I hate closers. Despise them. Maybe this is a result of being an Indians fan. Jose Mesa tricked me into thinking he was lights out, then imploded at the worst possible time (although we all know Tony Fernandez deserves more of the blame). Maybe it is the endless stream of closing mediocrity I have had to watch since then. But since you are reading this on Rotographs and not an Indians blog, you have probably guessed that this really stems from fantasy baseball.

Before I dive too deep, let me begin by saying that if you are playing in a traditional 5×5 league, you can probably ignore this. If your league counts Saves but not Holds, you probably should not hate closers. I finished 4th from the bottom in saves in the lone 5×5 I played last year, and that is not where you want to be. However, if you are not playing in a league that places an extraordinary value on saves, this may be for you. It is mostly written from the perspective of the ottoneu FanGraphs Points scoring, but applies to any league where holds and saves are relatively equal (or both worth nothing).
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Almost everyone who played in an ottoneu league got some upsetting news last week when arbitration results were posted. I, for one, was pretty unhappy to discover that Eric Hosmer was no longer on my FanGraphs Experts League team.

But I can take solace in the fact that I am far from alone, particularly when it comes to Hosmer – nearly 43% of Hosmer owners found themselves without their young first basemen as of November 1. And he isn’t the only player whose owners should be starting a support group.

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Most fantasy leagues are either already in or are headed to hibernation, but ottoneu, as those of you who played this year have already learned, is a little different. With arbitration voting behind us, we are onto the ottoneu hot stove season, and there are a few things you should know as you prepare for a 4 month period that will be surprisingly important to determining your 2012 league champion.

Some of what happens in the off-season is going to be similar to your other leagues – reviewing projections, putting together rankings, valuing players, preparing for the auction – but some of it will be quite different, and that is what I want to focus on here.
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My original intent for this highly anticipated (you were anticipating it, right?) sequel was to use the the findings from Part I to identify players who might have under- or over-performed in 2011, and I will still do that (feel free to skip the next five paragraphs if that is all you are looking for).

However, after posting part I, I got some great feedback, both in the comments and via email and decided to re-do some of the analysis, so I am going to start by recapping a couple of the changes I made and what I found.
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Back in September, Bill Petti at Beyond the Boxscore took a look at the year-to-year correlations of a set of hitting metrics. Some of the stats you’d expect had no year-to-year staying power (AVG, BABIP); some you would think are skill based turned out to vary greatly (Line Drive Rate); while some metrics proved to be remarkably consistent (Contact Rate, Swinging Strike Rate).

What jumped out to me was that First-Strike Rate had only a .56 year-to-year correlation for batters, while all of the stats I’d expect to directly impact First-Strike Rate (Swing Rate, Contact Rate, etc.) were quite consistent. First-pitch strikes make a huge difference in any at-bat, and the high year-to-year variation in this stat suggests that, over the course of a season, some hitters may have very good or very bad luck in this area. After looking at Petti’s analysis, I looked deeper into the phenomenon of F-Strike% and have three posts coming – starting with this one looking at my methodology and the basic information I found.

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About a year ago, I very happily traded Ian Stewart for Matt Joyce and Reese Havens in an ottoneu league. Joyce was just $3; Stewart was $12 (Havens was also $3 but that isn’t really relevant – this is not a story about my infatuation with MI prospects, which is how I ended up with Stewart in the first place).

I thought this was a steal but the feedback from other owners was basically, “meh.” I was pretty surprised. Sure, Stewart had been a very good player, but he was about to lose 2B eligibility and move to a position where his value was much lower (I also had Ryan Zimmerman and Jose Bautista). I had turned a guy with what I saw as questionable value and a too-high salary into a dirt cheap #2 or #3 OF. But since then, I have heard a ton about every outfielder on the Rays roster (Carl Crawford became a Red Sox, Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon became Rays, Manny became retired, Sam Fuld became a legend, Desmond Jennings became a star, BJ Upton became trade bait), but Joyce seemed to get lost in the shuffle.

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Last week, I tried to provide insight on strategies for arbitration voting in ottoneu, but with almost four weeks left until votes are due, I thought I would add some color to that lecture with a couple examples. I’ve identified a couple teams from the original ottoneu league that I think include some pretty interesting arbitration cases.

We’ll start with this year’s champion: Last Years Leftovers.

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With the season at an end, it is time for those in keeper leagues to turn to the off-season, and for ottoneu players, this starts with one of the most unique parts of the ottoneu format – the arbitration process.

The process itself is actually quite simple:

• Every owner votes for one player on every other team
• The player on each team who receives the most votes becomes a free agent
• At the preseason auction, each owner gets a $5 discount on the player voted off his team

See? Simple.

But if you haven’t been through it before, the strategy can be a bit confusing. Having played five previous seasons of ottoneu fantasy baseball, I wanted to give you my take on the most common voting strategies.
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RotoGraphs asked me to post my first-ever column for the site with six days left in the season. That’s right, six days.

This can only mean one thing, of course – they firmly believe that I will bring such brilliant and insightful advice that I can swing a full season of fantasy baseball with 500 words, less than a week before the season ends.

Well, maybe that isn’t what they had in mind, but I am going to give it a shot anyway. So here are six guys who are a) available in at least 90% of leagues (according to Yahoo) and b) will give you a chance to pick up those last couple points to break into the money or take the title.

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