A Fantasy Puzzle
Philosophers keep their minds sharp by posing ethical dilemmas. Naturally, it follows that fantasizers like me should pose fantasy dilemmas. Yesterday, we talked over some ottoneu keeper conundrums. I’ll also use ottoneu for today’s puzzle. If you’re not familiar with the platform, fear not! You don’t need a working knowledge of ottoneu to participate today – I’ll explain everything. Today’s subject is:
How would you allocate $3 across these eight players?
Paul Goldschmidt $31
Edwin Encarnacion $25
Yasiel Puig $14
Corey Kluber $10
Greg Holland $10
Evan Gattis $4
George Springer $4
Dellin Betances $3
IMPORTANT: Ottoneu has unique parameters. This is a 40 man roster with a $400 budget. A top player like Goldschmidt could be worth $60. In this case, all eight players appear to have substantial surplus value, although not all are created equal.
UPDATE: The point of your allocation is to increase the cost of these players for the current owner. You are not bidding to win a player in this puzzle.
Rules
- You may allocate your $3 in any way. You can bid $3 on one player, split the money $2 to $1, or drop $1 on three different players.
- You may imagine that 10 other owners are also allocating $3. As such, your decision may be conditional on the actions of others.
- There is no limit to years a player can be kept. In other words, your actions can be felt in future seasons.
- I may cut any player. That has both positive and negative implications.
I’m not going to offer any additional guidance, at least not today (you can however, read up on ottoneu arbitration). There is no right answer, so be as creative and spiteful as the parameters allow. To the comments!
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$3 on Springer. The potential multiplier effect from him is greater than any of the other players.
Misunderstood.
I’d put it all on E5. Most likely to regress and I’d like to focus the damage on one team.
I think you give the money to whoever is good now. If Springer does come close to his ceiling, he’ll get a ton of money added at that point. If not, it’s kind of a waste now when there are so many other candidates. I’d be inclined to add it to one of the first three. Don’t think it matters much to which one. You could split it if you want.
$1 each to Goldschmidt, Encarnacion, Kluber.
However, I also might change my decision based on the format. Just as an example, I wouldn’t consider keeping Holland in a points league, that’s way too much to spend on a reliever.
Also,I think it’s important to know if this is pre- or post-$2 bump.
It’s post $2 bump.
Why do you think $10 is too much for a reliever in a pts league (FG points in this case, although I intentionally left that open ended)? Based on my preseason values, Holland pretty much hit his projections which had him in the $20-25 range. I see no reason to expect considerable regression either. 10+ pts/IP is extremely valuable, even if it’s only 60 IP.
Relief pitchers are way too volatile to spend that much on, especially in a points league where you can get huge values on high-K holds guys (like the $1 Betances the team in this example had this year). For an elite reliever like Holland, once he hits $8-$10 I’m shopping him. In a 5×5 I might hold him a bit longer, but I’m not going higher than $14 for him in any format.
I’m not El Josharino, but I might as well be, as he made many of the points I was going to.
I’ll add that the single-point difference between saves and holds matters too, as t allows non-closers to earn almost as much add closers. The bottom line for me is that it’s really really easy to find a fantasy bullpen of $1-$3 guys that’ll return most of the value of the higher-end guys. I’m not saying the earnings-price difference for Holland isn’t what you say it is, I’m saying I can find a bigger gap and use the spare cash on lower- volatility players.
Oh god, that u is supposed to be I. Thank God my real name isn’t attached to this.
I’ll look into it later, but I think you’re overestimating the ease at which 600 pt relievers can be found.
My argument isn’t that you’ll find a cheap 600pt guy, I’m saying you can easily find a $1 450pt guy and use the extra $9 to get a better hitter or SP than you would’ve otherwise, and that the volatility of relievers makes that a more sound decision.
Pre-season, I’d rather fill my pen with guys who I pay $1-$3 and earn $10-$15 than a $10 guy who earns $20-$25, because of the chances of that $10 guy not actually earning that. On the other hand, if you’re *guaranteeing* the $20-$25 return, then the profit is equal so it doesn’t matter which you go with.
Of course, I also might be overestimating how frequently 10 P/IP guys lose that ratio the following year.
I’d happily bet on Kimbrel, Holland, Chapman, and Jansen. If they’re healthy, they’re studs. Granted, health is no guarantee, but other relievers have more “ifs” in their profile.
