Why We Cut Yordan Alvarez
In league 13, the FanGraphs Staff Ottoneu Head-to-Head league, I co-manage a team with Niv Shah. We just won a few auctions and among the cuts we made to get legal were an underperforming reliever (Joel Payamps), a low-value OF (Andrew Benintendi), a roller coaster of a starting pitcher (Yusei Kikuchi), and one big-time star: Yordan Alvarez.
The first three all look like pretty typical cuts, but that last one stands out and clearly caught some leaguemates by surprise. But there were good reasons for the decision to drop Alvarez.
I could just say he’s been a huge disappointment, not worth anywhere near the $52 we were paying him, and that would be true. He has only put up 3.7 P/G, he has been injured, and he simply isn’t helping our team. But, of course, he is still Yordan Alvarez and a few rough weeks and one injury aren’t enough to make him worthless.
And under the hood, he’s been solid. His xwOBA is .364. That isn’t vintage Yordan, but it’s very good. His plate discipline looks fine. He is hitting the ball hard. Everything I see suggests the HR/FB rate and BABIP will both regress positively and Yordan will be Yordan. We didn’t cut him because he is bad and I would generally be quite happy to add him in any league.
Instead, this was a strategic cut. Our team has been underperforming overall. Alvarez is part of that, but injuries and some poor roster planning have played a role, as well. Alvarez was a key piece of our roster coming into the season, along with Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, Kyle Schwarber, and Teoscar Hernandez. We landed a great C in Tyler Soderstrom. We got some good luck with Kristian Campbell making the Opening Day roster. We went cheap at 1B, but kept Spencer Torkelson and traded for Kyle Manzardo. Alec Bohm and Isaac Paredes should make a strong 3B pairing. We were weak at MI and lacked depth, but that offense should have been strong.
Except Soto has been good rather than transcendant and Alvarez has been bad. Bohm has struggled. Campbell hasn’t been able to carry us at MI. And Teoscar got hurt. And Yordan got hurt. Our OF depth took a hit with Parker Meadows being out. Our pitching wasn’t as deep and then we lost Grayson Rodriguez and George Kirby.
And so we found ourselves quickly falling out of the playoff hunt. And, to make matters worse, we had no cap space. Even as players were added to the 60-day IL, we couldn’t replace them.
So we started looking to sell, but hadn’t found a deal. And we felt the need to start refreshing the roster. So we “traded” Alvarez. We traded him not for other players, but we cut him for the cap space to fill our vacated 60-day roster spots and to be able to cut guys like Benintendi, Kikuchi, Payamps, and eventually others. Without cutting someone more expensive, we couldn’t have replaced all of those players. Alvarez was the guy who both cleared the most cap and was doing the least for us.
In addition, at the time we made the cut, no team in the league had more than $15 in cap space. This meant two things:
- We now have $22 cap space, giving us the most in the league. That doesn’t mean we can just buy anyone we want, but as free agents pop up, players breakout, etc., we have the ability to target whoever we want. And that $22 is going to grow – someone already started a Kikuchi auction, so in 48 hours we’ll be up to $25 in cap. And someone will go after Alvarez giving us another $26 in cap, likely soon.
- When someone does go after Alvarez, they will have to bid $26 minimum, which will require cutting at least $22 in salary to get legal. That will either put one big name on the market at a low price or will refresh the FA pool with a few new names.
Who might get cut? Just looking at a few teams, there a number of ways teams could bid $40 or more on Alvarez:
- One team could get up to $51 in cap by cutting Matt Olson, Willy Adames, Ian Happ, and Anthony Santander.
- Another could get to $53 by cutting Roki Sasaki, Carlos Correa, Nathaniel Lowe and Christopher Morel
Will those teams make those cuts? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe someone will pick up Alvarez without cutting anyone interesting. But realistically someone will be cutting at least one if not more $20+ salary and those players, even when disappointing, are often interesting acquisitions when the minimum bid is half price.
In the end, the biggest thing cutting Alvarez did for us was give us flexibility to play in the free agent market, which is a crucial step towards rebuilding a struggling roster. It’s possible we could have gotten more by trading him, but $52 is a lot of cap space to play with and I suspect by the end of the season, we will have accomplished more with that money than we would have via trade.
