One would expect that a fantasy writer’s success on something like bold predictions would correlate nicely with their success overall that year. After all, if you pay the low, low price to try out your bold predictions and you hit big, your teams should be excellent, right?

Well, maybe not. I had probably my least successful fantasy season in the last few years in 2016, yet easily my personal best performance on these here bold predictions. And looking back, I still think these were bold, but perhaps you disagree?
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I promised myself I would make a mix of positive and negative predictions this year, and I aimed to make them really bold, refusing to make any prediction that was less bold than one made by another writer about the same player.

Let’s see how that is working out as of the All-Star break.
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Almost three years ago, Ryan Braun was suspended and he got cut in a number of ottoneu leagues. I wrote about the chain reaction that occurs when a guy like Braun becomes a free agent.

Just this week, an arguably more interesting scenario played out in the FanGraphs Staff League Two, when a $62 Giancarlo Stanton was kicked to the curb, and a there are a number of lessons to learn from it.
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Over the last couple weeks, we’ve been releasing our bold predictions, and I noticed some patterns emerging. Before I wrote mine, I made a number of edits to my list because I didn’t want to cover the same player as my fellow Rotographs writers, unless I was going to be more bold than they were.

To facilitate that, I was tracking the other writers’ predictions. Because of that, I now have a list of the players where we overlapped – the 30 players who were the focal point of more than one bold prediction.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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