I think the $1 to Goldschmidt/Kluber/E5 makes sense. I want to make the other guy spend as much as possible on players they’d be inclined to keep in any case, and at these values I suspect all 3 would be kept, so now the owner has an additional $3 on his roster he can’t use for other players. That said, since we can re-allocate throughout the month, I’d keep an eye on where the other league members are putting their money and may re-adjust. I also strongly agree with Brad on the value of an RP like Holland. I try to maximize pts/IP (using fangraphs pts system) and those guys are critical to bump that up. The high K/Holds set-up RPs are also great (Davis/Miller/Betances) but it’s not either/or.
I’ve made the argument frequently that it may actually be a winning strategy to pay for great relievers. Most people that reject that strategy counter with “the volatility of relievers”, but they fail to apply that volatility equally to all relievers, including those they assume they can pick up for just $1. What they really mean is, “you shouldn’t pay top dollar for the riskiest investment”, but if all relievers are highly volatile, that uncertainty has to also be applied to the $1 scrap pile.
Why spend $10 on Holland when you can just spend $1 on a mediocre RP and use the remaining $9 on a hitter? Here’s the math:
* Holland scored 676 points in Ottoneu in 2014, or 10.89 P/IP over 62+ IP (he was #5 scoring RP, #3 by P/IP)
* There were just 13 RP in 2014 you could have bought for < $2.00 (using Ottoneu average salaries) that scored between 400 – 500 points. As a group, they averaged just 6.36 P/IP, so let's call that "replacement level".
* A replacement level RP (using above) for $1 would score you 398 points (6.36 P/IP) in the same amount of IP that Holland used (62+).
* Buying Holland at $10 nets you 278 points over the replacement level RP.
So, what could you buy with $9 extra?
* Assume you use that $9 to add to the $1 replacement level offensive player you were going to draft instead. You can now buy an offensive player for $10.
* Using Ottoneu average salaries, here are the four offensive players you could’ve purchased between $10 – $11:
Brandon Phillips
Brandon Belt
Michael Cuddyer
Wilin Rosario
I'll stop doing the math because by now it's easy to see that I'd rather have Holland than any of those guys in 2014 (or 2015). Sure, it's possible that you could have bought a $39 player instead of a $30 player and found slightly more value than 278 points (instead of Jay Bruce @ $29 you could have spent $38 on Carlos Gonzalez…ugh), but are you really mitigating risk any better?. Holland has been a monster for three straight seasons now and doesn't seem to be slowing down. Any player can get hurt, even hitters.
Finally, spending just $1 on your RP doesn't account for the "cycle" effect. It's possible that you could have found a gem in Wade Davis, Andrew Miller, or Pat Neshek, but it's even more likely you had to "cycle" through a crap load of really bad RP that performed well in a short sample size (Ronald Belisario, Edward Mujica, Matt Lindstrom, Chad Qualls, etc.). Odds are you got the worst of those guys since you didn't pick them up until their peak, and the cost of continuously using up roster spots has an impact as well.
It's not an open and shut case – there are certainly examples of buying big on RP and watching them tank the very next season, but as we've seen from 2014, there is a ton of value to be gained from $1 starting pitchers, too, so I'd rather build an elite bullpen, hold my breath, and fish for value in other places (especially SP).
Not sure I agree with that. 1500 inning limit for pitchers and in otteneu points league relievers are worth more than starters based on their point per inning output. For example, Craig kimbrel at $18 put up over 600 points in less than 70 IP for me this year. A $43 max scherzer, while he posted 1100 points roughly, also threw 200+ innings.
Five stud relievers in otteneu is pretty insane.
So for me, I put all three dollars on bettances
I’d throw the $3 at Puig. Given Puig’s second half and playoff struggles, bidding up Puig might encourage his owner to drop him, which gives you an opportunity to acquire him cheaply, or get another owner to overpay for him.
I take a different strategy with this – I think you want to allocate to players who are still likely to be kept. My goal is to make the team more expensive, and if he just cuts my allocated dollars then although I’ve driven someone back into the auction pool, the cost of that player could still potentially end up being less than the keep cost was.
There is zero chance that a $17 Puig is cut in Ottoneu. Despite an up and down season, he was a top 50 overall player and a top 15 offensive player in 2014. He was outscored by only 6 other OF, and that includes Brantley and Cruz, who may or may not be able to repeat their gains in 2015. His average price right now in Ottoneu is $20, which will likely escalate to $30+ after arbitration. He will play all of 2015 at the age of 24. You also get 2.7 points per bat flip in Ottoneu.
In general I’d prefer to allocate $ to offensive players, making Puig, Goldy, and EE the established choices here that are likely to carry the arb allocation well into 2016 and beyond. However, Kluber was so good in 2014 that at $10 I can’t fault someone for adding a few $ to him.
