Six Picks Market Report: Sale, Betts, de la Cruz, Brown and more

It’s been about a month since I told you that you should play Ottoneu’s Six Picks. And you should. In fact, if you haven’t picked your team for today, go do that now. I’ll still be here when you get back.

Welcome back! Now that you are ready to read, I’ll let you know that today’s article isn’t really about Six Picks. I mean, it is, on the surface. The data is Six Picks data and we are going to talk a bit about Six Picks to explain the data. But what the article is really about is what Six Picks can tell us about player values outside Six Picks.

I don’t need to write much about player values inside Six Picks because, well, they are right there. Go to select your catcher or middle infielder or starting pitcher and you have a list of prices. Pretty straight forward. But how those prices are set can give you insight into your fantasy leagues. Definitely your Ottoneu leagues, but honestly, the information here is useful for any league on any platform.

Prices in Six Picks are set by the market. Each player is initially priced based on their average Ottoneu salaries. So an established star-level bat or arm is going to have a high price while an unheralded prospect probably costs $0.50. But over time, those prices change in reaction to the market. If a guy is picked regularly by large numbers of players, his price goes up. If a guy is left on the shelf, gathering dust, his price goes down.

Those price changes process Sunday evening, so every player has a price locked in for Monday’s games that remains their set price through Sunday’s games. At that point, Six Picks uses player selection data from that week to adjust player prices. Each week, you can check out The Big Board to see the biggest price gainers each week. Or you can visit a specific player page via the Research Page to see how their price has moved.

The thing that is so interesting about this data is that prices move for players even if that player’s market value hasn’t moved in Ottoneu or most other seas0n-long leagues. This week’s top gainer – Chris Sale – is a perfect example. Sale’s Six Picks price went up $6 from $15.50 to $21.50. This is actually the reversal of a trend. Sale started the season at $19.00 before dropping to $15.50 over the first month and then jumping back up.

But if you go to Sale’s Ottoneu player page, he is and has been 100% rostered since the start of the season. His average salary hasn’t budged. The market on Chris Sale has move a lot since Opening Day, but he wasn’t a free agent who could get added and he was never getting cut.

That said, if you were looking at Sale on your roster, or thinking about trading to acquire Sale, it would be really helpful to understand how much his value has shifted.

Sale’s shifting value makes sense when you look at his season. Coming off a brilliant year, he had a bit of a rough go through most of April, but his last four starts have been great. He’s averaged over 6 IP and 8 K per start, giving up just one HR (in Coors) and pitching to a 2.01 FIP. But it was only in the last week that managers started to really believe again. Part of that was recent weak opposition (Cincinnati not at Great American Ballpark and Pittsburgh), but clearly his performance is getting noticed. A week after his rocky performances and a trip to Coors tanked his value, he is on the rebound.

There are other players whose Six Picks value changes are informative. The two biggest gainers in price since Opening Day are Elly De La Cruz (up $19.25 to $42.50) and Hunter Brown (up $18.50 to $28.75). Both are players that were 100% rostered before the season so there is no chnage in their roster rates or average salaries, but it’s pretty clear that their market value has shifted dramatically since the start of the season. De la Cruz may have found his level, as this past week his price went down $0.25, but Brown went up $2.25, tied for the 6th largest gain this week, so he is still on the upswing. If you are thinking about trade value for these two, this data might suggest that de la Cruz is at peak value, making it the best time to sell him if you think you need or want to sell him, while Brown is still gaining.

Another player who has gained more than $10 in value is Aaron Judge, up $11.75 to $73.75 since Opening Day. That is notable both because it’s a big gain on an already high price – managers have been breaking their budget to pick Judge and getting good enough results to keep spending more – and because it took him passed Shohei Ohtani as the highest paid player in Six Picks. Ohtani himself is up $4.50 since Opening Day, so it’s not like he has fallen off. Judge has just been that good.

Only three of the ten highest priced players in Six Picks have seen declines in value so far this season. Juan Soto (down $1.25), Mookie Betts ($3.50) and Yordan Alvarez ($1.50) have all seen their market values decrease since Opening Day. Alvarez lost half that $1.50 this week alone, after being placed on the IL. Which tells me that despite the poor starts, Soto and Alvarez are still bats people trust. Yes, their values are down, but not a ton.

But Betts might be a different story. That $3.50 drop doesn’t sound like a ton, but price decreases are capped at $1 per week. Thirteen players have maxed out at $7 total in lost value, almost all due to injury or otherwise being unavailable. So Betts dropping $3.50 is pretty notable. In a market with 2,191 players, only 225 lost more value than Betts and many of those players have been injured or in the minors. Betts is still 100% rostered in Ottoneu leagues, but it’s fair to assume, based on the Six Picks data, that managers trust him less and his trade value is very likely down a bit. If you think Betts is going to rebound from his poor start, now might be a good time to buy. That might not be true for Alvarez or Soto.

I noted that “almost all” of the $7 drops were due to injury, but Nolan Jones is in that mix as well, decreasing by $7 to $1.25 just by being really, really bad. Interestingly, Jones has shown some positive signs under the hood – 12% barrel rate, 51% hard-hit rate, career best average EV – but BABIP and strike outs are killing him. There is good reason to think he will rebound but Six Picks players are either not buying it or want to see if before committing (even for a brief one day commitment).