Arguing price is something that has been going down since currency was made out of copper coins and some of the coins had holes in the middle. In today’s world, price negotiators say things like, “$3.15 a gallon for gas?! You’re out of your mind!” or “I’m not paying over $3 for a watermelon, I’m just not!” Whether you’re the type to wait for a sale on underwear or the type to just go and pay what you pay because, well, you need it, all of us can relate to the idea of arguing a price. In my last piece on Kyle Freeland, I made the case that he’s worth $4. I was immediately argued with (politely, that is) about that price, and you know what? I may be overpaying. But, that’s the beauty of price! It’s here, it’s there, it’s really up for debate. So, let’s do it, let’s try this: Garrett Hampson is not worth $8 in FanGraphs points Ottoneu leagues. Here’s why:

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I recently took over an Ottoneu team for the upcoming 2022 season. If you are unfamiliar with Ottoneu, it’s keeper league where you get to make trades from mid-November to January 31st. Any players left on your roster after that you keep, using the auction draft to fill in the missing pieces. Taking over someone else’s team kind of feels like moving into an empty office. There are a few cobwebs in the corner, the previous owner left a really cool pen in the desk drawer and there’s a very stinky sandwich in the staff refrigerator that you somehow feel like is your new responsibility.

The fun part is taking stock of what you have and trying to decide what you want to keep (cool pen) and what you want to cut (stinky sandwich). In this series of posts, I’ll write about the decisions I have to make, how I go about analyzing the data before making my decision, and then what decision I plan to make. You too could be doing this kind of thing, all you have to do is take over someone’s abandoned team and search through the desk drawers when you move in.

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Two weeks ago, I reviewed positional production in 2021 but ignored the elephant in the positional eligibility room: positional eligibility, at least in Ottoneu and Yahoo, but also a lot of other leagues, will look different in 2022. In Ottoneu, players are eligible at any position they played 10 games or started five games in the current or previous season.

However, to account for the shortened 2020 season, Ottoneu (and Yahoo) made a temporary change for 2021 eligibility, allowing the previous two seasons to count towards positional eligibility. Other leagues made similar changes – I play in a CBS league that reduced our games played and started requirements for 2021. For 2022, eligibility will return to normalcy and as of Opening Day, players will only be eligible at positions they played in 2021.

As an example, Manny Machado was last primarily a SS in 2018. In 2019 he played 37 games at short, including 35 starts. He hasn’t seen the position since. So by the standard rules, he would have been SS eligible in 2019 and 2020, but not 2021. But because of the temporary rule change, he was a SS in Ottoneu in 2021. For 2022, he will only be a 3B.

This has led to speculation about how different 2022 will feel compared to 2021. Will it be much harder to fill positions? Was 2021 a major outlier in terms of players qualifying at multiple spots?

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For years, it was taken as a given that fantasy replacement level varied by position, such that a C, a SS, and a 1B with the same exact line would have different values because of how they compare to their peers. That has been challenged more often lately, especially in leagues that have multiple utility spots and no corner or middle infield spots, like standard Yahoo leagues. In Ottoneu, most people who create values are still assigning players a primary position, setting a replacement level for each position, and adjusting values for each player based on that. I went back to look at production by position, based on Ottoneu FanGraphs Points scoring, in 2021 to see how the positions compare. Is C really that much weaker than everyone else? Should you pay a premium for MI production? Is 1B much better than any other spot?

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What’s the first thing you do when you get a new spreadsheet? My answer; sort ascending, sort descending. That’s what I did on the 2021 pitching leaderboards. I looked at the plate discipline metrics for qualified pitchers and sorted the sheet by descending swinging-strike rate (SwStr%). The names I saw were not surprising. Corbin Burnes leads the group at 16.6%. He’s followed by Max Scherzer (15.9%) and Robbie Ray (15.5%). José Berríos is not in the top 30. In fact, when you sort the same list by ascending swinging-strike rate, he’s in the top 10, meaning he had one of the lowest swinging strike rates in the league (9.9% to be specific). The lowest swinging strike getters in the league this year were Adam Wainwright (8.1%), Chris Flexen 플렉센 (8.6%), and Dallas Keuchel (8.7%).

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Prior to the season, I wrote up the 12 players (and more importantly, the six types of players) who appeared most often on my fantasy rosters. Those twelve guys, plus a few others I tossed out as “other names” in each category, were a mixed bag this year, and it is worth going back to see if there is anything we can learn from my successes and failures.

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As we finish a brief lull in the Ottoneu world – those 2.5 weeks after the end of the regular season and before the start of arbitration – we have a moment to take stock of what works and what doesn’t in our leagues, and think about how we can manage them better. On the Ottoneu community site, a manager asked about a “best practices” document (this was in relation to an Ottoneu basketball draft) and it seemed like now is an ideal time to talk about best practices, for both new leagues being spun up for 2022 and existing leagues that might want to align on some key stuff.

With that in mind, I spoke to a handful of Ottoneu veterans – players who have been in a bunch of leagues, been commissioners of a bunch of leagues, and know the game well. Here are 10 of the best practices they recommended.
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Bold predictions are one of my favorite parts of those last days before the season starts. Nothing is settled, anything is possible, and we get a moment to put a stake in the ground on something outside expectations. This year, my predictions were, as always, a mixed bag.

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Today (Friday, October 1) is the last day in 2021 you can start auctions in an Ottoneu league. The rules are set so that all adds take place before the season ends (that is, you can’t start an auction Sunday, which will end on Tuesday, two days after the end of the regular season). This means that as you are grooming your roster to get ready for the off-season, today is your last opportunity to add guys who might be keepers, might have trade value, or might just sit on your roster until you cut them again in January. To mark this occasion, we’ll look at some widely available players you can still try to pick up.
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This time of year, there tend to be a flurry of veteran players cut as Ottoneu managers either try to grab young upside for the future or dump underperforming veterans to add someone who they think can help them down the stretch. This presents a nice opportunity to find some buy-low candidates before the off-season even starts. Read the rest of this entry »