eligibility and could be used at 1B, 2B or 3B. But because he didn’t re-up those other infield spots, he is now only eligible at 1B.

With that in mind, at the bottom of this article are four tables, one each list all players rostered in more than 5% of leagues who added MI, CI, OF or C eligibility this year. Here is a quick look at some key positional-eligibility gains that happened during this season.

• Vlad Guerrero Jr. adding 3B is a pretty nice boost to his value. Not that he needed it, given the way he was hitting this year, but having 3B eligibility both makes him more flexible for setting lineups and gives him some buffer if his production declines again. The floor to being useful at 3B is lower than 1B.
• Jazz Chisholm adding 3B is less valuable – more than likely he is more useful to you in the OF, but a little flex still helps.
• Spencer Horwitz’s 2025 value will certainly be a topic of debate this off-season, but adding 2B eligibility helps a lot. The problem is he lost OF, as well (we’ll cover that tomorrow) and he simply doesn’t appear to hit enough to be a viable 1B. For Ottoneu Prestige League or if you find yourself in dire straits, that 1B eligibility might have some use, but otherwise, he is basically just a 2B next year.
• Oneil Cruz adding OF eligibility is a little like Chisholm adding 3B – I am not sure it meaningfully moves his value because you are more likely to need him at SS or MI. But OF has been pretty shallow recently and I know at least some teams were plugging Mookie Betts in the OF this year. That could be Cruz in 2025.
• Byron Buxton, Jung Hoo Lee 이정후, and Jesse Winker all added OF eligibility after starting the year as Util-only. Lee was always going to do that, but the other two were not guarantees. Either of them could lose it again (though I think Buxton will be a regular OF again in 2025), but they have it for now.
• Not many players added OF eligibility. That position, as noted above, has played pretty shallow in Ottoneu and it doesn’t look like much help was added this year.