The Real Ottoneu MVPs (and LVPs)

Everyone loves a good MVP debate (actually, everyone might hate a good MVP debate, now that I think about it) and fantasy MVPs are particularly fun (or not fun, I guess) to debate because value can be tough to define. Because of the fixed budget in any fantasy league (either a set number of dollars or a set number of draft slots), a player’s acquisition cost has a real impact on their value. This leaves fantasy managers to debate if the most valuable players are the ones who produce the most, the ones who return the most value relative to cost, or something else. Today I want to consider “something else.”

I have the full rosters from March 20 of 138 Ottoneu FanGraphs Points Leagues. These leagues are all Ottoneu Prestige League eligible which means they stick to standard Ottoneu economics – 12 teams, 40-man rosters, $400 budgets. Seven of these leagues have fewer than 450 players rostered and may be pre-or mid-auction, but that should be fine for what we are doing today.

And what we are doing today is defining Most Valuable Player, in an Ottoneu context, based on how well teams did, on average, given they rostered that player as of March 20 (that is, Opening Day). I have combined the roster data with end-of-season standings and assigned each instance of a player (that player on a specific team in a specific league) a final standing based on how that team finished the year.

This does mean that a player who was on a team on March 20 and cut on March 21 will still be assigned a finish, but that isn’t a problem for what I am evaluating. If a player was widely cut in March or April, that could impact how valuable (or not) they were. Maybe being so bad that you are cut early makes you more valuable than a player who isn’t bad enough to be cut but isn’t good enough to help, either? Similarly, a player who is traded will be assigned a finish based on where they started the year but, again, that trade value might have made them a good auction pickup or keeper.

And at the end of the day, that is what we are looking at – who are the most valuable players (and least valuable players) to roster going into the season?

Let’s start at the top. There are a few players who were rostered on exactly one team going into the season and that team finished first. But I don’t think Jackson Kowar, Kris Bubic, Nathan Lavender, and Victor Gonzalez are the names we are looking for. Instead, let’s say that to even qualify for Ottoneu MVP, you need to have been on at least 10% of rosters (14+) when the season started. Here is that list:

Only eight players were on 10% of rosters or more and had an average finish of 5th or better, and those players are all over the map. You have two pretty high-priced stars, in Schwarber and Judge; a breakout star who is still probably underpriced, in Henderson; a low-cost SP who put up a huge comeback season, in Sale; and a solid, perhaps under-appreciated OF, in Ward. You also have one excellent reliever (Erceg) and two bad relievers (Maton and Miller). And, naturally, Maton is somehow the best, by this measure.

The obvious takeaway here is that being on a lot of good teams does not mean you are a good player. The 19 teams that rostered Maton did not do well because they rostered Maton; they did well in spite of him.

It’s also somewhat interesting that this list does not include guys like Jarren Duran, Brent Rooker, Marcell Ozuna or other inexpensive players who put up huge seasons. You would think those guys would pop up here, but they didn’t. We are also not seeing every high-priced star. The fact that Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr., and Juan Soto are not on this list, while Judge and Schwarber and Henderson are, is somewhat interesting.

It is perhaps meaningful that the top scorer among bats with an average salary over $40 (Judge), the top scorer among bats with an average salary over $30 but under $40 (Henderson), and the top scorer among bats with an average salary over $20 but under $30 (Schwarber) are all on here.

But that doesn’t explain why Duran and Ozuna (over $10, but under $20; and under $10, respectively) are NOT on here. Ozuna was 35th on this list; Duran 91st. Out of 626 players rostered in 10% or more of leagues, that is still pretty high, but even Ozuna was closer to being outside the top 100 than he was to cracking the top eight.

Maybe the big takeaway here is that good players who have good seasons are good to roster. And also three random $1 relievers, two of whom were awful.

At the other end of the spectrum, the first thing I noticed is that none of the “least” valuable players were that widely rostered:

Not one of these players was rostered in even 30% of leagues. Part of that is that these were players who didn’t produce and didn’t offer much trade value and who, to be honest, we could have/should have known that about even in March. Which is why they were so rarely rostered.

Let’s increase our threshold to 50% rostered and see if we get more interesting names.

It’s mostly breakout candidates who didn’t breakout, prospects who struggled and then you have guys like Merrifield and Verdugo who seem to have more name value than on-field value in Ottoneu. Merrifield hadn’t been Ottoneu-useful since 2021 and hadn’t been a net-positive for your team since 2020. Verdugo was barely a top-60 OF in 2023 and was even worse in 2022.

Interestingly, there is only one RP on this list – Lange. And unlike the RP on the previous list, who all had average salaries of $1 at the start of the season, Lange had an average salary of $7. One of the things I want to look at, and these lists hint at an answer, is whether it makes more sense to pay up for RP or go cheap on RP at auction.

For now though, those are your MVP and LVP candidates. But I think I should put a stake in the ground.

I will go with Schwarber for . I am not giving it to Maton and while I could go with any of the next three, I think Schwarber is most deserving. Judge came at a much higher cost and Henderson was mostly just an obvious keeper.

For LVP, my vote goes to Verudgo. While he performed better than most of the rest of that list, being so widely rostered should factor in. I almost went with Merrifield, but if you rostered Whit, you knew what you were getting and you brought it on yourself.