Our first trade! The FanGraphs/ottoneu Experts’ League has finally consummated a trade. I gave Andy Behrens my $1 Aaron Harang, and he gave me his $1 Placido Polanco. Early polling on the ottoneu Facebook page (like it! doooo it!) did not favor me, so I’ll do a quick defense. For your reference, the full post-draft rosters are listed in the introduction post here.

I realize that on value alone, I’d rather have Aaron Harang for my team. There, I’ve got that out of the way. Harang, perhaps finally healthy after two years where he only managed about 270 innings combined, is looking good. He’s got his trademark control back, and just enough strikeouts to make the package work. Polanco is also playing well, but his .128 ISO would be his best number in eight years, and his .375 BABIP will surely regress. I’ll take the ZiPs RoS and take a .300-ish batting average with 13-15 combined steals and home runs.

And that’s the key. I’ll take those numbers. I’m not sure Harang would have cracked my lineup too often. He’s still an extreme flyball pitcher – his 33% ranks 12th-worst among qualified pitchers and fits right into his career line (37.8%). As such, he’s probably a confident start about 60% of the time in mixed leagues. On my team, he fit in right behind Josh Johnson, Mat Latos, Ricky Romero, Jaime Garcia, John Danks, Wandy Rodriguez and Derek Holland. You have enough innings for about 6 starters’ worth of work, so basically I was betting that Rodriguez and Holland could handle that final starters’ worth of a workload. That’s a bet I think I can win.

We already looked around at the league and determined that there were only a few teams with extra MIs available. With Ryan Raburn looking like a platoon bat in real life and fantasy, I needed an MI. I offered Aaron Harang for Howie Kendrick (ZiPs RoS .280 with 24 combined HR and SB) and was quickly rebuffed. The best other deal I managed to find was a $5 Alcides Escobar for my $2 Matt LaPorta. I didn’t mind the deal, but my firstbasemen, in a 12-team league, are Gaby Sanchez, Mitch Moreland, Justin Smoak and Matt LaPorta. I think I need to keep all of those guys to see who works out – they’re all flawed.

So, in the end, I traded away a cheap superfluous older player to another team for their cheap, superfluous player. Kudos to user DScott for predicting Behrens as my trading partner. It seemed like a good match. Participant Chad Young (Amateur Hour), when writing about this league on his blog, agreed for the most part – even though it cost him a chance at Matt LaPorta. What do you guys think?

It’s time to check in on the FanGraphs Experts League! You can see the full rosters in this introductory post.

Our intrepid hero is doing ‘comme ci comme ca’ as the French say – in seventh out of twelve. I’m not sure exactly which direction I should tack. Clearly, playing Ryan Raburn in my MI spot hasn’t worked out so well – perhaps it’s time to use one of my FOUR FAAB DOLLARS to drop Josh Thole (my third catcher) or David Hernandez (my J.J. Putz handcuff) and pickup a middle infielder. The problem with that idea is that, with 40-man rosters, I’m stuck looking at Jonathan Herrera and Felipe Lopez. In a twelve-teamer. Maybe it’s time for a trade.

I hope it’s not time to cash in a prospect for this problem. I still have high hopes for Travis Snider. I wonder if the commissioner (Amateur Hour) would give me his $2 Orlando Hudson or $1 Freddy Sanchez for my $3 Erik Bedard, $1 Aaron Harang, or $2 Matt LaPorta? I wonder if I would do that. With Josh Johnson, Mat Latos, Ricky Romero, Jaime Garcia and John Danks as my starting five, I could perhaps trade some pitching – perhaps I should put $1 Jarred Cosart on the block. In the meantime, I’m going to start chatting up Team Rotowire about Howie Kendrick, who has probably hit half of his yearly home run total already.

Let’s take a look at the leader right now. Earl Webb, run by BaseballHQ writer Neil FitzGerald. My first inclination is to say that he won’t stick around in first for very long, but after more inspection, I’m not sure. His veteran team is certainly propped up by some fast starts – Alex Rodriguez, Paul Konerko and Matt Kemp, in particular, have performed ‘ably’ in the early going. As those batting averages regress to career norms, he may have some uncomfortable moments. The back end of the Earl Webb rotation is also iffy – he has two of John Lackey, Scott Baker and James Shields running out there every day, and no minor league prospects that might restock him in the future.

