I love Bold Prediction season here at FanGraphs. Everyday I am hit with dozens of interesting, exciting and unique predictions, almost all of which will be wrong, but almost all of which will contain a nugget of truth that will make me a smarter fantasy player. Plus, I get to make crazy predictions!

But in looking back, I realized I have a tendency to be overly positive. In four years doing Bold Predictions, I have put out 33 positive posits and only seven negative notions. This year, we restore balance! One other change this year – I have been tracking the Bold Predictions of my fellow Rotographers, and any player I am predicting that they already predicted, I will be bolder.

Read the rest of this entry »

Each year, before the season, I try to run a set of projected standings for my leagues. It’s not super difficult, though you do have to set aside probably about one hour per league to set it up. But once you have these projections, they can be extremely useful in figuring out your strengths and weaknesses, and giving yourself a realistic outlook for your team.

The specifics below are based on ottoneu, but the theory can be applied to any format.
Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I participated in a slow auction to kick off a 4×4 ottoneu league. I have done (and generally love) slow DRAFTS many times in the past, and those are pretty straight forward. They tend to work just like normal drafts, though the longer time between picks often leads to better research and fewer reaches, panic moves, etc.

But this slow auction thing – that was a whole new ballgame.

Read the rest of this entry »

Is a $65 Mike Trout a keeper in ottoneu? What about a $59 Mike Trout? What if I told you that I kept a $65 Trout but decided not to inquire on a $59 Trout as a trade target. And that it had nothing to do with available cap space or team makeup?

It was all about scoring format. ottoneu comes in four flavors (two points systems, 4×4 and 5×5) and each has it’s own unique traits. But the reason to pass on that $59 Trout might surprise you.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fantasy baseball is an inherently analytical game – you are trying to use a scarce resource (either dollars or draft picks) in a wiser manner than your competitors. And so it is no surprise that fantasy players have become big fans of the projection systems from ZiPS to Steamer to PECOTA and beyond. Just last week, Justin Vibber shared his ottoneu Surplus Calculator which uses Steamer projections to find expected values for MLB players.

In the ottoneu Slack community, the surplus calculator and other similar tools have become the primary manner of determining player value – if Steamer says a player will produce $30, that is the baseline. And this creates an opportunity to profit by ignoring projections.
Read the rest of this entry »

The ottoneu Slack community continues to be a great place to discuss strategy, get feedback, and more. One of the more active channels is Trade Review, where you can talk about ongoing trade discussions and get feedback from the crowd, and on that channel, there tend to be two camps in this off-season window – those who only care about player values and those who care about roster construction.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago, I had a fantasy team that won a title in part thanks to a certain fantasy stud named Mike whose last name just happens to be the name of a fish.* My wife – not exactly a baseball fan, though she spends more time around the game than she might wish – thought I should go all in: cut everyone NOT named after a fish and build a team entirely of fish-themed players.

No matter how many times I tell her this would be nearly impossible, she insists I should try (in much the same way I insist that my son should try putting away his toys when he insists he needs help). So today, I try to build a fish-themed team, and look for other, potentially more successful themes.

Read the rest of this entry »

I opened up trade talks with my esteemed colleague Brandon Warne the other day, inquiring on one of his three elite SS in our ottoneu league.

“Any chance you are interested in moving [Manny] Machado, Xander [Bogaerts] or [Carlos] Correa? You can only use two at SS/MI and while you could play Machado at 3B, you have [Miguel] Sanothere.”

His reply was direct – “Probably will just start Sano at util.”

But I still need a SS and he still has a monopoly (those three plus Brad Miller and Starlin Castro), so how do I convince him to part with one of his prize possessions?
Read the rest of this entry »

ottoneu arbitration came to an end last weekend, with more than 25,000 allocations totaling more than $35,000 handed out to nearly 450 MLB and MiLB players. The results, as always are occasionally interesting, often expected and sometimes surprising.

You probably won’t be surprised, for example, to find out that Carlos Correa received the most arbitration dollars, but you might be surprised that Mike Trout and Joey Votto – neither of whom were particularly cheap in most leagues, were among the 35 leading targets.
Read the rest of this entry »

On the ottoneu Slack community, this week featured an interesting debate on the merits of spending on Mike Trout at an ottoneu auction. There were two things posited about Trout:

1. Keeping/buying Trout and leaving the auction with him ties up too much money in one player, thereby hurting your chances to field a competitive team, and
2. Because of this, the team that does buy Trout is almost always looking to sell him, so you can get him later (with loans) anyway.

I disagreed, arguing that unless the market was messed up, paying fair value for any player should not hurt you unless that player underperforms. Agreement was not to be found, so data needed to be found instead.
Read the rest of this entry »