Why could one not use Madison Bumgarner in DH in the year he was a league average and a 13% better than league average hitter? (That’s an admittedly kinda sarcastic question to head off the “we are just mirroring Real Baseball” argument that sometimes is used as justification for decisions, without acknowledging the myriad ways Ottoneu doesn’t mirror Real Baseball like the lack of a MLB salary cap, the draft, free agency, the capacity for an owner to spend the floor or multiples more than other teams to try to win, etc.)
My concern is that this works if and only if your league will be Year One in 2023 or maybe Year Two. For leagues that are older, we didn’t auction Ohtani in 2018 at a value reflective of his value next season, and we didn’t apply arb dollars to him as if he’d be potentially the system’s first and only 2000-point player, while occupying one roster slot. This is not a question of a player, whoa, blowing up like Soto or Trout. It’s a thing of shifting the rules around one player. In a league I play there is a 47 point gap between first and third. The guy in third has Ohatani, so it’s a rule that impacts one player and has a tangible impact.
Seems the fair thing to do would be to put a league out of arb for the year and do a vote-off so that Ohtani can be voted off, with every other team losing a player as well to balance it out, so that he can be auctioned off at a fair market value. Upthread there’s reference to his salary being $60 on average in first year leagues. His overall salary is 1/3 lower, a pretty good indication that in older leagues his salary is quite low.
His salary is lower in older leagues because he was less valuable 18 months ago because he hadn’t really put it all together and there were questions about him. His lower price in those leagues isn’t really relevant to this conversation at all.
Also the MadBum thing is completely irrelevant since he wasn’t allowed to be a DH - he was a pitcher and only a pitcher and pitchers aren’t eligible to be in Util spot. DH’s are.
Anyway, you can go back up thread and see the conversation, but this doesn’t change Ohtani’s value nearly as much as you might want to think. If you really think this $1-$3 increase in his value needs to be addressed, you should use arbitration to increase his price by $1-$3.
Commish in league 1348 here - is there an update on this? One of our managers is asking because he can’t figure out how to do it on the lineup page. Thanks as always, Niv!
Clicking on the Pitcher version will allow you to move him in and out of your Pitcher section of your lineup, and clicking on the Hitter version allows you to move him in and out of the Hitter section of your lineup.
In order to get hitting and pitching stats from Ohtani on Opening Day, he must be in a SP slot and the Util slot. If you only want hitting stats, he must be in the Util spot and on the pitching bench. If you only want his pitching stats, he must be in a SP slot and on the hitter bench.
FYI, I think the official rules need to be updated to reflect this change. At present, it still reads as
Rule III(d): Players with two-way eligibility will only receive stats for either their pitching performance or their hitting performance on a given day, depending on where they are placed in a team’s lineup
