Last week I wrote about a few lesser known opportunities within Ottoneu to maximize salary cap space, which is important to understand before your fantasy season begins.  However, by the time you read this post the fantasy season will have already begun, so I want to focus your attention today on strategies that will help you in-season as you attempt to squeeze every bit of value out of your team during what is sure to be a long but very fun Ottoneu season.

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The major league season is starting in just a few days. Fantasy owners are making the adjustment from pre-season to in-season mode. Before owners concentrate 100% on in-season topics, they should take a step back for a few minutes and reflect on their final rosters and the process they used to acquire them concentrating on what worked and what didn’t. Here are some areas to consider and how I struggle with them.

Player Valuation Process

This area is probably the one area I struggle with balancing the most. Do I over think the player values and more importantly do I make actual decisions based on these valuations? I start all my valuations by creating a composite projection system from several websites and generally probably lock myself into these projections to create player values depending on the league’s format. Usually, I just check each value and adjust them as I see fit.

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Fantasy baseball is about having fun. One of my leagues is a head-to-head format against my former college teammates. I use this league as an opportunity to be (a little) less competitive.

My first few seasons – about a decade ago – were frustrating. My attempt to build balanced rosters led to a consistent top two roto score and a sub-.500 H2H score. Apparently, being good-but-not-great in every category is an excellent way to consistently lose over half the categories per week. Then, completely by accident, I stumbled upon a strategy I’ve been successfully using for the last half decade.

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Today, I’ve prepared for you a fantasy roster served two ways. The first is a reduction of ottoneu with a head-to-head sauce. For the second, I took advantage of the manager’s special on expiring meats to plate a premium meal on a budget. Enjoy.

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Ottoneu auction leagues are drafting furiously to finalize rosters prior to the start of the regular season. Earlier this week Justin touched on the best way to build out a roster. Head-to-head is also coming to Ottoneu in 2018. The Ottoneu community is buzzing with prospect junkies and interested owners looking to join new leagues.

Needless to say, Ottoneu is now in full swing, so if you’re still on the fence about trying out the game this year, now is the perfect time to jump in with both feet. With so much activity in March, most of our Ottoneu content is geared toward helping new owners learn the basics of the game. However, today I want to detour and offer a few tricks of the trade that veteran owners have figured out over time that might benefit those who are trying to take their Ottoneu game to the next level this season.

Trading for players you intend to cut…for cap space.

No matter how good your pre-auction plan, it’s not all that uncommon to exit an Ottoneu draft with less cash that you had hoped to save for future transactions. While a good rule of thumb is to keep about $10 in cap space, it’s easier said than done when some of the better bargains find their way into your hands at the end of a long draft night. What do you do when you’re up against a tight salary cap to start the season?

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This past weekend I was again honored to be asked to participate in the 15-team Tout Wars auction held bright and early on Saturday morning at Staten Island’s Richmond County Ballpark. After a short ferry ride, I caught up with old friends and then auction began. Like last year, it rolled at a fast pace and ended in about four hours later. While my final team’s roster doesn’t resemble any team I’ve previously rostered, it has a nice chance to compete.

Prep

The biggest decision I made when constructing this team happened months ago when I looked back at my 2017 fantasy teams and found my pitching way outperforming my hitting.

To help offset this final imbalance, I decided to go with a 70%/30% hitter/pitcher split. Over the past few seasons, this league’s split has been 67.8%/32.2%. The difference works out to a $6 difference. I am not married to reaching this exact mix at the auction but it gives me a general guideline to follow. It had a side effect I didn’t fully understand but the anomaly ended up driving my auction.

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The LABR only league auctions are a fantastic way to start off the fantasy season (AL and NL results). I’m co-captaining one of the AL-only teams with Eno Sarris who is making one last attempt for a championship. Here are some takeaways from the weekend.

For a quick rundown of the rules.

• 12 teams
• 23 players, 9 pitchers, 14 hitters (two catchers)
• 5×5 roto with AVG
• $260 budget

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Major league talent drop is not linear and it shouldn’t be treated as so in fantasy baseball but it does for many owners because we love our simple ordinal rankings. The talent drop from the best shortstop to the 10th is more than the drop from the 10th to the 20th. As soon as an owner moves away from using just rankings and goes to an overall production value they will gain a leg up on the competition. The whole idea can be explained by the talent distribution curve.

The talent distribution curve can be created with auction dollars. Other values can be used such as raw Standings Gain Points. But setting our auction calculator to the standard 12-team roto settings. Here is the talent distribution curve:

Note: While only 276 players are needed for this example, I extended the data out for deeper leagues. For those in 12-team -Only leagues, they will be picking at the 552 mark where the talent really begins to drop.

I’m not even sure if it has a shape. Maybe a sideways ‘S’. There is an extreme drop for about 100 picks and then starts to level off. Owners want to acquire as many players in this first group. In this part of the draft, talent needs to be prioritized over a position since talent differences exist more at this level.

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While it’s true that Ottoneu never sleeps, some are often surprised to know that January and February are among the busiest months of the year for this growing fantasy sports platform.  This winter frenzy period for baseball is refreshing because it keeps owners engaged even as they await free agent signings, and it is highly active because so many new leagues are forming.  If you’re thinking about playing Ottoneu this season, here are some key resources for review:

What Is Ottoneu?

Ottoneu First Impressions

Why You Should Play Ottoneu

How To Get Started Playing Ottoneu

10 Tips for Ottoneu Rookies

Join an Ottoneu League

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It’s tough to create a perfectly balanced team on draft or auction day. Owners are feeling the push-and-pull of trying to balance all five categories in a roto league. Mid-draft, many owners decide to drop a category with the hope of finding the needed stats on the waiver wire. Knowing which stats can be found can be tricky. By looking back at last season’s Tout Wars leagues, a decent idea of available stats can be determined.

One feature of the OnRoto.com fantasy league website computes the league’s final standings using just the drafted teams (nine pitchers, 14 position players). I took these draft values and compared them to the actual final values for each of the four roto leagues (12-team AL and NL-only and the two 15-team mixed leagues).

Some specific notes on these leagues. First, they are deeper than most leagues so every player who might be good is already owned. As for the timing of the mixed draft (the other three were auctions) happened a few weeks before the other three. Additionally, only the 23-man rosters were used used for the projected standings. Each team had an additional five or six-person bench.

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