2 on Goldy, 1 on Edwin. Bet on proven horses.
You HAVE to throw 3 at one player, since there are 8 players for 10 owners, they bidders don’t want to be a team that is left empty handed. Everyone will bid 3. I don’t know what the tiebreakers are if multiple teams bid 3 on the same guy.
Kluber is the best player to spend the 3 on that probably wont get bid on by others, so you wont rely on the tie break.
ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm
read it again please
Non-ottoneu player here. What happens in the case of multiple owners bidding the same amount on a player and that bid is also the high bid? Example: 5 of 10 teams go for $3 on Goldy. What happens to Goldy?
Think of “bid” as meaning “allocate” here- if 5 teams throw $3 each at Goldy, his price rises from $31 to $46
Who gets him at $46?
His original owner
Thanks for clarifying.
After considering your helpful responses, I would go with $1 each for Kluber, Holland, and Betances. Kluber and Holland are steals at $10, and it seems to me that they might have the most surplus value. Betances is very valuable, but an extra dollar or two may convince the original owner to cut him, making him available to all (and to my team).
All 3 on Puig. Auction cost minus present cost is highest for him
I’ve added a clarification on the bid/allocate question. The player will remain with the original owner unless he is cut. If Goldy were bid up to $46, I could keep him for $46 or cut him. He would return to the draft pool if cut.
Thanks Brad.
Unless there is an absolutely GLARING surplus value (in one of my leagues, for example, a $7 Jose Abreu), I like to spread my arb dollars across several players to make the owner “feel” my contribution. The goal is to force them to make difficult roster decisions rather than having an obvious choice of who to throw back to the draft at the start of the season.
1 on Puig and 2 on Kluber since they are the most undervalued, proven players. My goal is to to saddle the owner with dollars they will keep for as long as possible on players that we have some confidence will remain as top performers.
I don’t think adding $3 to Goldy, Kluber, Puig, or Holland is going to make any marginal difference for 2015. So I’d probably dump the whole thing on Betances or Gattis as it is most likely to force the owner to make a difficult decisions to keep or cut. Say Gattis for the sake of discussion.
I like this strategy (wedging players away) more than trying to make owners pay for no-brainer keepers.
I see no reason not to allocate the money to people you know the person will keep. If you allocate it to Gattis, he may keep him for one more year, but then he’ll be dropped. If you allocate to Kluber, those $3 will be in play for each of the next few years
There are two keys to consistently winning in otteneu (or maybe I should say contending every year.
1. Maximizing relief pitching to its fullest and having a stud filled pen
2. Having a balanced enough roster of well priced keepers that tough decisions like this on who to allocate to cause people to make mistakes (for example, I had a $3 segura, a $3 puig, a $4 carpenter, a $3 Tehran, a $3 minor and a $3 iwakuma last year. Everyone spread that money around those guys, no one ended up north of $10 and I got to keep a $14 hunter pence and a $7 jonathan lucroy arbitration free and clear.
My main goal is to make the team’s payroll higher, i.e. players the owner will keep despite the salary inflation. If you put it on Holland or Betances they may be cut. Relievers in FGPoints leagues are not that difficult to find, as holds count. I fielded an outstanding bullpen for less than $10 ($1 Wade Davis, Tony Watson, Cody Allen, Steve Cishek, KRod…) Nobody needs to allocate a fortune on their ‘pen in FGPoints leagues.
I would put all $3 on Kluber. He is more clearly undervalued than anybody else on the roster.
But why is the main goal making the other team’s salary higher? So he has less to spend on other players, obviously. But if you think your team will be better if there are more ML players available at the auction, then I’d think you might be glad that the guy cut a player. I get that doing so means your $3 vaporizes, but what are you trying to buy with your $3? adding players to the pool impacts the cost of all the other players in the pool, especially if they are already valuable ML players. And if your value on the player is significantly higher than the current owner’s, you have a chance to get that player without giving up in trade. That’s the thought, anyway.
I see your point. But I am not sure how to quantify the effect of adding an extra player to the draft pool, and it probably fluctuates wildly from league to league. On the other hand I see a direct value in inflating my opponent’s payroll. I would prefer not watching my opponent enjoy the fruits of a $12 Corey Kluber next year if I can make him into a $15 Corey Kluber.
Every teams payroll gets higher. The goal in that sense you mean is to put it on players that will be kept regardless?
Our custom points keeper league could be described as Ottoneu light with slightly different scoring, smaller rosters, and no arbitration. Unlike roto, pitching has a slight edge. All RP’s are valuable.