A long-time fantasy baseball veteran and one of the creators of ottoneu, Chad Young's is the Managing Editor for RotoGraphs, and can be heard on the Keep or Kut Podcast. You can follow him on Bluesky @chadyoung.bsky.social.
Bold.
Interesting insight into Ottoneu for someone who plays different leagues.
The decision made sense for you, given the need for depth and your roster construction.
While by any objective measure, cutting Alvarez for no direct return is a failure, Ottoneu’s structure creates a very high opportunity cost for keeping him, in a manner that’s not replicated in ESPN or CBS.
So, while an owner dropping Yordan would be objectively insane in my home league, it makes sense why you’ve done it.
Good luck scouring the waiver wire!
This is spot on, and I also think it is similar to MLB in a way that most leagues aren’t. Just as an example, no matter how much your first round pick in a standard draft league struggles, you are unlikely to end up cutting them. They might turn into a 10th round value instead of 1st, but that’s still better than waiver fodder. But if a high-priced star in MLB is suddenly not worth their contract to their current time, they might get placed on waivers. We see this pretty often, and then the player doesn’t get claimed, and nothing happens. But if the player did get claimed, the MLB team might be thrilled to get out of the contract. That’s effectively where we were here- for us, getting out of the contract, opening up cap to go after other players, etc., was more valuable than Yordan. I love how that ties to how real front offices have to evaluate not just players but contracts.
FWIW, if your reaction to this is “hey, that is pretty cool/interesting” I would highly recommend checking out Ottoneu. There are likely some leagues here looking for managers: https://community.ottoneu.com/c/managers-wanted/12 and this is a great way to get started
No bandwidth to do that right now, but I will file it away for future reference.
Thanks!
Soderstrom is C-eligible? He got into 1 game for 4 innings at C last year. That’s some real loose eligibility rules there and I say that coming from a Yahoo league with standard positional eligibility (5 GS or 10 G)
Agree with the other commenter – interesting strategy. I like it.
Yeah, Ottoneu includes the minor leagues when setting position eligibility, and Soderstrom had 21 games started at catcher in AAA last year. Looks like he will be losing it for next year though, unless something changes.
This is another example of why Ottoneu is the best fantasy baseball game going – it forces tough decisions and also allows for so many different strategies that wouldn’t be in consideration in other leagues. For anyone who enjoys fantasy baseball but hasn’t tried Ottoneu, you should really give it a shot.
I cut an overpriced Sasaki a couple of weeks ago and it was the best decision I could have made, even before the injury news. Makes roster management much easier the rest of the year. Kudos for pulling the trigger on Alvarez.
Albies is on his way to being involved in a round of cuts if he doesn’t turn it around soon. I’m just trying to find another regular 2B before I pull that trigger myself.
I’ve had been going through that same process, but then I remembered, I really like Yordan Alvarez … so I didn’t do it.
As a fellow Yordan Alvarez rosterer in Ottoneu. This is an incredibly tempting rationale
So for the better part of the last decade, I’d been a part of a h2h yahoo league that used Ottoneu scoring but a standard snake draft and 100 faab, and I thought “I’m finally ready for the big league!” And boy was I not!
Realizing that dropping high-cost players that “could turn it around” but are creating an oppressive cost by hoovering up payroll is majorly different. Some people in our league are also learning that “churn and burn” for $1 FA isn’t viable if they’re risky players unlikely to be picked up by someone else as that dead money starts adding up (one of the teams is already reminding me of the Angels with how many dead bad contracts they have). The resource valuation in Ottoneu requires major recalibration from any other league.
Thanks for all the great content Chad, super helpful for one of the most interesting fantasy games out there!
Soto has been good…LOL
Not sure if you are laughing because he HAS been good, or because you think he hasn’t been good, it because you think he’s been great and I shouldn’t have complained…
But I’ll just point out that he’s having the worst season of his career by P/G (hence the not transcendent comment) but is still 18th in P/G among OF with 50+ PA. He’s definitely been good but he’s not close to doing what we have come to expect from him.
I’ll be surprised if his stat line at the end of the season isn’t his typical Soto stuff. Or at least 90% of it.
Love the humblebrag listing off the great core of hitters