The Ohtani Rule
The Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani is finally coming to MLB (and more specifically to the Angels), and in doing so will become the trailblazer that sets a new expectation for the future of the (possible) “two-way” player. Because salaries and injuries continue to escalate in the game, a true double threat major leaguer is still hard to imagine in baseball, but if the 23 year old Ohtani does become the first player since Babe Ruth to make a regular impact on both sides of the ball, he will change the landscape of fantasy baseball, too.
Ohtani 😱 pic.twitter.com/YXJJ8954Hs
— Vladimir Guerrero (@VladGuerrero27) December 8, 2017
Several weeks ago I posted my Top 100 fantasy prospects list for 2018. The 6’3″ Ohtani wasn’t eligible for the list at the time, but now that he’s officially signed, Ohtani would rank #1 on a revised version. With apologies to Ronald Acuna, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Shohei Ohtani is now the best prospect in baseball.
Acuna is an elite prospect (as are Eloy Jimenez and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., both of which have a case to be best overall), but the big difference for Ohtani is his readiness. Acuna had a terrific season in the minors in 2017 but Ohtani is tailor-made to step on the field and contribute in a meaningful way in April for the Angels…as a starting pitcher.
Last week Paul Sporer ranked Ohtani just outside his top 30 starting pitchers, slotting him between Lance McCullers and Jose Berrios. Two key points stand out for me in Paul’s write up:
He should bring at least two plus pitches right out the gate with his fastball and splitter while the slider has also gotten plus grades, but might “only” be more of a 50-55 grade pitch, same with his curveball. He doesn’t have a true changeup in his arsenal, but the splitter acts as one without a doubt.
An ankle injury limited him to just 25.3 innings last year, but he has peaked at 160.7 innings (2015) so I’d use that as a high end for his potential 2018 output and work from there. If the team that signs him gives him a real go at hitting that might also limit his workload on the mound, especially if the signing team institutes a de facto 6-man rotation.
The first quote should confirm what you already know: Shohei Ohtani is a very talented, experienced pitcher with elite stuff that should translate successfully to MLB immediately. It’s the second quote that is more important as Paul rightly suggests that valuing Ohtani for 2018 must factor in a smaller-than-ace-like workload of somewhere between 140 – 160 innings. The Angels have already stated they will help him acclimate by potentially deploying a six-man rotation next season.
I agree with Paul’s early ranking of Ohtani, and believe McCullers is an excellent expectation for what we should see from Ohtani in 2018. Looking at Steamer, McCullers is projected for the following season:
148 IP, 3.68 ERA, 158 K, 9.58 K/9, 2.72 K/BB, 0.91 HR/9, 11 Wins
Per Justin Vibber’s 2018 Ottoneu Surplus Calculator, McCullers’ Steamer projection is worth roughly $20 next season. My guess is $20 sounds too low for Ohtani to most of you, so let’s look forward now by looking back to Justin’s 2017 end-of-season Ottoneu values for a few select pitchers that might be similar:
James Paxton ($31 value): 136 IP, 2.98 ERA, 156 K, 10.32 K/9, 4.22 K/BB, 0.60 HR/9, 12 Wins
Zack Godley ($24): 155 IP, 3.37 ERA, 165 K, 9.58 K/9, 3.11 K/BB, 0.87 HR/9, 8 Wins
Aaron Nola ($24): 168 IP, 3.54 ERA, 184 K, 9.86 K/9, 3.76 K/BB, 0.96 HR/9, 12 Wins
Charlie Morton ($20): 147 IP, 3.62 ERA, 163 K, 10.00 K/9, 3.26 K/BB, 0.86 HR/9, 14 Wins
Making some assumptions about how Ohtani’s “stuff” will translate to MLB, these four 2017 seasons represent high strikeout pitchers that landed in that 140 – 160 IP zone. Paxton’s value stands out for his superior control and elite ability to limit the long ball, and both Godley and Nola get the slight benefit of being in the NL. That leaves Morton’s 147 inning breakthrough season as my favorite approximation for what Ohtani could be expected to achieve this year…which is eerily similar to that Steamer projection for McCullers.
Here are early Shohei Ohtani ZiPS projections.
So Ohtani is probably a $20 – $25 starting pitcher for Ottoneu in 2018. But shouldn’t he gain value as a hitter, too?
That is the million dollar question, of course.