In a vacuum without knowing how comparable players are valued and whether the goal is to get the owner to throw the player back into the FA pool, IMO the most underpriced players in that list are Kluber ($2) and Betances ($1).
Goldschmidt and E5 would be valued higher. Puig has the talent and reputation, but will he eventually be that much better than some other young OF’s who are available for much less salary? Not sure I’d bet the arb dollars on it.
Kluber is a talented kid and would be under a league team’s control for several more years. Betances is a stud who is worth a lot relatively speaking in the RP ranks whether he pitches the 8th or 9th.
Just glad we don’t have arbitration because I have $6 Jose Abreu and $7 Anthony Rendon.
Not an ottoneu player so forgive me if I am missing something. But, it would seem that you would want, as Blue suggested in the first reply, to allocate the $3 to the player who is likely to be kept the longest, thus multiplying the effect of the salary increase. While Holland is a great bargain, given the typical lifespan of closers, I don’t think it is him. So, I would put it on either Springer or Kluber, both of whom are way underpriced and would likely be kept as long as rules allow, even allowing for some required raises along the way.
Allocation in otteneu is about three or four things:
1. Turning a keeper into a drop
2. Turning a keeper into an overpriced player
3. Adding cost to undervalued players and making them less of a bargain
4. Adding cost to a team so they have less money at auction.
Where people make mistakes is allocating to low priced keepers with the idea that an owner will keep the player and the cost.
A smart owner takes that player, and trades him to another owner for more value.
Example. In my league, everyone allocated money to Byron Buxtpn last year and he went from a $3 player to a $12 or $13 AA player.
He was traded for mike trout.
Prospects in otteneu are like prospects in real life. Their value is directly related to their cost and ceiling.
Considering all the players are undervalued and it is very unlikely that any of those players will be cut unless 90% of the money goes to one player, I think it is best to spread the wealth around and try to have you money stay on the team as long as possible.
Now is the hard part.
I would eliminate Encarnacion because of age and Gattis because is is likely to lose C in the coming years. I prefer to not give it to the SP because they have the most injury risk and the volatility of pitchers. Goldschmidt is coming off an injury, Puig is always a risk, and Springer could be a bust, but the $1 would carry for the longest.
Since I think Kluber is much more valuable at the same price than Holland, I would eliminate Holland. Betances is very undervalued if he does become the closer, but will he, and if he does will he succeed? I would eliminate him.
Down to four I would give $1 to Kluber , Goldschmidt , Puig. I would remove Springer on the risk he busts.
My arbitration strategy is two-fold:
1. As others have already mentioned, I try to increase the cost of players likely to be kept. I want my allocation $ to be absorbed in such a way that it reduces the money to be spent at auction, and I don’t really care about increasing a player’s salary just so they will be dropped and available at auction. Prime targets using this criteria would be Goldschmidt/Encarnacion/Puig/Kluber/Gattis.
2. My initial allocations will be targeted to those players I believe others won’t allocate to. In my experience the likeliest targets of allocation are no doubt cheap studs and first/second year high impact prospects. In this case I think Puig and Kluber will be likely targets of others, so I will be more likely to allocate to Goldschmidt/Encarnacion/Gattis, probably $1 to each to start.
The answer depends on who are the owners of a player. Unless I am misunderstanding something about the puzzle, you obviously don’t add $ to any of your own players. It might make sense to increase the price of a player for an owner who you consider very skilled, and therefore a bigger threat than an owner of a different player.
Or maybe there’s just an owner you simply don’t like so you throw the $3 onto his player. If you didn’t care about morals or ethics, you could collude and get some people together to de-value his keeper.
They all belong to the same owner.
Are league members allowed to discuss with each other who/why they are allocating their $ on to make sure that a certain player is not left with too much surplus value, or made so expensive that they become an easy cut?
Seems like obvious collusion to me, but I dont know how these leagues work.
If I have no idea what other owners are doing, then I throw all my money at the one player with the most surplus value on the best team.
Wait, so are all the listed players in this post from a single team?
Does every owner get to allocate $3 to *each* other team, or just $3 total across the league?
That could really change things.
In 12 team Ottoneu leagues, each team gets $33 to allocate across the league, with the stipulation that a) you have to allocate at least $1 to every team but your own, and b) you cannot allocate more than $3 to any team. Yes, you can see which players are receiving arbitration allocations in real time, but you don’t know which teams are doing the allocating. It’s a unique process and there are usually some interesting surprises. As many have said, the goal is generally to force the other owners to carry (not cut) as much extra salary as possible into the draft.
