What to do with Jack Leiter in Ottoneu

This is a fun time of year for fantasy prospects. Guys are getting traded left and right, creating conversations about players like Ezequiel Duran who otherwise might have been ignored (0.291% rostered in Ottoneu right now and being auctioned in one league). Those trades are also opening up space for other players to get a shot – might we see Andres Gimenez back in Cleveland soon?

At the same time, the players selected in the draft a few weeks back are starting to sign, making them eligible to be added in Ottoneu leagues. It’s no surprise that the current leader in live auctions right now (he is being added in nearly 60 leagues) is Jack Leiter, who was just added to the Ottoneu player pool Wednesday afternoon. Henry Davis has been added in more than 10% of leagues. Marcelo Mayer has been added in nearly 7% of leagues. The tough call is what to do with these guys if they are free agents or up for auction in your leagues.

In general, I stay away from newly drafted prospects. I wrote about this a bit in 2012 and my logic has mostly stayed the same. These guys are high risk and many of them will never see a Major League field. Many of those who do reach the bigs will do so with far less hype than they have today, and will be solid role players (a pretty good outcome!) and not necessarily fantasy relevant. Some of them will turn into stars.

But to find out, you might have to sit on a guy for 4-6 years, watching him slowly progress up the ladder, adding a dollar in salary each year, using up a roster spot the entire time. I am really intrigued by Marcelo Mayer. The scouting reports seem great. He feels like a potential Ottoneu star. But I don’t feel like putting much cash into him now just to wait 4-5 years for him to maybe help my team…and maybe not.

However, I did say my logic has “mostly” stayed the same. There is a bit more nuance to my thinking today and there are a couple cases where I am more likely to grab a newly drafted guy than I was previously.

1. Likely Fast Movers: In general, I want prospects who will help me relatively soon. I have not rostered Jasson Dominguez anywhere and likely won’t for a year or two, at the earliest. I rarely take guys who aren’t already in Double-A or at least High-A, as I want to know they will be up in no more than 24 months, preferably less. This year, the only name that reaches that level for me is Jack Leiter. A polished college arm coming into an org that needs pitching, the biggest obstacle to Leiter being up next season is that the Rangers likely are too far from competing to bother starting his service time clock. But he is a very good pitching prospect with a relatively near-term ETA, and that makes him an interesting target for me. Treat him like you would any other top 50 prospect who probably can’t help you until 2023. Paying him $5 now, $6 next year and $7 in 2023 for a partial season, so that you can pay him $9 in 2024 for a full-season doesn’t seem like a great use of resources to me. But $2, $3, $4, and $6 over 2021-2024? That is something I can handle.
2. Cheap Trade Pieces: Looking at THE BOARD, there are seven draftees in the current top 100: Mayer (34), Davis (35), Leiter (39), Khalil Watson (56), Jordan Lawlar (80), Colton Cowser (88), and Kumar Rocker (95). While Leiter has a 2023 ETA, only three others (Cowser, Rocker, Davis) have a 2024 ETA, and the rest are 2025 or later. I am extremely unlikely to take any of those guys, even for $1, and sit on them for that long. However, all of those guys will likely see real movement in their value in the next six months, especially if they get into some games with their pro org. That makes them interesting pieces to me, in certain circumstances. In a league where I am not competing and have some garbage at the end of the roster to churn, I am interested in grabbing Mayer, Davis or Watson for $1-$3, purely to see if I can spin them off via trade in August or in the off-season. I am not bidding $5 on them. I probably won’t even bid $3 on them. I am not counting on holding them through the January 31 cut deadline (though, especially with Davis, I am not writing that possibility off completely). I just want to pick them up now, see if they gain value, and then flip them when the time is right.

Other than those two cases, I could also see starting auctions on some draftees purely to see what other people bid and see what shakes loose. If I don’t mind starting a Mayer or Davis auction, winning for $1 and just taking the cap hit (assuming I don’t want to keep them), I can start that auction and hope someone else spends $5+ on the guy, and has to make a cut to make room.

Beyond that, I am probably ignoring the recent draftees until auction season in February.