Ottoneu: Should you cut Gerrit Cole?

It depends. Thank you for reading my article, I hope you enjoyed it.

Ok, snarky intro aside, this question is coming up a lot lately and it is a good question and one worth considering. Gerrit Cole is, unquestionably, one of the best pitchers on earth. He is a bit better for 5×5 than he is for Ottoneu Points or 4×4 because he can be a bit homer-prone (he wasn’t in 2023, but HR/FB rate is noisy and I expect his will come back up), but that’s beside the point.

He is a legit ace, one of very few reliable aces in the game, and people paid accordingly. And now he is hurt. So what do you do?

“It depends” is, in fact, the right answer, but what does it depend on. A few factors:

How much are you paying him?

Cole’s median salary is $45 but he ranges from $12 to $78 across Ottoneu, not counting the 5% of leagues where he is currently a free agent. If you have the $12 version, please don’t cut him, at least not yet. Honestly, even if Cole ends up getting Tommy John, you could justify holding that version through recovery. And that is a worst-case scenario that seems unlikely.

But even up to at least $30, there is good reason to just wait this out. He could be back before too long and giving up that cheap a Cole is just not ideal.

Why $30? It is admittedly a bit of an arbitrary cut off, but it puts you a solid $15 below his median price. If you get 3-4 months of a healthy Cole (back sometime in June), you’ll get $30 of value from him, not to mention keeping him at $32 next year.This doesn’t mean you have to keep him at $27 or that you have to cut him at $33, but it’s the first thing I would consider.

What does cap space look like for your team?

Put simply, if you cut Cole, the primary thing you get back is cap space. If you have $30 in cap space already, cutting a $45 Cole so you can have $75 in cap space once he is re-auctioned likely won’t move the needle for you very much. If you are up against the cap, there may be good reason to cut him, as that cap space has real value.

Why is that $45 less valuable to a team that already has cap space? Just like real money, the value of each additional dollar, beyond a certain point, is lower than the dollar before it. The value of the cap space is only equal to what you can spend it on. If you can spend $10 on something exciting, then that first $10 in space is valuable. If the next $10 will go to mediocre pieces you don’t care about, then it is less valuable. The 70th dollar of space you have probably won’t do you much good.

What does cap space look like for the rest of your league?

And it may not be the rest of your league – it might just be one other team. If no one in your league has more than $10-$15 of cap space to pick up Cole, cutting a $45, median-priced Cole will do one of two things. It will either result in him sitting out there for 30 days because no one wants to figure out how to add him, giving you a shot to add him back OR it will create enough of a bidding war to force another team into some difficult cuts of expensive players. And once those players are cut, you will have whatever cap space you already had plus $45 dollars to scoop up whatever was cut.

If you cut a $45, median-priced Cole in a league with a team that has $50 in cap space, that team might claim him. They might wait to start an auction. But when they add him, they will add him without having to make any meaningful cuts. Maybe you get lucky and that team doesn’t win the claim or the auction, but they are the “favorites” to win. If more teams have extensive cap space, the odds of interesting cuts get even lower.

What does the free agent market look like in your league?

This is related to your cap space. Maybe someone else has already cut some injured stars. Maybe no one picked up Jackson Merrill and you think he is a star in the making. Maybe you are desperate for pitching and eyeing some free agents who could help. Those might all be good reasons to cut Cole (or plan to cut Cole when you win an auction) in order to have cap space to make a strong bid on a player.

Or, maybe the market is bare and you have no one you want to pick up, so why bother with the cut?

What does the trade market for Cole look like?

Before you cut Cole, you probably want to at least poke around at the trade market. This is a bit dependent on the answers to the questions above, though. If there is a team with a lot of cap space, they might be willing to take him off your hands and absorb the salary for a small return. If he is super expensive, you probably can’t trade him at all. Someone in one of my leagues offered me an expensive Cole for two mid-priced SP. I turned it down – he was expecting me to also take on Cole’s salary and I wasn’t willing to do that – but that kind of offer may lead to a better outcome than an immediate cut.

Are you in OPL?

If you aren’t in the Ottoneu Prestige League there is still time to join. Another 53 teams could sign up and if you have a team in an eligible league (most leagues) and finished in the top half of that league (half of teams), you could sign up. And that would change the Cole equation. In OPL, that dead roster spot hurts and you can’t make up for it later in the year.

That doesn’t mean you have to immediately cut Cole. If you have good, deep pitching, a strong offense, and don’t necessarily need Cole to survive, you could choose to hold him at least until the mid-point of the first round. If your team survives through round 1 with Cole on your roster, you’ve now got an ace coming back in round 2 (hopefully). And if it turns out you need to cut or trade him to stay alive in OPL, you’ll have a chance to do that in the middle of round 1.

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Clear as mud, right? I didn’t really give you any answers today, but hopefully I helped you identify the questions you need to answer. Playing in a league with little cap space, some interesting free agents, no team that can easily afford Cole, and have an expensive Cole? Cut him loose. Have a cheap Cole in a league where lots of teams have cap space and the free agent market is not exciting? Might has well hang on.