The Anatomy of a Ottoneu Dynasty Rebuild: Part 8, The Season in Review

We made it through the whole regular season and hopefully you brought home some hardware in your leagues. For Ottoneu teams, the job isn’t finished at the end of the season; there’s arbitration, the keeper deadline, offseason trades, and next year’s draft to look forward to. For rebuilding teams, this is the time to evaluate your progress and to start making a plan for next season; will you be continuing to build toward the future or is your roster ready to compete? If you haven’t been following along with this series, I’ve covered my process of rebuilding this team, from the initial decision to rebuild, to the draft, to preparing to sell.

This season was a wild roller coaster for my team in Ottoneu League 32 – Fantasy Field of Dreams. I made some blockbuster trades this summer and churned through a ton of players on the waiver wire. In the end, I wound up in seventh place with 17,046.4 total points, just a hair under 2,000 points behind the winning team. Despite the mediocre finish, I was actually pretty happy with how I finished the season; during the second half of the season, my team was the fifth highest scoring team in the league and during the final month of the year, I out scored every other team.

My rate stats (P/G and P/IP) weren’t the best during September, even though they were comfortably above average, so that big point total seems to be a bit of a mirage thanks to hitting my games and innings caps. Still, I’m happy with the progress of my roster and I think I’ve taken a big step towards competing sooner rather than later. I’m still a bit unsure if that window is opening next year or not, but I’m closer to moving out of this rebuilding cycle than I thought I’d be at the start of the season.

The biggest challenge I had on my roster during the season was rostering — and subsequently cutting — Wander Franco. He was one of the core pieces I was planning on building around but his legal trouble has sabotaged the bright future he had in baseball. I won’t wade into that situation except to say that fantasy baseball is a game and you should do what helps you enjoy it as much as possible. I wound up cutting Franco and didn’t look back.

Losing Franco obviously changes the complexion of my roster a bit. Instead of building around a pair of superstars in Aaron Judge and Franco, I’m now left with a pretty significant hole at shortstop that I’ll need to address in the offseason. Despite that gap, I’m actually pretty happy with where my roster stands. Here are the 20 players I’ve identified as clear keepers with an early look at their potential production in 2024 using the in-season updated Steamer 600 projections:

I’ve got a solid core of position players with a few key high priced veterans and a young, cheap pitching staff. Of these 20 keepers, I acquired seven of them via trades, four of them through in-season auctions, and two through the preseason draft. Spencers Torkelson and Steer were the last two draftees on my roster by the end of the season; of my ten drafted players at the beginning of the season, four were traded away and four were cut during the season. Obviously every team’s mileage will vary, but that’s a pretty clear illustration of how difficult it is to rebuild through the draft.

I’m really happy with how my outfield is shaping up. Judge is the obvious headliner but Jazz Chisholm Jr. provides an exciting ceiling if he can stay healthy next year while Ian Happ and Taylor Ward should be consistent contributors. I’ve got Steer, Josh Lowe, and Jeff Mcneil to plug and play as needed. Because five outfield spots have been increasingly more difficult to fill with solid options over the last few seasons, I’m pleased to head into next year with these players locked in.

Third base is another strength as long as Royce Lewis can stay healthy. His second-half breakout was exciting to watch and he’s finally fulfilling the lofty prospect ceiling he’s had since being drafted first overall back in 2017. More importantly, I’ve got some nice backup options on my roster if Lewis continues to be injury plagued; Steer, Alec Bohm, and Jorge Polanco can all fill in at third base if needed, though that might have some knock-on effects on my middle infield situation.

I quite like where my pitching staff ended up by the end of the season too. Tarik Skubal’s breakout after returning from his own elbow injury gives me a high-ceiling starter to anchor my rotation alongside George Kirby, Jesús Luzardo, and Grayson Rodriguez. Pending the status of his injured leg, Nick Lodolo could ascend into that group as well. This group of pitchers is young and filled with potential.

With just seven obvious cuts on my roster, that leaves 18 players on my keep/cut bubble. I have $194 in cap space devoted to my 20 keepers above which gives me a ton of room to play with. Ideally, I’d probably keep half of these bubble players while adding another $60-$80 in salary to my cap.

There’s definitely a world where I’d keep both Sean Murphy and Shane Bieber, the highest priced players on my bubble, but I’m not sure I need either on my roster next year. Murphy started the year really strong but really struggled in the second half of the season and the emergence of Jonah Heim at a fraction of the salary means I can head into the draft looking for a cheap catcher to add. Bieber’s return from his elbow injury before the season ended gives me a lot more confidence about his ability to be a solid contributor next year; I’m just not sure his ceiling is as high as it’s been in the recent past when he was producing over 5 P/IP.

There’s that group of young outfielders priced around $9-$10 that feel like they’re just a touch too expensive but still have some promise to outproduce their projections. I also have to make a decision about Jake Cronenworth or Brendan Donovan as a utility knife for my roster; the projection for the latter surprised me and I’m leaning towards him even though I thought he would have been a cut before this exercise.

Then there’s this group of cheap-ish pitchers who should provide some nice bulk innings for my roster even if there isn’t much ceiling for much more than their projections. Drew Rasmussen’s injury is a wild card and Jack Leiter made some promising steps forward during the second-half of the season. I’m not sure it really matters which of these pitchers I keep, but I think it’s important to keep three or four of them to give me plenty of opportunities to play matchups and still hit my innings cap.

Let’s say I keep nine of those bubble guys giving me 29 players on my roster heading into the draft — disregarding any offseason wheeling and dealing. Accounting for the $30-ish in salary added to my roster via arbitration, I’m expecting to have around $285 in salary committed to these 29 keepers. That leaves me around $115 to fill 11 spots in the draft which is a great spot to be in. I’ll need a shortstop, one more big bat, a frontline starter or two, and a full bullpen. That feels doable with the amount of cap space that I’ll have.