Before we can answer what kind of added value the next Babe Ruth should receive from his bat, we have to figure out how he’ll actually be used by fantasy providers.
Shohei Ohtani presents a host of challenges for those who oversee fantasy baseball at Yahoo, CBS and ESPN. One approach may be splitting him into two players. https://t.co/4QqXr9WRy3 pic.twitter.com/EZfnFhQvAI
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 12, 2017
The interview article by Awful Announcing does a nice job of detailing the difficulty some sites are having in coding Ohtani as both hitter and pitcher for fantasy in 2018. In summary, here are the primary options:
- Ohtani is draftable only as a starting pitcher.
- Ohtani is two draftable players: one pitcher, and one separate hitter.
- Ohtani is one draftable player, but must be designated (per day or per week) as either hitter or pitcher, to accrue points.
- Ohtani is one draftable player, and owners receive all his pitching and all his hitting points.
Fantasy providers rightly assume the first option is a non-starter because the minute Ohtani does become a bonafide offensive player (that’s the plan), there will be major outcry from customers frustrated with the inability to take advantage of his offense, which will be novel and could be significant (we’ll get to this soon).
I’m no developer, but as someone who has been playing fantasy baseball for 20 years, the second option strikes me as one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard. The fact that some fantasy platforms are actually considering creating two fake players out of one real one seems ludicrous, and when you consider that this could also make it theoretically possible for Ohtani to be traded for himself within leagues (the pitcher version traded for the hitter version), I’m at a total loss. This just doesn’t feel right.
The fourth option doesn’t feel quite right either. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t really want Ohtani to set off a chain reaction for all starting pitchers to start receiving points for their almost worthless 75 PA’s per season. Sure, Madison Bumgarner homer highlights are fun the four times it happens per season, but is this a trail that anyone really wants to go down?
The right answer to this problem is option 3, which happens to be exactly what Ottoneu creator Niv Shah has prepared his customers for: the choice to deploy one Ohtani as either hitter or pitcher, depending on what’s best for your team on a given day. Ironically, the real honor of setting this trend goes to Christian Bethancourt, who Niv had the foresight to use as his model a season ago in anticipation of what might happen with Ohtani. As Niv states:
There will be one Shohei Ohtani, he will have eligibility at SP and UTIL (or wherever he earns it), and you will receive either hitting or pitching stats from him depending on where you play him in your lineup.
Now that we know how Ohtani should be used, how can we factor in his offensive value?
Again, let’s make some quick, easy assumptions:
- Shohei Ohtani will bat in the back half of the lineup (the left-handed hitter does have speed, so this could be debated).
- He’ll accrue ~4.0 PA’s per game started.
- He’ll start three games per week in the active lineup, giving him ~300 PA’s over 75 games.
- He’ll receive another ~30 PA’s from pinch-hitting appearances during the season (guesswork).
So maybe 330 PA’s next season? That feels very aggressive, and is significantly higher than the 200 PA’s Jeff Zimmerman projected in November. But, since we still aren’t sure of LAA’s plan, let’s roll with it, as 330 represents the maximum for Ohtani.
Again, looking back at Vibber’s 2017 season-ending Ottoneu values, a few potential matches:
Jose Pirela ($10 value): 344 PA’s, .262 AVG, 10 HR, 0.837 OPS, .355 wOBA
Nick Williams ($8): 343 PA’s, .288 AVG, 12 HR, 0.811 OPS, .344 wOBA
Matt Chapman ($2): 326 PA’s, .234 AVG, 14 HR, 0.785 OPS, .332 wOBA
Rafael Devers ($6): 240 PA’s, .284 AVG, 10 HR, 0.819 OPS, .344 wOBA
If 330 PA’s is aggressive, Devers is probably the best match here. The fact that it is almost certain that Ohtani won’t play 3B and maybe even unlikely he plays anywhere but DH should also nudge us to pull back the reigns a little too.
All in, I’d peg Ohtani’s projected Ottoneu value somewhere between $28 – $32 for 2018 if used regularly as both pitcher and hitter.
Early opinions from the community suggest that range is too low to be a buyer on Ohtani this spring, which isn’t a surprise considering the novelty value of his two-way potential and the hype of the unknown at this point in time.
Here are my Ohtani rules (and recommendations) for 2018:
- As will be the case in Ottoneu, Ohtani should be a single, draftable player, taking up one roster spot and giving owners the choice to place him in either their lineup or rotation (per day or per week).
