Ottoneu: The Big Name Pitchers Dropped at the Deadline

One Ottoneu manager’s cuts are another Ottoneu manager’s auction bids. But take heed pretend baseball general manager! These pitchers were cut for a reason. Maybe their signature pitch no longer fell out of the zone at the last split second like it used to. Maybe injury has the general public concerned. But, maybe those criticisms will be your opportunities. This article provides some context about the pitchers who were dropped the most at the keeper deadline, using “% of leagues with a cut in the last 7 days” as the starting point.

I kept Bobby Miller at $7 and documented my reasoning in part one of my starting pitcher keep/cut series. His Steamer projection does not expect he’ll reach the replacement level I’ve suggested in the table above. That’s a problem. But I think he’ll do better than the 92 innings he’s projected for. You can’t be blamed for thinking that even if he does best that IP projection, his walk woes won’t go away and he’ll do more harm than good to your team. Baseball Savant’s new “Movement Profile (Induced Break)” visualizations have me wondering about Miller’s sinker:

Source: MLB, Baseball Savant

Why doesn’t it get more drop? And because it gets less drop than average, why is the pitch’s Stuff+ grading above average? This may warrant further exploration. Still, I am willing to bet on a young pitcher’s bounce back after injury, especially when he’s shown success at the major league level before.

Kenley Jansen is still unsigned and going into his age-37 season. Still, his cutter continued to grade above average in Stuff+ and in its ability to get swing and miss. But, he finished 2024 on the IL with a shoulder injury and there hasn’t been much news of his health going into Spring Training. The uncertainty has projection systems unwilling to guess his save totals for 2025 and over a third of Ottoneu managers don’t want to deal with the unknown at $10. Similarly, Kyle Finnegan has been dropped from many teams due to his uncertain 2025. A big difference between Finnegan and Jansen is that Finnegan finished the season healthy. Finnegan’s 2024 season was the best of his career from an Ottoneu P/IP perspective, but without a team for 2025, we won’t see a true projection.

Kevin Gausman being dropped at the keeper deadline reflects his poor 2024 season. His 4.50 P/IP was at replacement level and his worst mark since 2019. Over his career, his splitter has garnered a 22.3% swinging strike rate and that mark fell to 16.0% in 2024. The splitter also landed in the zone a little less often and Gausman was forced to use his fastball (including the re-discovered, but poor-performing sinker) too often. Overall, Gasuman’s SwStr% has declined in the last three seasons:

Along with Gausman, Aaron Nola had a down year and finished below the replacement level of 4.50 P/IP. He’s been a consistent bulk pitcher over the last three seasons, averaging 199 IP in that time, but his home run issues added too many negative points to team totals in 2024. Jake Mailhot wrote about his reason for cutting Nola in his own Ottoneu keep/cut article writing, “…if you’re expecting a front-line starter and paying those kinds of prices to roster him, I’m afraid you’re going to be sorely disappointed.” It seems many Ottoneu managers have taken Jake’s advice.

The big drop in Luis Castillo’s overall swinging strike rate, from 14.7% in 2023 to 11.8% in 2024, must have fantasy managers worried. Projection systems don’t expect there to be much change from his 2024 performance in 2025, but his HR/9 is expected to come down, which may help bring him back above the replacement level area he found himself hovering around last season.

Lastly, Yu Darvish posted his fourth consecutive season with a decreasing K%.

Darvish has the worst 2025 projection of all the starting pitchers in the table above, indicating further decline. There is hope, however, in 2024’s fastball performance. Two of his three fastballs, the sinker, and the cutter, returned above-average swinging strike rates.

Each pitcher above deserves a bright yellow star next to their name indicating your interest in re-drafting them (if they were dropped in your league) this spring. They are worth adding to your roster, but be sure you are jumping back in at a good price. Next week, I’ll review the most dropped hitters in the same way.