Just when all your leagues ended and you thought the fantasy baseball season was dead… it has risen. ottoneu fantasy baseball is bringing back Pick Six for the playoff run, and everyone gets $100 this time in order to promote different lineups. Oh and there will be some playoff-specific achievements for you. So that’s nice.

Otherwise, it’s the same game you’ve grown to love.

With the season at an end, it is time for those in keeper leagues to turn to the off-season, and for ottoneu players, this starts with one of the most unique parts of the ottoneu format – the arbitration process.

The process itself is actually quite simple:

• Every owner votes for one player on every other team
• The player on each team who receives the most votes becomes a free agent
• At the preseason auction, each owner gets a $5 discount on the player voted off his team

See? Simple.

But if you haven’t been through it before, the strategy can be a bit confusing. Having played five previous seasons of ottoneu fantasy baseball, I wanted to give you my take on the most common voting strategies.
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I’ll be here by 12:30! We can talk streamers, keepers, sandwiches, you know, whatever.

The inaugural season of Ottoneu Fantasy Baseball here at FanGraphs is coming to a close, and hopefully you’ve enjoyed the experience as much as I have. Deep rosters (40-man) with minor leaguers and 60-day DL maneuverability … it’s great. I even have Yu Darvish stashed on my bench (cost $1 on auction day, $2 next year to keep), hoping he’ll anchor my pitching staff next season.

Anyway, I’ve long been a sucker for trying to find value in middle relievers in fantasy, but in traditional 5×5 formats they’re almost useless. A points league is another matter, especially those based on linear weights like Ottoneu. If you’re unfamiliar with the linear weights scoring, you can see it here. It’s not a surprise that some top middle relievers are worth as much, if not more than some closers, but how much? Let’s look at the top producers for each demographic, starting with the closers. Just some advance warning, these point totals do not include last night’s games.

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Fantasy trade deadlines have a tendency to come and go unnoticed, but I refused to let that happen in my ottoneu FanGraphs Points league. After mostly letting my team do it’s own thing this year without many roster moves, I opted to make some aggressive offers at the deadline in an attempt to shape my roster heading into the offseason period. I ended up completing three deals, each of them interesting and a little unique in their own right.

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Some ottoneu cats have to look to the future, just like the major league teams. How much more to the future can you look than signing 2011 draftees?

Of course, there’s a lot of attrition between now and then. So you have to focus on the top talent. The beginning of the first round boasted two such top talents, Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer. Cole, with super agent Scott Boras puling the strings, hasn’t signed yet. But the third overall pick, Bauer, has signed. How much might you pay for a recently drafted college pitcher? Let’s check in with ottoneu owner and FanGraphs writer Jack Moore, who recently won an auction for Bauer.

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After a one week hiatus, I’m continuing to look at players who have been busts in ottoneu fangraphs points fantasy baseball leagues.  It uses the same model described in this post, although the values have been updated based on year to date statistics.

Second Base

My Pick: Dan Uggla

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Another week and another innovation at ottoneu headquarters. Now you can browse any ottoneu league you like, right here. A few recommendations include the FanGraphs Staff League, the original ottoneu league, Justin Merry’s league (for you linear weights players, since he’s the scoring system creator and all), and, yes, the Expert’s League. Use the feature to learn a little more about what you should do in your league.

For example. A little ride over to the commissioner’s team page in the Expert’s League can show you what our group of prognosticators decided Brian McCann was worth ($33). Or how many minor leaguers a seasoned ottoneu player owns (zero in this case). Lastly, since Commissioner Chad Young has his Amateur Hour team in seventh place, it can show you what another ottoneu team trying to decide whether to buy or sell looks like.

It’s an interesting team, you might find when you’re looking at his set lineups page. He’s got J.P. Arencibia and Brian McCann, two very good young catchers, both playing right now. And yet he only has 13 games left to play at the position. Is McCann going to be worth $35 next year? Will someone want Arencibia? This is a clear position of surplus for Young.

His team is not that old, though. Sure, he has Vladimir Guerrero ready to head to the bench for good, and of course no minor leaguers, but he also boasts Eric Hosmer, Hunter Pence, Domonic Brown and Mike Moustakas as position players. But the Vlad injury forces him to play Rajai Davis in the outfield. He could use an outfielder if he’s going to go for it this year.

His pitching is strong. Roy Halladay, Jered Weaver, Jeremy Hellickson, Shaun Marcum and Jair Jurrjens are the headliners, but Julio Teheran and Ryan Dempster make for a good bench. If he goes for it, a $10 Marcum might have great trade value without requiring him to sell his top pitching prospect. If he calls it quits on the year, a $43 Roy Halladay may not be keepable, as much of a machine as the Doc is.

The old adage is that “Nobody cares about your fantasy team.” The irony is that you can learn a lot from looking at other people’s fantasy teams. And before we get too up in arms about Chad’s team, we should go softly. He’s about to return from his honeymoon to discover that Guerrero broke his hand. As if returning from a honeymoon wasn’t difficult enough.

Oh, and the offer still stands! Fill an ottoneu league now, and the entire league is free. Contact ottoneu founder Niv Shah if that sounds interesting to you (on twitter or at help @ ottoneu.com).

(it takes me a while to get there, but in this post I propose an alternative to the current FanGraphs Points scoring system for pitchers)

Last week, LuckyStrikes asked me to do a post talking about and defending the scoring system used for pitchers in ottoneu FanGraphs Points leagues (I’m the one that developed it).  He pointed out that Doug Fister has been a top-20 pitcher thus far in FanGraphs Points, and went so far to say that it seemed like any scrub pitcher in San Diego or Seattle seems to do well in this system.

Here’s the thing: Fister arguably has been a top-20 pitcher thus far (or, at least, right on the fringes of top-20).  He has 2.7 WAR, which ranks exactly 20th in MLB right now among pitchers, with a 3.09 ERA and a 3.13 FIP in 125 innings!  He’s been fantastic.  In fact, the entire Seattle rotation has been fantastic:

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Ug. In the FanGraphs home league on ottoneu, the fantasy guy in the room has been embarrassed. It’s a Perm needs to open up its doors and sell, sell, sell. I hang my head in shame. My team of old dudes that take walks didn’t take enough of them and proved to be too old.

Maybe you guys can help me spot my most sellable veterans. So far the sharks are circling for Jonathan Papelbon, mostly. He’s not real old, but I have to think about possible returns too. Help me out here. And if you do, I’ll give you a tip on a good deal.

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