Three weeks ago, I wrote a piece about my intention to commit the greatest of sacrileges (at least in my mind) – a fire sale. More recently, I wrote about my first blockbuster of that rebuilding process. Yesterday I made another two blockbusters, so let’s breakdown the motivations behind those moves and what they accomplished.

Let’s recap. It’s an ottoneu league aptly named FanGraphs Staff Two. We use a points scoring system. For those who are unfamiliar with ottoneu, we have a 40 man roster and $400 budget. We can keep any number of players at a cost of draft price + $2. There is also an offseason allocation system that can add anywhere from $11 to $33 to your overall player costs. In a nutshell, the league is between a standard keeper and a dynasty format. The trade from a couple weeks ago was as follows:

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Last week, I admitted I was conducting something of a fire sale in my FanGraphs staff ottoneu league. This is a big deal for me, I’m usually a harsh opponent of any kind of fire sale – they’re boring (once completed) and rarely pay off half as well as the seller expects. Mike Trout is a rare beast who has elevated everybody’s expectations of a top prospect. Most are like Jason Heyward or Domonic Brown or (gasp) Fernando Martinez – something goes wrong with either health or the skill set and leaves the owner with less than they expected.

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For those of us in keeper leagues, it’s the season of the fire sale. Owners without any hope of reaching first place are looking for top prospects in return for high priced veterans. Sometimes it pays to be the first team at the bonfire – the best prospects are still available for your talent.

A fire sale implies a discount, just like a liquidation. Owners who settle for pennies on the dollar may be doing themselves a disservice over the long run. Whether it’s due to pride or game theory, I’m convinced the best course of action is to sell at full price or not at all.

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Judging from my twitter comments, it looks like there’s a window of opportunity for those of you that want to buy Kevin Gausman, for this year or for your keeper teams. But we know that Gausman has flaws. The question is: how likely is he to correct those flaws and become the fantasy superstar that his velocity and minor league record seems to suggest is possible?

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The conventional wisdom says that your starting pitcher needs three pitches. Fastball, breaking ball, change-up is best, but three pitches by hook or crook. If they don’t, they’ll have platoon splits and a tough time getting through the lineup. That’s largely true, of course, but there are always exceptions.

Let’s see what we can learn from the exceptions.

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You’ve perhaps seen it mentioned on Twitter, but I’m representing FanGraphs in The Dynasty Guru Experts League and we’ve been participating in a slow draft over the past five days. Check out the specifics here. The highlights: 20 teams, 40 players, major-league and minor-league players, standard snake draft, and owners will keep 35 players of their choosing from year-to-year with no contract or time restrictions.

Awesome.

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The clock is ticking ever closer to the ottoneu keeper deadline and you now have less than a week to make your final cuts. By the end of the day (midnight ET) on January 31, your rosters need to be at or below 40 players and you have to have at least $1 in cap space for every open roster spot.

I know I am still making some hard choices – should I trade a $14 Jason Kipnis for a $32 Paul Goldschmidt? Which of my five $20+ pitchers and three $30+ OF should I keep? – and that is just in one league. So I thought I would take a look at those choices and hope that it can help you make your last cuts, as well.

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Ever since ottoneu was developed, I have played exclusively in dynasty leagues, and primarily in leagues that I started. But twice in the last three years, I have had a chance to jump into an already-active dynasty and take over an abandoned team. And so far, nothing in fantasy baseball has proven as challenging as taking over another owner’s roster.

This time of year, leagues that have lost owners are looking for replacements and since I am going through a take-over myself, I thought I’d look at what it takes to start a turn-around.

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Last season Albert Pujols was drafted in the mid- to late-first round. Some people expected a bounce-back after a disappointing 2012 season. All they got from him was a dead cat bounce. He ended up as the 352nd-ranked fantasy player according to our end-of-season rankings. Once again, he may look like a rebound/buy low candidate, but his rebound chances are slim.

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Last night, Jacoby Ellsbury had three plate appearances in his return back from a fractured foot. He had a hit and a walk after missing just 20 days. I decided to go back and look at players who fractured their foot and how they performed after returning.

With a sample size of one game under his belt, Ellsbury looks great and he feels pretty good (source)

“Yeah it was a nice game back,” Ellsbury said. “I’m definitely excited about it. I felt pretty good out there.”

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