Last year, Eno Sarris gathered a group of fantasy experts from around the internets and formed the FanGraphs Experts league – an ottoneu league using traditional 5×5 roto scoring – pitting some of the best fantasy minds around (and me) against each other in a battle royale.
This year, we resume the battle.
As a long-time ottoneu player, I have come to realize that the traditional waiver wire columns are great for leagues with 23-27 man rosters, but don’t quite hold up when you teams all go 40-deep. So from time to time this year, I will try to offer up names of players who are free agents in more than 90% of ottoneu leagues, but are worth keeping an eye on.
To differentiate from waivers, I’ll call them Watchlist Wonders — guys who are worth adding to your ottoneu watchlist and, depending on your team needs, worth starting an auction for.
For the greater good, I try not to recap every fantasy trade I make. First of all, most of you probably don’t care about every trade I make. Second, I really like making trades (seriously, tweet @ottoneu and ask about Chad’s trades, Niv will tell you all about it), and so I would end up writing nothing but trade recap posts.
But once in a while, a trade happens that I think is worthy of a recap. And in my first trade in the new ottoneu FanGraphs Staff League, I believe I have made one of those recap-worthy trades: Pablo Sandoval and Hong-Chih Kuo for Matt Thornton and Paul Goldschmidt.
It takes a special kind of overly-obsessed fantasy player to worry deeply about what to do with marginal players over two games in late March before 28 teams have even played a real game. I mean, there are 2,430 games in a season. Two early season games account for a solid 0.08% of the MLB season.
So it should come as no surprise to anyone that this morning I found myself wondering, “What do I do with Mike Carp in Japan?!” And I figured if this is keeping me awake at night, I can’t be the only one.
Twice in the past few days, Howard Bender (whose name I cannot hear without imagining this) has provided a list of guys he will not draft in 2012.
I wanted to add my own list, but with an ottoneu twist. I’ll just add a note that I am very specifically saying I won’t draft these guys. At the right price, I would have held onto any of them as keepers, and I actually have the first one on one of my rosters because his price is so low. And so, without further ado…
I’ll let you in on a secret – I actually play in one non-ottoneu league. I know, I know…crazy, right? But this did give me an insight into a format that I know many of you use, but that I have never done before: the rookie draft.
In this 12-team, 25-man roster, 13-keeper league, the only way to add prospects to your roster is via trade or a two-round rookie draft, held just prior to the annual auction. We just completed that draft and some analysis could offer insight to those of you doing similar drafts in your leagues, or even to those of you trying to figure out who to bid on in an ottoneu league.
Eno dropped his Wednesday morning, and by Wednesday afternoon, Jeff had reported for duty. Howard and Mike joined today.
Now, I add mine.
Two weeks ago, Eno Sarris ran a series of posts asking you, dear readers, to analyze some fantasy questions and offered you a subscription to the FanGraphs+ 2012.
Today, at the behest of Niv Shah – the Abner Doubleday of ottoneu (except, you know, without the doubts that he is actually the man behind the game) – I present to you an opportunity to win a free $9.99 ottoneu team for 2012. All you have to do is tell us who you think was the worst value in the original ottoneu auction that happened this past weekend.
After part one of the auction for the Second FanGraphs Staff League, I took some time to look back at the strategy I set up going into the auction, and to re-strategize for day two, based on where I was.
And looking back, I’d have to say I executed pretty well, although not always in the ways I expected.
Yesterday, my colleague and fantasy competitor, Steve Slowinski, broke down day one of the inaugural auction for the Second FanGraphs Staff League, with an eye towards how his strategy played out. Today we reconvene to finish our bidding marathon, but before we do so, I wanted to take a more general look at part one.
First and foremost, despite Mr. Slowinski’s kind words, I am not sure I am as well positioned as he thinks, nor am I sure my attempt at patience was as smart as it seemed. And that is due to what I would consider some oddities in the bidding.