Ottoneu Trade Targets by P/G vs. Median Salary

We’re nearing the half-way point of the season and teams are aggressively buying and selling to set themselves up for titles (whether those titles are this year or in future years). Identifying trade targets is generally a league-by-league kind of thing, as buyers can only buy players sellers are selling, but you can find targets by looking at broader trends across leagues, as well.

Plus, as a buyer, you can’t always wait for someone to decide to sell – sometimes you need to be proactive and reach out and see if a team is ready to move a bat you need. Today, I am looking to identify hitter trade targets for buyers, by comparing players’ median salary to their 2023 points per game.

This isn’t foolproof, by any means. A player with a low P/G might not be a sell if the manager is confident they will turn it around. A player with a high median salary might be nice and cheap in your league, and therefore not a sell. But it’s not a bad place to start.

The chart below compares salaries vs. production for all hitters rostered in more than 60% of Ottoneu leagues, with a few players called out. I excluded Shohei Ohtani cause he is Shohei Ohtani and he breaks all the models.

The first thing you should notice is that there is a relationship between salary and production. The correlation is .413 so salary isn’t by any means a perfect proxy for production, but in general you should expect production to increase as salary increases.

That’s obviously not going to always be the case, and players who fall below a line of best fit on this graph – whose point on the chart is lower than others with similar median salaries – are likely overpriced players whose current managers are not getting what they paid for. These players are unlikely to be keepers and are likely to be disappointing their current managers, making them ideal candidates to try to acquire in a trade. Let’s look at a few.

The brown dot, right near the intersection of $40 and 4 is Manny Machado, who has put up 4.21 P/G vs. a median salary of $40. No one with a median salary over $18.50 is producing as little per game as Machado. The concern for a buyer could be that Machado has been so bad that he isn’t really a trade target. But Machado has been quite good since coming off the IL in early June, hitting the ball harder and getting results to follow. Machado’s track record is strong and there are plenty of contenders who could use help at 3B right now. It’s possible that Machado, now at over 6 P/G for his last ten games, has turned things around enough to not be a sell. But there is a good chance his struggles and missed time have been a big hit to his current manager and that manager may be open to moving on.

The blue dot is a Blue Jay – Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has been really good but really good isn’t what we paid for. His .340 wOBA is well below his .351 last year and his 2021 season set expectations even higher. The thing is, Vlad is kinda/sorta repeating that 2021. Not quite, but his xwOBA that year was .417 and it is .392 this year. Don’t get me wrong – .392 is a far cry from .417 – but it’s also a whole lot better than .340. All the underlying numbers – strikeout rate, walk rate, hard-hit rate, barrel rate look good or even great, but his HR/FB rate has dropped to an inexplicable career-low. He should be anchoring offenses and the teams that paid him $45 median are not going to be happy with around 5.40 P/G, and their teams are likely struggling. If they are, he’s a great buy right now. He’s hitting the ball too well for the results not to follow.

The red dot just a bit below the Guerrero dot is Trea Turner, whose $46 median salary and 4.57 P/G make him both more expensive and less productive than Guerrero. Turner, a bit like Machado, may have already righted the ship and convinced his current managers to wait things out. His P/G is over 5.9 over his last 10 games and over the last 16 days, he is walking more, striking out less and hitting the ball harder. Turner has been in a multi-year slide that has been somewhat ignored because he has gone from “great’ to “still great” and that makes it hard to see. But his chase rate, contact rate, K-rate, and HR/FB rate have all gotten worse every year since 2020. So unlike the last two, I am at least a little concerned. I like the idea of buying low and trusting that Turner will still end up great or at least very good, but there is some risk here that we are seeing real decline. If I need SS help though, I am going to inquire.

The green and yellow dots that overlap on the far right are Juan Soto (yellow) and Mike Trout (green). I am talking about them together mostly because they are both over 6 P/G already – Soto at 6.38 and Trout at 6.23. That might be less than you want for the $58 median salary they both command, but it is still pretty good. Which means that unlike Machado (who you hope can stay hot), or Vlad (who you expect will get it going again based on the underlying numbers), or Turner (who you are willing to bet on talent despite the decline), you don’t need to make a bet with these two. They are already producing. If you are lucky, they produced not-quite-enough to keep their current teams in the race, and left enough questions that other manager think they are overpriced. If so, these players are easy buys because you have every reason to expect them to produce for you.