You’ve just signed up to play Ottoneu – now what?

Ottoneu is growing, and while you’re going to see a lot of ink spilled here on RotoGraphs about this premier fantasy game, the learning curve for rookies can be a little steep.  Below are ten critical tips you should consider when embarking on your first Ottoneu fantasy baseball season.  What follows is based on the assumption that you’ve either joined an existing Ottoneu league or are creating a new league and are now preparing to draft in your first spring auction.

1) Join the Ottoneu Community

One of the best aspects of Ottoneu is the massive contingent of game players discussing all things baseball (and football) 24/7/365.  You can find the most active Ottoneu gamers on the official community site and on Slack. Complementing the already feature-rich platform, the Ottoneu community brings all owners together in one place to crowdsource player information, trade feedback, auction tips, keep/cut decisions, enhanced league communications, and a forum for recruiting new league owners.  Even if you don’t play Ottoneu (yet), the community is a goldmine of daily baseball dialogue, strategy, and advice, and it also the perfect place to dip your toe in if you have any interest in learning more about playing and joining Ottoneu.  When you do play Ottoneu, you’ll want to get acquainted with the community as soon as possible, as it is an excellent resource for new Ottoneu players.

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With drafts fast approaching, it’s time to start talking auction strategies. Sometime soon, I’ll offer advice on nominations and common early bidding patterns. Today, let’s begin with the end of the draft.

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Last winter, FanGraphs rolled out an auction calculator. I wrote two articles on the subject of using and abusing the calculator. First, a tutorial, then my lifehack advice for using it. I’ve been getting numerous questions on Twitter and by email, so what follows is some advice for power users.

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(This is part one of the “Ottoneu 101” series)

Spring is almost here, which means pitchers and catchers (and fantasy drafts) are just around the corner.  Today I’ll walk you through an Ottoneu player auction (thanks to the guys in League 100) so you can be fully prepared before your own league draft gets underway in the coming weeks.

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Below is the Third Base installment of our 2016 Ottoneu FGpt rankings.

Previous Rankings: Catcher/First Base

In the context of Ottoneu, perhaps rankings are a misnomer, because you really want to know the dollar value each player is worth. We’ve included this information for our benefit. In all, these rankings should help to give you a spread of four dollar values for each player, as well as a comparison to average prices (post-arbitration, pre-cut deadline) within the Ottoneu FGpts universe. Each player’s Ottoneu eligibility (5GS, 10 appearances) is included as well, though players are ranked at their most valuable position. If you have questions on a specific ranking, or a question for a specific ranker, feel free to let us know in the comments.

Consider this your very early, subject to change, Ottoneu pricing cheat sheet.
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Hard to believe, but it’s almost February.  Almost all the top free agents have signed.  It’s almost prospect season, and it’s almost time for pitchers and catchers to report.  All these things add up to a baseball season that is almost here.

Patience.

But patience is a luxury we don’t have these days in fantasy leagues like Ottoneu that have a keeper deadline (January 31st) fast approaching.  Auction formats make player valuation even more complex, and now that it’s crunch time, tough decisions need to be made.  How comfortable are you hanging onto that $20 Corey Dickerson while the risk of a possible trade out of COL remains a real possibility in February or March? Despite the power and the incoming fences, how does Giancarlo Stanton’s unavoidable injury history influence your decision to keep at $56? How much value, if any, has Zack Greinke really lost moving to Arizona? Is he a $35 starting pitcher? Everybody loves Kyle Schwarber as the next best thing (C and OF!), but where’s the line? $20? $25? $30?

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So, what is Ottoneu?

Ottoneu is a smarter, better brand of fantasy baseball.  By design, it’s a fantasy platform engineered for the hardcore baseball fan that doesn’t enjoy the term “off season”.  Ottoneu is the perfect fit for FanGraphs readers looking to join a competitive fantasy baseball league with a lot of cool features, a sabermetric-economy, and a massive community of raving fans.

You can read first-year feedback from Ottoneu players here.  You can also learn a lot more about the game from the FAQ, but here are the top 10 reasons you should consider joining or moving your fantasy baseball league to Ottoneu this year:

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On the ottoneu Slack community, this week featured an interesting debate on the merits of spending on Mike Trout at an ottoneu auction. There were two things posited about Trout:

1. Keeping/buying Trout and leaving the auction with him ties up too much money in one player, thereby hurting your chances to field a competitive team, and
2. Because of this, the team that does buy Trout is almost always looking to sell him, so you can get him later (with loans) anyway.

I disagreed, arguing that unless the market was messed up, paying fair value for any player should not hurt you unless that player underperforms. Agreement was not to be found, so data needed to be found instead.
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In 2013, I won the inaugural year of the Tout Wars Mixed Draft league. I was rewarded with a promotion to one of the three live auction leagues and was ecstatic to have been slotted into the storied American League only version, made famous by the fantastic book Fantasyland. Unfortunately, year one in AL Tout Wars went terribly, as I finished 10th. As further punishment, my team garnered fewer than 60 fantasy points, which resulted in me beginning the 2015 season with a reduced FAAB.

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It has begun! May your leagues bring you much joy. What follows is one approach to auctions that should bring you future joy.

I participated in two auction drafts. In both, I decided to spend little on pitching. In The Fake Baseball’s Friends and Family League (TFBFFL), I spent almost the minimum on our (co-own the free team with Zach Sanders) rotation and bench. I spent $16.00 on 12 pitchers ($2 max), but the results were not horrible: Drew Hutchison, Homer Bailey, Carlos Martinez, Henderson Alvarez, Shelby Miller, John Lackey, Sean Doolittle, Carlos Rodon and Rafael Montero. I dropped Chad Qualls already for Zach McAllister. We have enough bats to upgrade.

In my next auction, I wanted two better pitchers, but I still gave myself a $40 cap. I wound up spending $45 on the following:

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