In general, that’s the team’s weakness: It’s very old. Ben Revere, Lorenzo Cain and Carlos Carrasco might be his youngest players. Perhaps he’ll be able to sell some extra pieces for prospects. Saaaay… stopgap MI Chris Getz to me for young pitcher? He certainly won’t be hunting on the waiver wire unless someone loans him some money.

On the other hand, by being a veteran team, he doesn’t have any glaring holes (like my MI problem). His worst everyday players in the lineup are probably Austin Jackson and Vernon Wells. It gets much, much worse than that.

Save for a few rogue ottoneu one league members, we’re all new to this game. One quirk in the game is the fact that though we have two catcher slots, we only get 162 games from those two slots combined. This is to reflect the reality shown in real baseball – all catcher situations are tandems, more or less. It’s a difficult position, and so even the hardiest, youngest catchers need days off. This does leave ottoneu managers in a difficult position – how do we best handle that position?

Let’s focus on the top 12 catchers by games played last year. They averaged 130 games played. That means you should really buy a number one catcher and then look for a $1 value to plug in for those other 32 games. That means if you are playing two catchers every game, you better watch out for your games played limit, like, now.

But how should you use those 32 games best? One thing you could do is find a backup catcher with a great platoon split. Then you could play him whenever that split is activated, and get more value out those games. Going back to 2008 in order to get a decent sample, here are some guys that have played well against lefties but might be backups in your ottoneu league:

Kelly Shoppach (.396 wOBA)
John Buck (.374 wOBA)
Carlos Ruiz (.368 wOBA)
Ryan Hanigan (.360 wOBA)
Ronny Paulino (.353 wOBA)

A natural extension of this approach might actually have you sitting your primary catcher if they aren’t great against southpaws. That would leave more at-bats for your backup in case you ended up with two strong catchers. Here are some front-line dudes that don’t play so front-line against lefties:

Matt Wieters (.275 wOBA)
Kurt Suzuki (.292 wOBA)
Miguel Montero (.328 wOBA)
Russell Martin (.333 wOBA)
Brian McCann (.333 wOBA)

There are some obvious caveats that should come to mind. First, this second list includes some young players that have not ‘proven’ that they cannot hit lefties yet. Also, a .333 wOBA is above average, and strong for a catcher, so maybe you shouldn’t sit Brian McCann, like, ever.

But there is a chance that if you have a first catcher that is a little weaker against lefties, and a backup catcher that is strong against lefties, you might find a great mix between the two. With a little daily effort, you can use platoon splits to get the best 162 games out of your roster.

I play in two points leagues, both of which use lwts-style scoring (although what follows applies to most other points systems).  They differ in format, however: one is a head to head points league with weekly lineups (my yahoo league), while the other is a more traditional points league with game and innings caps but daily transactions (my ottoneu league).

One of the biggest differences between the two systems is what the rule differences mean for reliever value.  In a head to head points league, it’s all about point accumulation.  And in my league’s scoring system, like in many points systems, a major key to generating the most points in a season is playing time, i.e. innings.  Because you can only set lineups once per week, this means that starters who have RP eligibility are tremendously valuable.  As an example, here are the top 11 pitchers who had RP eligibility in Yahoo last season, based on total FanGraphs Points:

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We held what might perhaps be the first keeper auction experts league on the 31st. The results were epic.

At least, they felt that way after so many adult sodas, so many auctions.
So many broken dreams.

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Let’s say you blew all of your money on Albert Pujols, Michael Pineda, and Eric Hosmer, and need a super-cheap shortstop in an ottoneu fangraphs points league.  Or, maybe you’re scrambling because Stephen Drew is dealing with his day-to-day, negative-MRI, weeks-old abdominal injury.  You have $2 to spend, and you need a shortstop with a job.  Here are shortstops who have been going for two bucks in ottoneu points leagues:

Since it’s a FanGraphs Points league, we can get a good idea of value by simply ranking players based on your favorite offensive rate stat, be it wOBA here or at Hardball Times, or TAv at BPro.  I took a dumb average of the three projections just so we could get an overall ranking, but the average itself has no meaning in and of itself.

