As many of you in the ottoneu world know, the format which has been playable on FanGraphs for the past five years got its start with a single league. Originated by three high school friends and bringing in six of our college friends (yes, our first year had nine teams). Well, 2015 is our tenth year playing ottoneu and I recently discovered a treasure trove of emails from before, during and after that first season.

One of these emails included a spreadsheet of rosters from the last day of our first season. With everyone busy with auctions right now, I thought it might be fun to glance back at what the league looked like in year one.

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This past week, in the ottoneu Slack Community, (check this out if you are interested in joining, which you should be if you play ottoneu) there was a heated debate about paying for top RP, particularly in points leagues. One side was arguing that the elite RP put up a Pt/IP score that few other players can manage. That if you are willing to pay $35 more for Mike Trout than Ryan Braun (projected to have a 200 point gap between them), why not pay the same premium for Aroldis Chapman over a guy 200 points below him – Santiago Casilla?

The other side argued that spending $30+ on a relief pitcher would be crazy – there are always solid RP options on the wire, so why not just wait and see who will be the next Wade Davis?

Both sides are right.

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After two straight first place finishes, I landed in second in the FanGraphs Staff League last year, and went into the off-season dead-set on regaining my crown.

I made a few trades, made my cuts and sat down to look at the available free agents…and was stopped in my tracks. I really had no good options.

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With the cut deadline behind us, now is the time to start prepping for your auctions. One thing to do is identify your targets, but another is to suss out the competition. Who has cash to spend? How much? Who is building a new roster and who is filling just a couple holes?

I started by taking a broad look at my three leagues to see how much cash was kept and I was intrigued to see how different the three auctions are set to play out.

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The keeper deadline for ottoneu leagues is upon us (midnight on the night of 1/31 – tonight!), and that means it is time to start auction prep in earnest. As I have the past two years, I am going to help out with my auction values for all four ottoneu formats.

Also as per usual, I made a couple tweaks to the approach this year.
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Last week, I started a review of the players I am targeting to acquire and trade away, going position by position through the infield.

Today we look 12 more players – outfielders and starting pitchers who will factor heavily in my trade talks.

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The ottoneu off-season is well underway and I know many leagues have been wildly active, making the Padres and Dodgers look dull in comparison.

My leagues, however, have had slow developing trade markets, so rather than being able to report on what I’ve done, I am instead going to provide a list of players, by position, who I am targeting (or would be, if I had a need) in trade talks. For good measure, I’ll add in a player I am trying to trade away, too (or would be, if I owned him). We’ll hit the infield today and I will follow up with the OF and pitchers.

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We’re almost half-way through ottoneu arbitration and, at least across my leagues, some patterns are forming. A Cleveland pitcher and two Chicago first basemen are proving to be the most targeted players.

That probably is not much of a surprise, but does it make sense? And who else is near the top of that list?

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Arbitration allocations and voting off players in ottoneu leagues start this Wednesday. Brad Johnson and I have both shared guides to the process in the past (both for arbitration allocations and vote offs), but this year I want to focus on one point.

Prospects. Every year I touch on this briefly and every year a couple prospects are among the most allocated-to. So this year, I want to explore allocations to prospects/rookies a bit deeper.

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So “Yan” and “man” don’t actually rhyme, which makes the title less fun, but has nothing to do with its accuracy. Maybe it’s because I am an Indians fan and see him play almost daily, but I spent much of the last two years wondering why Yan Gomes wasn’t getting more love from the fantasy community. You have to look no further than these very pages, where Gomes was mentioned for fantasy purposes all of twice in 2014.

The first time it was because Brett Talley was covering the Cleveland infield and Gomes was listed there only as a sleeper (and likely only because you can’t just ignore a team’s starting catcher in talking about their infield). The second was when Nicholas Minnix noted, in September, that Gomes was a top five fantasy asset at his position. By the end of the season, he was top four.

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