Spent Too Much at the Draft? You’re Not Alone

Did anyone leave their draft with a feeling similar to when you just picked up the family dinner check? Broke? It’s so exciting bidding and spending and clicking “+$5” in the draft room, isn’t it? It’s the best time of year and while we all celebrate spring by making fake baseball teams, we can go a little overboard. Take, for example, a winning bid for Jackson Jobe in an Ottoneu Points League of $16. That is, in fact, his max salary. Jobe is a 21-year-old right-hander with zero major league innings to pair with zero AAA innings and he has only recorded six innings as high as AA. Is he worth $16 in 2024? No. He’s expected to be good but not to start the year in the major leagues. He’s had one, that’s right, one inning of spring training. Albeit it was a good one, but $16?!

In this exploration of Ottoneu (FanGraphs Points Leagues) player salary, I’ll explore three groups of players. First, those with zero plate appearances but large differentials between their max and average salary. These are the “not-even-yet-rookies” (intentionally lowercase). Next, are the “Middle of the Pack” players, closed out by the”Strange Outliers” group. Each group has some unique aspect about them that has driven a few buyers to act illogically. Let’s dig into each and see if we really did order too many blooming onions for the table last night.

Side note: Can you guess the name of the player representing the highest dot on the y-axis? He’s a working man’s working man. 

Wyatt Langford is Jackson Jobe with way more confidence in his 2024 playing time projection. He’s expected by all projection systems to play in at least 125 games this season. He’s burned through spring training with a .388/.446/.796, and RosterResource has him penciled in as the team’s DH. By all accounts, he’ll be in the big leagues this year. Will he start there? That remains to be seen. As it is with Langford, it seems every day there’s another story about how good Jackson Holliday is, how young Jackson Holliday is, how super-duper cool Jackson Holliday is. It may all be true and like Langford, Holliday’s spring training slash line is an eye-popping .311/.354/.600.

Beyond Langford and Holliday, Dylan Crews and Jackson Chourio are the only other hitters on this list with a 2024 ETA. While Crew’s near $10 average is too high, Chase DeLauter’s average $3 salary is much more reasonable for a prospect. If you found a share of Crews for $3, then you’re in good shape. Termarr Johnson is number nine on the FanGraphs top 100 prospect list and he’ll need to have good things happen for him in the minor leagues if he wants to see the majors this year.

Buyer’s remorse is a real thing when real money is involved. In the case of fantasy baseball, where we use fake money, the feeling may not be as strong, but the fact that too much money has been spent on one player remains. Remember that spring training hitter stats are all inflated, prospects are volatile, and even if these promising stars somehow match their max value, the price will likely go up in arbitration. Players like Gunnar Henderson, Gleyber Torres, and Bryan Reynolds are all rostered on average around $17-$18. Wouldn’t you rather pay for 2024 production?

The “Middle of the Pack” group represents players who have an established amount of plate appearances in the past few seasons, yet youth, injury, or some other block has been placed in front of their path to playing time. These players have an average salary right in line with their production, but some Ottoneu managers are more bullish than others.

Jake Burger, for example, just wasn’t given steady playing time in the past. Last season, he finally broke through the block, accumulated 323 plate appearances for the White Sox, and hit 25 home runs. The re-building White Sox traded him to the Marlins and he thanked them by hitting another nine homers. Will he continue that production in Miami? Projections place him somewhere between 27 and 31 home runs making last season’s total of 34 seem like a career high. But what if that’s not right? What if he goes over 34 in Miami in 2024? Those are the questions that make a few Ottoneu managers pay well over the average. These types of players, while valuable, are much more likely to benefit your team when they aren’t impacting your bottom line. Let others take the over, over, over, and pay too much. If you’re rostering any of the “Middle of the Pack” types at or under the average, you’ve got something good going on.

Of course, there will always be people spending lavishly with no monetary worries at all. “Bring more steak and wine and seafood towers to the table please!“, they yell across the dining room while laughing and clinking glasses. These people spark questions in your mind like, “How can they spend so much all weekend at bars and restaurants and still afford the rent?” or “Are they supplementing their income by investing in AI-powered robo-advisor portfolios?” Whatever questions the $107 salary given to Mike Trout sparks in your mind, consider it an outlier, and don’t try to answer them. That, in my opinion, is the best way to deal with these situations. Ottoneu is a tricky game because placing an exact value on a player is a challenging exercise. Calculating a player’s points above replacement (PAR) level can be helpful, but it won’t justify these max salary prices for even the great Mike Trout.

If you’re still drafting before the 2024 season in Ottoneu, here’s a tip; don’t be the manager who goes way overboard on a player. Try not to go too high over the average salary a player is rostered for, especially on players who are not yet in the major leagues. Show some restraint and know that if you don’t click the “+$1” button in the draft room one more time, you’re saving the budget for players you could get great deals on in the “Middle of the Pack” group.