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Is there an elite experts dynasty league out there? One doesn’t immediately come to mind. And with ottoneu in the FanGraphs fold, it’s a perfect time to break new ground. So, in that vein, we are proud to announce the first annual FanGraphs Fantasy ottoneu Experts League. This 5×5 auction keeper will draft opening day and will surely test the wills and knowledge or our esteemed competitors.

Andy Behrens (Yahoo – Roto Arcade)
Michael Rathburn (RotoExperts)
Jeff Erickson / Peter Schoenke (RotoWire)
Andrew Fiorentino, (RotoWire)
Tim Heaney / Nicholas Minnix (KFFL)
Andy Andres (Tufts University)
Neil FitzGerald (BaseballHQ)
Tom Keppy (BaseballHQ)
James Quintong (ESPN)
Jack Moore (RotoHardball)
Eno Sarris (FanGraphs)
Chad Young (ottoneu)

We’ll be reporting in on this league periodically, and you’ll hear from our competitors, too. Wish your hometown heroes best, and give us your best advice in the comments!

As we get to the final stretch of fantasy prep before the season starts, I wanted to update everyone on some changes over at ottoneu Fantasy Baseball, as well as a few leagues that need a couple more owners for drafts over the next few days.  First, for those of you who might not know, ottoneu Fantasy Baseball is the FanGraphs fantasy baseball game.  You can read the introduction here, or you can send me an email with any questions you might have.

Technical Updates

Wednesday, a relatively large number of leagues wanted to draft at the same time, causing my server to eat itself for about 3 hours.  We’ve done a couple of things to ensure this won’t happen again, such as doubling the capacity of our server and examining all the database code line by line.  Long story short, it was unacceptable, and I’ve spent a lot of time Wednesday night fixing it up so that going forward we won’t have these issues.  Yesterday, we had a couple of leagues draft with no issues reported to me, so I think the changes have helped.

Open Leagues Still Available

We have a few leagues actively looking to fill out their ranks.  Here are a couple that reached out to me:

Halpin’s League – Run by John Halpin at foxsports.com, still needs 7 players.  It’s a 5×5 for those of you more interested in a traditional set of stats.  John knows his stuff and I imagine this league would be a pretty good challenge, if you fancy yourself as a fantasy expert.

RBP Blog League – Another 5×5 league, only needs 3 more players, and they are drafting tomorrow starting at 2pm PT.  Short lead time, but having talked to the guys running this league, it’ll definitely be a fun time. (corrected the draft time for this one from 2pm ET)

Money League Baseball – Finally, for those of you that want FanGraphs Points and some cash prizes, we have a $49.99 prize league that needs 8 owners still.  Highly recommend this league, as I know one of the participants is one of the original ottoneu owners playing in a points league for the first time.

Beyond these leagues I’ve mentioned here, there are a few more public leagues looking to fill out, as well as some private leagues that are very close.  Check out the list here and if you have any questions about a particular league or getting in touch with a commissioner, shoot me an email or tweet @ottoneu.  I will get back to you as fast as I can with whatever information you might need.  Since I like giving away teams, how about the best tweet about ottoneu today will get the winner a free $9.99 team for this season.  Include @ottoneu so I see it!

Continuing this series of comparing FanGraphs Points league scoring to traditional scoring, we’ll begin looking today at pitching.  To start, I decided to look at a traditional points scoring system compared to the ottoneu points scoring system.  There is no apparent “standard” fantasy points system, but I chose the points scoring used at CBSSportsline as my comparison, as it seems fairly typical of systems you see out “in the wild.”  Let’s start with a list of the top-10 pitchers by their system in the 2010 season:

For reference, I also included their rank according to total FanGraphs Points.  Overall, it doesn’t look that different, right?  The top three are identical, and most of the top-10 are ranked similarly in both systems.  There are two pitchers who had a ranking disparty of at least 10 spots, however: David Price and Tim Hudson.

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As Carson mentioned over the weekend, myself and eight of my fellow FanGraphers huddled up in the boardroom at Phoenix’s Highland Hotel at Biltmore for six-plus hours for our ottoneu league auction about two weeks ago (three others drafted from home). I selected 27 players that night then chose the final 13 when we wrapped things up this past Saturday. Eno presented his club yesterday, and here’s my roster…

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