The ottoneu keeper deadline was jam-packed this year, at least judging by the activity in my deadline chat, the questions popping up on Twitter and all the action in my leagues. Across the Original ottoneu league, the second FanGraphs Staff League, and the FanGraphs Experts League alone, 223 players were cut on January 31, and 29 more players changed hands via trade over the final couple days of roster action.

As you all recover from what I am sure was a similarly hectic deadline rush, I am going to try to provide some insights into what happened a) in my three leagues and b) across the universe of leagues to give you a sense of what the ottoneu-verse looks like today.

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The deadline to keep players in Ottoneu passed Thursday evening at midnight, and today I thought it might be fun to run my roster through the wringer. After all, I’m eagerly trying to gain the acceptance of my readers! But seriously, I sort of am.

So here’s the Fangraphs Staff League II. My team name is “Bang the Woodrum”, and we are in a 12 team league — I just noticed Woodrum named his team “I am Warneing You” — with FanGraphs points (linear weights) scoring. The budget is $400, and I’ve filled 31 roster spots with $344. Last year, I led down the stretch until innings limits sabotaged me at the last second, leaving me in third place. Read the rest of this entry »

We often talk about ottoneu as if it were a single game and experience, but in reality it is three very different games, depending on which scoring system you choose. As with any fantasy format, you have different values on different players based on the stats you choose, but even the ways you reflect those stats can have a huge impact on the way the game is played and the way auctions proceed.

For those of you who are thinking about starting an ottoneu league (or another ottoneu league), I wanted to take a look at the three different formats and what you should expect in terms of game play and player valuation for each.

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Over the next three weeks, I am putting together three articles to help both existing and new ottoneu players (including one for those still thinking about ottoneu). Next week we’ll look at how the three scoring systems offered by ottoneu compare, and the week after I’ll offer some guidance for those venturing into their first ottoneu experience. In the midst of all that, expect to see a detailed breakdown of how I create projected auction values for my ottoneu leagues.

But this week, with just nine days until rosters freeze, I am going to focus on those of you in your second or third year in ottoneu, or those of you taking over abandoned teams. In many ways, the next nine days are some of the most important to your season – moves you make now can put you on the path to a title or start a downward spiral.

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The FanGraphs Experts League has been a relatively slow moving league with regards to trades. I am told this is fairly common in experts leagues (my dubious standing as an expert makes it difficult for me to validate this on my own).

But in the last week, we have had a veritable flurry of trade activity, with not one, not two, but THREE TRADES going down in a 48 hour period.They are intriguing trades on their own, but also have some good lessons that I think can help all ottoneu players make final moves before the January 31 roster deadlines.

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After weeks of reviewing hitters, position by position by position, it is time for me to offer up my response to Zach Sanders’s rankings of starting pitchers.

As with Zach’s rankings, we are limiting ourselves to pitchers with more than 140 IP this year, giving us a list of 101 starting pitchers, including a few whose values varied greatly between 5×5 and linear weights points leagues. One slight change from hitters to pitchers – because an IP is so valuable in linear weights (almost every team should be using up all 1500 IP over the season in an ottoneu league), we are going to rank pitchers based on Points/IP, not based on total points.

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We’ve already seen the new Bill James projections for 2013 used to rank hitters for 5×5 and linear weights, and to rank pitchers for 5×5 – time to look at how ottoneu players should be thinking about pitchers for 2013.

As with hitters, we are going to look at three sets of data, but unlike hitters, I am going to add a bonus set at the end (isn’t that nice of me).

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Last week, we received our first set of 2013 projections, and Jeff Zimmerman presented 5×5 rankings based on three cuts of that data.

By now, many of you have probably noticed a pattern forming this off-season – 5×5 rankings come out, and Chad follows with the ottoneu edition. Sure enough, here three cuts of linear weights points rankings of the top 20 hitters for 2013, based on the Bill James Handbook Projections.

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After a brief Holiday respite, Zach Sanders continued his end-of-season positional rankings by posting his OF rankings on Monday. With far more players than at any other position (103 players qualified for the OF rankings) the differences between where a player falls in 5×5 vs. linear weights can be more drastic.

In fact, instead of talking a few spots here or there, there were six players who “fell” at least 20 spots when we shifted to linear weights, and six who “rose” at least 20. We’ll see a couple old friends on this list and once again OBP and SB go a long way towards explaining the differences.

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A few weeks back, the RotoGraphs staff covered the RotoGraphs Fantasy Awards, our look back at 2012 and a chance to recognize the guys who made or broke your fantasy season by being really good (or really bad) or by being really good and then being really bad (or being really bad and then being really good). When we voted, I think everyone looked at 2012 in a vacuum, focusing on price and production, but I would also guess that almost all the voters were in the mindset of a traditional 5×5 league when they voted.

Well, I wouldn’t be the ottoneu guy if I did that! Instead, I based my votes on the unique world that is the ottoneu FanGraphs Points format and, as a result, often found myself voting against the grain.

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