A group of Ottoneu experts, including myself, my FanGraphs colleague Jake Mailhot, Surplus Calculator creator Justin Vibber, and Ottoneu creator Niv Shah are in the midst of a mock Ottoneu auction, drafting a full start-up league of 480 players. The goal is to get some insight into how the market is shaping up for the 2022 season before auction season heats up in February. Hopefully we can learn something early about who should have trade value, who you should target at auctions, and who you might be able to cut and get back cheaper.

As of when I am writing (late Wednesday night, December 1), we are 223 players deep and I wanted to start analyzing some of what we are seeing. To start, we’ll look at some of the biggest value gainers since the start of the 2021 season.

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Two weeks ago, I reviewed positional production in 2021 but ignored the elephant in the positional eligibility room: positional eligibility, at least in Ottoneu and Yahoo, but also a lot of other leagues, will look different in 2022. In Ottoneu, players are eligible at any position they played 10 games or started five games in the current or previous season.

However, to account for the shortened 2020 season, Ottoneu (and Yahoo) made a temporary change for 2021 eligibility, allowing the previous two seasons to count towards positional eligibility. Other leagues made similar changes – I play in a CBS league that reduced our games played and started requirements for 2021. For 2022, eligibility will return to normalcy and as of Opening Day, players will only be eligible at positions they played in 2021.

As an example, Manny Machado was last primarily a SS in 2018. In 2019 he played 37 games at short, including 35 starts. He hasn’t seen the position since. So by the standard rules, he would have been SS eligible in 2019 and 2020, but not 2021. But because of the temporary rule change, he was a SS in Ottoneu in 2021. For 2022, he will only be a 3B.

This has led to speculation about how different 2022 will feel compared to 2021. Will it be much harder to fill positions? Was 2021 a major outlier in terms of players qualifying at multiple spots?

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For years, it was taken as a given that fantasy replacement level varied by position, such that a C, a SS, and a 1B with the same exact line would have different values because of how they compare to their peers. That has been challenged more often lately, especially in leagues that have multiple utility spots and no corner or middle infield spots, like standard Yahoo leagues. In Ottoneu, most people who create values are still assigning players a primary position, setting a replacement level for each position, and adjusting values for each player based on that. I went back to look at production by position, based on Ottoneu FanGraphs Points scoring, in 2021 to see how the positions compare. Is C really that much weaker than everyone else? Should you pay a premium for MI production? Is 1B much better than any other spot?

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Prior to the season, I wrote up the 12 players (and more importantly, the six types of players) who appeared most often on my fantasy rosters. Those twelve guys, plus a few others I tossed out as “other names” in each category, were a mixed bag this year, and it is worth going back to see if there is anything we can learn from my successes and failures.

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As we finish a brief lull in the Ottoneu world – those 2.5 weeks after the end of the regular season and before the start of arbitration – we have a moment to take stock of what works and what doesn’t in our leagues, and think about how we can manage them better. On the Ottoneu community site, a manager asked about a “best practices” document (this was in relation to an Ottoneu basketball draft) and it seemed like now is an ideal time to talk about best practices, for both new leagues being spun up for 2022 and existing leagues that might want to align on some key stuff.

With that in mind, I spoke to a handful of Ottoneu veterans – players who have been in a bunch of leagues, been commissioners of a bunch of leagues, and know the game well. Here are 10 of the best practices they recommended.
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Bold predictions are one of my favorite parts of those last days before the season starts. Nothing is settled, anything is possible, and we get a moment to put a stake in the ground on something outside expectations. This year, my predictions were, as always, a mixed bag.

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Today (Friday, October 1) is the last day in 2021 you can start auctions in an Ottoneu league. The rules are set so that all adds take place before the season ends (that is, you can’t start an auction Sunday, which will end on Tuesday, two days after the end of the regular season). This means that as you are grooming your roster to get ready for the off-season, today is your last opportunity to add guys who might be keepers, might have trade value, or might just sit on your roster until you cut them again in January. To mark this occasion, we’ll look at some widely available players you can still try to pick up.
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This time of year, there tend to be a flurry of veteran players cut as Ottoneu managers either try to grab young upside for the future or dump underperforming veterans to add someone who they think can help them down the stretch. This presents a nice opportunity to find some buy-low candidates before the off-season even starts. Read the rest of this entry »

Things either slow down or heat up this time of year, depending on your league. In playoff leagues, action can be fast and furious, as the remaining teams scramble for streamers, fill-ins and generally anyone who can throw points up on the board. In year-long leagues, sellers have already targeted the most interesting prospects, some teams may have checked out, and the teams at the top may not need to jockey for position much.

But there are still some interesting names popping up in auctions right now, and the four with the most live auctions – Josh Lowe, Frank Schwindel, A.J. Alexy, and Eric Lauer – worth taking a look at before you have to make a call on them in the next 48 hours.
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As we push towards the stretch run, almost every league I am in has a contender desperately pleading for innings on their trade block. Between injuries and underperformance and weird drop-offs in production after the crackdown on sticky stuff, there just does not seem to be enough pitching to go around.

Last week I covered free-agent position players to help you fill your games played; today we look at pitchers rostered in less than 50% of leagues who can help you fill out your innings pitched. Reader beware: If you need starting pitching, the choices are not good.
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