For the purposes of this exercise, assume the players are on the same roster and you can allocate $3 to each team.
As LS indicated there is an overall budget that averages slightly less than $3 per team (actually $25 total). So you have to decide which teams to ding for $3, 2, or 1. For this exercise, you can ignore that aspect. Given the surplus value in this scenario, I would assume $3 bids from everybody anyway.
In that case seems like dumping the $3 max on Goldy is a no brainer.
Hes the surest thing t provide a ton of excess value for a long time.
Even if Goldy racks up ~$20 in allocation from across the league the owner is still going to keep him this year, and likely next year. Make it hurt.
When you allocate money, you’re able to see a fewthings:
1. Who on your team has been allocated to
2. Who has allocated money and how much
3, who on other teams have been allocated to.
So you can literally see how much money other teams have allocated to someone. You can also change your allocations over the allocation period. So another strategy is to put money on the wrong players at first and then change the allocations at the end.
And yes, owners discuss amongst themselves how to handle other teams for sure. Especially the juggernauts.
To me the four players that I would want to try to poison (so I could bid on them as free agents) would be Goldschmidt (obviously), Kluber (ditto), Holland and Betances; but everyone will dump on Goldschmidt anyway, and Betances is too much of an unknown so I’d drop $2 (American) on Kluber, and another $1 (probably also American) on Holland.
You should allocate your dollars in such a way that they are multiplied through the most number of years. So if you think that Goldschmidt will be a 3 year keeper and Springer a 4 year keeper, you should allocate dollars to Springer. If you allocate dollars to a player that is cut, then you’ve wasted those dollars by eliminating the multiplicative effect of your decision.
Once you agree on the objective, you still have to guess at the decisions of your other league mates! I’m not familiar with the scoring of this format, so I can’t really say which player is the best value. In other league settings, I would be penalizing Goldy and Springer.
I haven’t played Ottoneu, so I’m mainly picking up my strategy to the poised question after having read the comments.
1. Since all of the players are very much undervalued right now, I’d assume that my $3 is unlikely to force a keep/don’t keep decision by the owner.
2. As such, as others have delightfully mentioned, this is all about trying to hobble the team as much as possible for as long as possible.
3. The “for as long as possible” automatically eliminates the pitchers (as much as I love them and wish nothing but good things in the future for): Kluber, Holland, and Betances. I just don’t see pitchers as good long-term bets.
4. Similar reasoning for Gattis, I don’t like betting on catchers.
5. We don’t know yet what Springer is; he could easily come out next year and be atrocious. Again, not someone I’m going to chose if my goal is to hobble a team’s finances.
6. Encarnacion will be 32 at the start of the ’15 season. How many good years does he have left?
7. That leaves Puig and Goldschmidt. I am less sold on Puig’s talent than I am Goldschmidt’s. So I’m tempted to put all $3 on Goldschmidt; even if some other owners in the league do the same thing, he’ll probably end up a price that his owner would keep him, and even though he’s 27 (and will be for nearly all of ’15), he’s a good long-term bet. His injury is a bit of a concern, but not so much that it would dissuade me. Sill, Puig will be 24 for ’15, so that’s tempting, too, since there is potential for longer damage to the owner’s salary. Basically what it comes down to is me just viewing Goldschmidt, at this point, as a being a higher echelon player. Plus, there’s the OF vs 1st base thing and I view 1st base as the shallower position (speaking as a non-otto player; that is a judgement highly conditional to how leagues are set up). But at the end of the day, I think Goldschidt will be kept, he’ll be kept for a long time, and so that is where I want to inflict the whole of my damage.
+1
$3 to Kluber, he was the best of these players in 2014. In a vacuum my rivals are more likely to target a batter too, I would hope to attract some bids his way with my bid. If we can get his cost to $20, then he has to have a good year in 2015 to be an unquestionable keeper. Over $20 he won’t be nearly as intriguing in 2016.
Goldschmidt is already somewhat punitive at $31. He’s probably worth that price, but he’s not a steal, he’s just a bargain.
Encarnacion is similar, his ceiling is lower than Goldy’s, which makes his $25 cost fair.
Puig and Springer are potential steals as priced, but there are enough questions to let their owner have another year of cost-control. I wouldn’t be bothered by bids on either of these two, I’d rather put pressure on Kluber.
I see Gattis as risky, his cost might be correct at $4 considering the injury and contact rate issues.
Holland and Bettances are relievers, and there are always plenty of relievers available. These two were elite in 2014, but could be bad in 2015, and are a low priority for arbitration adjustment.
Before I read the other comments… I say $2 to Kluber and $1 Puig