- 85% of Ohtani’s projected value should come from his ability as a pitcher, so bid accordingly.
- Ohtani the SP will likely be capped around 150 innings in 2018.
- Ohtani can hit, but be realistic about the value of his offense based on his limited PA’s (probably about $5 of value).
- There’s a better than 50% chance Ohtani is only eligible as a hitter at UTIL.
- The hype surrounding Ohtani, which will only increase during spring training, will drive his 2018 fantasy price higher than the value he will actually deliver to owners next season.
- Ohtani isn’t invincible.
- There will be novelty value (emotion) for many owners in rostering the first two-way player in our lifetime.
I’m excited about Shohei Ohtani. The hard part is calculating the value of that excitement, which is what fantasy owners are tasked with over the next few months.
Trey is a 20+ year fantasy veteran and an early adopter of Ottoneu fantasy sports. He currently administers the Ottoneu community, a network of ~1,200 fantasy baseball and football fans talking sports daily. More resources here: http://community.ottoneu.com
Worth mentioning the UCL issue. Seems like there is some risk here. Who knows if the PRP injection relives the pain he felt prior.
i play in a custom league that runs on software i wrote myself, so i’m gonna have to deal with this too, and we had a three-week argument about all of this stuff on the league messageboards last month
the league vote ended up up landing on basically your option 3. but since our league is weekly, i supported and still believe in another option – there is one ohtani who can only be owned once, but he appears on your roster twice, as both a hitter and a pitcher. since, over the course of a week, he can both pitch and hit, he ought to be able to do both at the same time in a weekly league. but getting both stat feeds from one roster slot is unfair. this way, he occupies two slots (one pitcher slot and one hitter slot) and does two things. the fact that both players are the same human person doesn’t actually matter
i was unable to win a majority of my league comrades over to this view, but i am still certain it is ultimately the closest approximation of what ohtani actually does (if in fact he does this), and i never see it mentioned as an option in these articles
(this is mostly a weekly league issue – in a daily league, “choose one thing to do today” works a lot better, since you’d obviously just pitch him on days he’s pitching and bat him the rest of the time)
Out of curiosity, in your proposal, would both versions of him have to be started each week, or could you start one and sit the other?
I would assume that you can start them independently.
A lot of the hitting value does come down to the league. If you’re weekly, then his value as a hitter should be almost 0, since I can’t imagine a week where I would rather his batting points than his pitching points. With daily lineups he does get some value from the bat, but he may not be a lot better than what you get on the waiver wire, although obviously with some upside to him.
yeah, that was my position in the argument – that ultimately it was probably academic, since in a weekly league he’ll likely have almost no value as a hitter unless the league is extremely deep, even if he turns out to be pretty good at hitting, just because there’s probably no way he’ll get enough PAs compared to mediocre regulars or even platoon guys.
i just think philosophically it should be allowed
Alex Bregman brings a lot of value to ss and 3b but I can’t use two independent alex.bregman’s. Multi position, one player, make a choice each scoring period.
shortstops and third basemen both generate hitting stats, though, which is all most fantasy leagues use. if bregman plays SS half the week and 3B half the week in real life, you still get all of his stats from both positions if you have him slotted at SS all week. so this ohtani thing is different
This is similar to what I’ve been thinking. Couldn’t fantasy sites make an option to put him (or any other pitcher for that matter) in as the DH or Utility for any particular day or week, separate from using him as a SP? That way you can use him as a hitter if you think he’s the better option but you wouldn’t have to include all SP hitting stats. I agree that using him as an OF or another position on the same day he’s a SP doesn’t make sense, but why couldn’t you make an option to use him as a DH at the same time?
Yes, and this is essentially what Ottoneu creator Niv Shah has decided to do, which is also how he setup Brenden McKay, who has both pitcher and hitter stats. But you still have to choose (during a given scoring period) which is most optimal for your roster: hitter or pitcher (not both).
The problem with your idea is how to handle him during the draft. Since he’s basically one player who takes up two roster spots, that makes it very difficult to configure the draft when one team suddenly has one more roster spot filled than all the other teams when they pick him. Does that player get his next pick or his last picked skipped? Does he get to play with an extra roster spot which then gets transferred if he trades Ohtani to another player? Each of these options is unfair to some degree.
