Forty man rosters make for a very different (fantasy) ballgame than many other (fantasy) ballgames. The other day, in a Roto Riteup, Zach Sanders passed along Jeff Zimmerman’s reminder that cold weather favors pitchers, and that April is cold (compared to July, anyway), and that therefore you can be a bit more liberal with your pitchers now than you can be in a few months.

Around the same time, I was giving ottoneu player Joe Pytleski seemingly contradictory advice on twitter. But I assure you, I agree with Jeff, and the discrepancy can be explained.

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Another year has begun and, as always, ottoneu players are actively working the free agent pool, searching for that missing piece that can put them over the top. Or maybe we are all just busy trying to find replacements for those guys we really didn’t want but got stuck with at the auction.

With the auction-wire red hot right now, I thought I’d take a look at the six players who are in the most active auctions at the moment.

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We’ve started bold prediction week for 2013, and it sounds like the readers really want BOLD predictions. Of course there is always a trade-off – don’t go bold enough, and you are just stating what we already know; go too bold and you will likely be wrong and your predictions will have no fantasy value.

But the fans want bold and I like to please the fans, so I am going to go big here. Does that mean I will likely fall short of the four predictions I made last year that were either right or at least close to right? Probably. But I’m swinging for the fences anyway.

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A couple weeks ago, I covered C, 1B, 2B, and SS. Since then, I have also shared my rankings spreadsheet. Today, we cover 3B, OF, SP, and RP.

The lessons are going to remain pretty similar – guys with high walk rates rank higher, guys with a lot of speed rank lower – and will extend to the pitching sphere nicely – closers lose some value, guys projected for close to 20 wins lose some value, pitchers who keep the ball in the yard gain value. But it is still informative to look position by position and see where the differences manifest.

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Back when we launched FG+ earlier this year, I included a table that put dollar values on players for year one and future year ottoneu leagues. Since then, I have mentioned a few times that I wanted to refresh those values with new projections.

Well, I have auctions coming up the next two weekends and finally got my act together to get my spreadsheets in shape; today, I release them into the wild!

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Over the last few days, my compatriots four of my compatriots have begun presenting you with an extremely valuable draft tool: consensus positional rankings. But for those of you who play ottoneu, things differ a bit, especially if you are in a 4×4 or Points League.

Starting today, I am going to take a look at those rankings and let you know where ottoneu players should take a different stance.

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Sunday afternoon, the 12 members of the ottoneu FanGraphs Experts League gathered for our annual auction, bidding $1,210 on 174 players over 3 hours and 19 minutes. Thats about 69 seconds and $7 per player. And yet it didn’t take more than about five minutes for arguably the two best values of the day to come off the board.

The first two players tossed out both went for less than what I anticipated them costing – and yet I failed to pull the trigger.

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Last week, I talked about the “no-plan plan”, the approach I use for new ottoneu leagues. But that plan isn’t nearly as effective for most players moving into year two or beyond. Some teams are rebuilding, starting almost from scratch, entering the auction with 30 open roster spots and $350 to spend, and for them, last week’s plan is a-ok.

But what about the majority who have 10-15 spots to fill and specific needs? I try to use my rankings to establish the holes in my team, assign dollars to fill those holes, and pick targets who I think can be nabbed for those dollars.

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Many people believe that fantasy leagues are won prepping for the auction or draft. Having a plan, being ready to execute, and then following through can make all the difference.

But any time I have started a new ottoneu league, I have intentionally NOT planned. Well, that isn’t exactly true, but the No-Plan Plan is far less defined than how I approach any other league.

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Before diving back into this, after our long weekend away, I want to let you know what to expect this (hopefully this) week: Part 5 is clearly here right now, and Mike and I are working on parts 6 and 7 as we speak. In Part 6, I’ll be looking at the equations Mike came up with the other day along with one other equation that smarter statistical minds than mine are currently developing. Ideally, part 6 will be something of a wrap on our attempt to find an equation for expected HR/FB within a season. In Part 7, Mike will take a deeper look at a handful of players, and see how useful this new equation really is.

Today, I’ll be looking at another piece of the puzzle – what happens in future years to guys who show breakout distance on their fly balls.

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