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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