This (potential) extra value should be baked into his draft price and as long as every team has a chance to capitalize on the value they calculate for Ohtani, nothing should be unfair about it.
i didn’t want to get too far into the weeds on our particular league rules, but my actual plan was to have him occupy one roster slot but two lineup slots, if you see the distinction there
if you want him to pitch and hit, he should occupy one place in each of those active lineups
but as far as team roster limit / use of your draft picks – our league has a 40-man roster, and i say he should only occupy one slot there
(this is what ultimately caused my idea to be shot down; too many people thought this would constitute “having an extra player”)
will only make sense, as Angels probably intend to use him that way. Wonder how online leagues will play him?
Man, having two Ohtanis in the player pool, one a hitter and one a pitcher, seems like the type of hackey solution you usually ask engineers to avoid. Better to actually take a hard look at the architecture and write something that makes sense for the long run.
You’ve got to do something with internal consistency. I think a truly robust solution would be to have two game modes, configurable in the league manager settings, that allow you to toggle (1) pitchers to qualify at positions after X appearances, like everyone else, and after qualifying they can be played as either a hitter or batter OR (2) all players accrue stats for everything they actually do, agnostic of pitcher/hitter designations.
I’m not a huge fan of the second one, because if you play in a league with, for example, penalties for strikeouts you’re really screwing NL pitchers. But let owners decide is the point!
Question is if they could turn that around in 3+ months of dev work (setting aside the additional issue of why they didn’t see this coming and start updates months ago).
Wayne Gretzky was drafted as two separate players for years. One player was “Gretzky goals”, and another was “Gretzky assists”. Without this, fantasy hockey would have been broken. So, I don’t think I’d classify splitting a single player into two draftable players as one of the dumbest ideas ever since in this case, it worked very well. Yes, the two could technically be traded for each other, but this is fantasy, isn’t it?
Gretzky was also an order of magnitude better than any other hockey player when that was done (in terms of fantasy scoring), so until Ohtani becomes Kershaw on the mound and Trout at the plate I don’t think the comparison is apt.
ohtani won’t be so good that he break fantasy baseball, but i think the point was just that splitting a player in half isn’t _always_ an on-its-face stupid idea just because, like, you can’t actually split a person in half and then trade the halves for each other in real life
(well, you CAN, but, cops)
Would any sites consider having “American League” weeks and “National League” weeks, where you would play by the league rules for that week? During certain weeks you would receive benefit (or detriment) for pitchers ABs, and other weeks you would have a DH slot and only be able to use them in one designated role. It would be similar (albeit not one-for-one) to how real managers have to deal with interleague play.
Interesting idea. In such a format, it seems like AL SPs values would be elevated compared to NL SPs under most scoring systems. Because even in most “National League weeks,” they wouldn’t be hitting in real life so they can’t drag on rate categories.
While I agree that the 3rd option is the only one that makes sense, any affect of the positional flexibility will vary in leagues with strict positional limits. If a league has a strict SP limit, you can stash Ohtani as a hitter on your bench. If a league has a strict bench hitter limit (like mine does) he’s worthless as a hitter.
Also, anyone else *not* looking forward to their league mates continually complaining about how Ohtani’s eligibility is set up, no matter how the fantasy providers settle it?
So just to make sure I am understanding the #3 rule correctly:
Lets say there is a week where LAA plays all 7 days, and Ohtani is the projected starter for Wed. Am I correct in saying that Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri, Sat & Sun you can slot him in an offensive position (assuming he starts there), and on Wed you’d slot him in a SP spot, and not getting any Offensive numbers. Is this correct?
You are understanding correctly. (Except in certain cases, you might choose to slot him in as a hitter instead of a pitcher on that Wed).
This is exactly correct. You (owner) get the choice to deploy him as either hitter or pitcher, but you can only choose one per scoring period. In your example, you’d get his pitching stats on Wednesday, and his hitting stats all other days he’s in your lineup and the Angels’.
Ohtani won’t bat on days he pitches. He already doesn’t do that in Japan. Plus it would mean losing the DH for the whole game for the Angels. Not a good alternative to just letting him rest and using your other DH.
well, technically the DH can sub for any position, so in theory they could have somebody DH for pujols on those days instead
not in the American League
ah, looked this up and you’re right. has to be the pitcher
i wonder what other incorrect information has been floating around in my head for decades
He has to bat if he’s the starting pitcher for an interleague game in an NL park, though, assuming that he’s going to be pitching for more than just two innings.
