UPDATE: Thank you for your applications. The position has been filled. Please be on the lookout for a new opportunity early next week.

Last year, Dave Cameron’s Screw Cancer ottoneu league required some help. Five new owners, including me, were needed. Instead of recruiting purely by fantasy chops, we decided to put charity at stake and raised $1,258 from the new entrants. Since its inception in 2012, the league has contributed over $30,000 to cancer related charities. Cameron has forsaken his responsibilities due to a silly little thing like joining the Padres front office. We’ll carry on without him.

Today we’re looking for one new owner. Read on if you’d like to apply. We’re also encouraging general donations.

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Baseball has a problem, one I’ve personally touched upon numerous times on this site, my personal blog, twitter, in chats, and whilst walking around the grocery store. The traditional role of starting pitchers is dissolving. Even though it has led to teams playing smarter, it’s also deteriorating the product on the field. Baseball, after all, is selling entertainment. We like to pretend that winning equals entertainment, but perhaps that’s not always the case. In fact, we have some decent evidence it is, indeed, not the case.

I explained the problem from a high level on my Patreon yesterday (paywall). I’m hardly the only person to notice this issue – it’s a frequent talking point among baseball circles. Recently, Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer quantified the ways in which starting pitchers are ceding innings to relievers. Bill  James had a rare good tweet about the point of baseball (i.e. entertainment). Jeff Sullivan kindly confirmed that people are pissed via a poll. Sometimes, writers aren’t the best barometer of fan preferences. In this case, we’re all on the same page.

When the way baseball is played changes, so too does the way we play fantasy baseball. The latest trends in pitch usage have altered the way I will approach the 2019 season.

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Here’s today’s chat transcript which turned out to be very ottoneu heavy. Fitting since arbitration started yesterday.

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Ottoneu arbitration began on October 15 and runs through November 15. This omnibus is a one stop shop for all the strategy and tactics you need to get through the process. The following omnibus is a recreation of the one I published the last three years. We’ve mostly said everything there is to say over the course of more than 10,000 words. But first, some background.

Ottoneu is the award-eligible fantasy platform hosted by FanGraphs. Think of it as dynasty-lite. You get a 40-man roster, a $400 payroll, and way too much freedom to manage your team your way. For reasons unbeknownst to me, the platform is named after former St. Louis Browns player Otto Neu who compiled a whopping zero plate appearances over his “career.”

Over the offseason, the price of every major league player increases by $2. Minor leaguers increase by $1. Then there is an arbitration process that can be done one of two ways. Most leagues use the allocation process which ultimately adds an additional $11 to $33 per team. This omnibus is intended for both forms of arbitration, but the allocation process does open more possibilities for strategery and thus has more words dedicated to it.

As I mentioned, there are two systems of arbitration: voting and allocation. An asterisk indicates that the article is intending for voting leagues. I’ve organized the omnibus into sections: intro, intermediate, and advanced. Read the rest of this entry »

Royals phenom Adalberto Mondesi is going to be a hot topic this winter. By ripping off 32 steals in 291 plate appearances while also popping 14 home runs, Mondesi won quite a few fantasy championships. The hype may have crested yesterday when he was selected 28th overall in the very first NFBC draft of the 2019 season.

I’m going to do something novel (lazy) and just kind of assume we’re all on the same page about who Mondesi is as a player. This isn’t an analysis of his skills. I’ve done been there, done that elsewhere. As a hitter, he compares to one of the top fantasy assets in the league. This same comparable player was a massive resource suck for many years before finally breaking out.

Could Mondesi skip the painful growth seasons?

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The following is the first in a series of probably two articles about my FanGraphs Staff League team on ottoneu. This was written during the season, prior to the start of the playoffs. Thus it contains no further reference to Nick Pollack’s heartrending defeat of me. That’s the topic of the next one.

Last winter, just before the ottoneu keeper deadline, our dark overlord (shh, don’t say his name) informed us that we would be switching to the new Head-to-Head format. I would say we didn’t have much time to adjust to the new settings, but, well, those settings were still very much in the design phase. At this point, my roster was set up as a back-end contender. With a little luck, I had a shot at first place. Maybe 15 percent? I wasn’t drawing dead, but I also wasn’t the odds on favorite.

The new format was a gift – manna from heaven – an unexpected opportunity to play a little Moneyball to get out ahead of the competition. And, after going 20-1 in the regular season, I’m comfortable saying I Moneyballed the crap out of my opponents.

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Great chat today. Here’s the transcript. Anyone wanna do me a favor and note down everything I said was going to be a future article?

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Every year, I sit down to hold myself accountable to you, the reader. I believe it’s important for the people dispensing fantasy advice to prove their aptitude for the game. So without further ado, my team-by-team performances.

My number of teams increased this year despite knowing I would miss two weeks in June for a rafting trip. Ultimately, I settled on two 20 team dynasties, three ottoneu (semi-dynasty), two keepers, TGFBI, and a sim league. As you’ll notice, my league participation skews sharply towards long term modes. My attention was a little too divided to effectively manage all of these clubs.

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It’s ’bout that time, eh chaps? The regular season is over which means we can review the nonsense we said prior to the 2018 campaign. I am, of course, referring to our Bold Predictions.

I participated in two rounds of predictions: preseason and midseason. I put together the latter list during the All Star Break (ASB) because it was painful apparent that I completely whiffed on all 10 initial predictions. Sure, let’s rub my face in it.

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Behold, a transcript.

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