The season is winding down and in the ottoneu leagues where I am still competitive, I find myself looking to fill a few extra games and a few extra innings. There isn’t much you can do at this point to make up ground in games played, but leaving positions open when a starter gets an off day is no longer such a good option. And adding a viable SP for a game or two could be a difference maker.

With that in mind, here are two players that have been tearing up ottoneu leagues for the past 30 days – but are still available in most.

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The off-season arbitration process in ottoneu is likely the single most polarizing aspect of the format. In fact, in the FanGraphs Q&A section, there is a thread titled “Do you hate the arbitration rule in ottoneu?” with split answers. The initial post simply says, “I hate it.” A later reply says, “I love it.”

Personally, I am a fan. I believe some form of arbitration can help restore balance. But the system we have in place now is probably not the only system that would work and so for the past few months, the ottoneu founders have been developing rules for a new arbitration process, one that lets the market decide which players need to have their values raised, without pulling anyone off a roster.

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Sometimes the standings can play tricks on you. You see your team in first, but it’s an optical illusion. You are in seventh but are sure you have the best team.

In my experience, this has always been the domain of match-up leagues, but in my first go-round with the ottoneu FanGraphs Points Leagues, I am learning that I was missing a use case – and now I am hoping to take advantage to secure a championship with a very simple step.

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The ottoneu trade deadline has come and gone, and Friday was a busy deadline day for the original ottoneu league. While there had been a number of deals weeks or even months before the deadline, two big stars with rather large contracts remained on non-contenders, and a number of other teams were still trying to get over the top.

Between 8:00 p.m. ET and 10:45 p.m. ET, we had three deals go down and had another owner make the call to hold onto a rather expensive star.

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Once upon a time, there was a 1B/OF for the Mets, and that 1B/OF was one of the top sleepers in the fantasy baseball world. But our hero the sleeper never quite woke up. Oh sure, there were signs of a star in the making – a 780 OPS in April is nothing to sneeze at – but by the middle of the year, our hero was looking more and more the goat everyday, and woke up one morning no longer a Met and instead a Bison.

But he wouldn’t be our hero if he didn’t make a triumphant return and now he is re-donning his Mets uniform and trying to re-establish his value before 2012 comes to a close. By now you have surely guessed that our hero is Lucas Duda (either guessed or read the title of this article) and there is no one in the ottoneu-verse being auctioned more right now than Duda.

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It’s a whole new twist on ottoneu Hot Right Now! In the past, we’ve looked at the most-auctioned players out there, but right now, you have all decided to take it easy for a few days and the auctions are few and far between. Instead, using the sortable fantasy leader boards, we’ll look at two of the hottest players in the last 30 days.

Since July 20, Jake Westbrook has been the 20th most valuable pitcher in ottoneu points leagues, piling up 196 points in 41.1 IP. Over the same time frame, Ryan Ludwick has been even better, slotting in second among batters, with 260 points. And yet neither is owned in more than 2/3rds of ottoneu leagues.

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The two most auctioned players in all of the ottoneuverse (ottoneuniverse?) right now are one-third of the Braves short-term six-man rotation: Paul Maholm and Kris Medlen. Neither of these are new names – both have been relevant, irrelevant, and relevant again in the fantasy world. Both recently underwent some change that impacted their current relevance status.

But for pitching starved ottoneu players, the question at hand is, even though the Braves won’t both these guys in their rotation, do I want either?

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For those of you not looking to buy, the Seller’s Guide is right here. But for those of you still trying to make that run, still trying to claw your way into the money, still trying to hold off the late chargers behind you, the following a brief guide to buying for the ottoneu stretch run.

Whether you are filling a hole that you have had since April or trying to replace Jose Bautista’s production in case he isn’t back in time to help, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

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With the hours of July 31 ticking away, the MLB trade deadline is winding down and by the time you sit down to dinner tonight, you’ll know whether your favorite team has landed that arm/added that bat/moved that contract/restocked the farm. But you are not a GM (unless you are, in which case you have better things to do than read a fantasy column on deadline day) – you are an ottoneu owner and you still have the month of August to get something done.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll take a look at how the ottoneu trade deadline differs from the trade deadline in other keeper leagues and lay out some recommendations for how to handle the deadline. We’ll start with a sellers guide today.

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In the FanGraphs Experts League (most recently discussed here), my team (Amateur Hour) has been in a free fall, sinking from first all the way to 8th and 15 points out of the top three.

But I am thinking of acquiring at least one rental, if not two or three, to try to make a push this year. Before doing so, I want to lay out my case here and explore why a team in the bottom half of the standings might decide the time is right to make a run.

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