I assumed from the beginning that he would be two draftable players. Your objections make no sense. This is fantasy baseball – the entire construct is artificial. Offensive players and pitchers have always been categorized differently. To do it that way, for what amounts to accounting purposes, is the only solution that makes sense within the confines of the game.
The comments in reply to Eno’s are interesting here: https://twitter.com/enosarris/status/941381137917665280?s=17
You could have traded Wayne Gretzky for himself in fantasy hockey back in the day: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/7ejtqu/til_that_wayne_gretzky_was_so_dominant_in_fantasy/
I’m no lawyer, but that seems like precedent for two Ohtanis!
One problem I see with your value calculation is that all such calculations assume there is an opportunity costs (i.e. a roster spot) associated with rostering a player. Ohtani the hitter is effectively a free option under the proposed solution, which means his value has to be calculated differently. I don’t claim to have the answer; curious what the group thinks…
This is a good point. I do think Ohtani could get a bump from that opportunity cost benefit (or think of it as rostering 41 players for the price of 40, in Ottoneu), but I’m also personally skeptical about his ability to contribute significantly with that bat, so I would not bump up the price much at all for that extra roster spot. That said, his actual price in most leagues will exceed what I think he can deliver, so maybe that extra roster spot will help Ohtani owners justify their final bid/pick.
I think that I read that OnRoto, or another non-big 3 fantasy stats site, is using a swing position in their leagues. That position can be filled by any position whether position player or pitcher, and their stats will be accumulated. If Ohtani is eligible at P and Util, both his pitching and hitting stats will count. This seems to be the most elegant solution for weekly leagues while also creating a further level of strategy for every team of whether to deploy an extra pitcher or batter each week.
If I understand this correctly, it would make Ohtani quite a bit more valuable than other players in weekly leagues since you’d get the double benefit of both his hitting and pitching stats in that swing position. If there is only one swing spot and I get to choose each week to place either a pitcher or hitter there, Ohtani is the only player that can be both of those at the same time.
Well there’s always the possibility of one of those goofy blowout games where some non-pitcher comes in to pitch, and it would really suck to lose a weekly match up because this guy you never expected to play as a pitcher gets shelled for 5 runs while retiring only one batter. But the chances of that happening AND someone having him as their swing player when it did is small enough it can probably be safely ignored.
Just an idea, but how about making it so all pitcher hitting stats count except for on the days they start?
But when would you ever select to put a pitcher in your lineup over a position player (other than Ohtani)? I’m assuming here you’d actually have to elect to place the pitcher in your lineup to receive their stats.
Sorry, my original post wasn’t very clearly stated. My idea is primarily applicable to weekly leagues. I was suggesting that for any pitcher that you start (in their regular pitcher spot), their hitting stats for that week also get counted, but only on days where they aren’t the starting pitcher in real life.
So, Ohtani’s (and any other pitcher who is good enough to pinch hit or DH) hitting stats get counted, while the pitchers who only hit because they’re starters in the NL don’t negatively impact everyone’s hitting stats.
Not sure how option #3 could work in “old school”, AL-only Roto leagues where there is no provision for changing line-ups. We have 23 active players, while injured or demoted players are on a reserve list.
I assume each player has a position? You either put Otani at pitcher or DH. Pretty simple.
100% agree with your assessment. Very sad that Yahoo will make him 2 separate players. Completely devalues what makes him so special. Even worse, when you consider Dynasty leagues and Keeper leagues, this decision will be irreversible. And as a developer this, is not a huge overhaul. It would likely take 3-4 sprints (which is not a small feat) to refactor what is probably some legacy SQL code and whatever backend stack they use to handle certain cases. However, everyone agrees in this solution and Yahoo is making a lazy software decision at the expense of what the customer wants. I can’t wait to hear what amazing features we will get for the upcoming year that had a higher priority over this in the backlog. If its anything related to daily fantasy, i will just lol.
Did they already decide this?
I would’ve thought that this solution was obvious (at least in daily transaction leagues). Players are already used to streaming their starting pitchers based on when they’re scheduled to start. This is no different but with the bonus of then putting Ohtani into your lineup on the days he doesn’t pitch rather than being left on the bench.
It should be a fifth options: Ohtani is one draftable player: but resides as two actual players on your team, one pitcher, and one separate hitter. Thus, only one owner can have him, but he can take up a pitching spot AND a hitting spot if you wanted him to.