As somewhat of an ode to the will-be-missed Mr. Swydan, I want take a page out of Paul’s book to highlight a number of players I’m excited to watch in 2018 (this is part one).

Freddie Freeman

Having fun with some random comparisons, Justin Smoak finished a terrific 2017 with a career-high .371 wOBA (.270/.355/.529).  Freddie Freeman also finished the summer with a .371 wOBA (.291/.378/.513)…after spending six weeks on the DL with a broken wrist.  Before that DL stint, Freeman was arguably the best hitter in baseball, slashing .341/.461/.748 (.485 wOBA) over the first six weeks of the season.  He was essentially unstoppable during that stretch, and at the age of 28, armed with one of the most consistent batted ball profiles in the game and a full season of health (plus 3B eligibility in some leagues), Freeman has all the ingredients for a truly special season in 2018.

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2018 is here, and the dawn of a new year is the best time to reevaluate your overall fantasy strategy.  But before digging into the finer points of roster construction, auction value calculations, and post-post-hype sleepers, January is also the perfect time to step back and ask whether it might be time to trade in your entire fantasy experience for one of the more advanced, up-and-coming fantasy platforms around.

This is a shameless plug for Ottoneu, a fantasy sports platform so addicting that it has also launched a community of more than 1,000 hardcore baseball fans that sleep and eat baseball year round.  But don’t take my word for it.  There are many reasons why you should try Ottoneu (including some exciting new features launching in 2018), but today I want you to hear from some of the “rookies” who just finished up their first full year of Ottoneu in 2017. This growing community of raving fans is a big part of the Ottoneu experience, and their Season One feedback may help you make the final decision to drive your own league to Ottoneu in 2018.

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My previous article detailed the steps all ottoneu owners should be taking this offseason (ottoneu never sleeps!), and today I wanted to expand upon offseason trading (and keeper decisions, to a lesser extent) through the context of surplus and inflation (read through that article if you need a refresher on those terms). One caveat before we begin- fantasy baseball player valuations are often a very fluid and subjective process, so this breakdown is less about the specific players and their values and more about evaluating things at a more general level.

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The Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani is finally coming to MLB (and more specifically to the Angels), and in doing so will become the trailblazer that sets a new expectation for the future of the (possible) “two-way” player.  Because salaries and injuries continue to escalate in the game, a true double threat major leaguer is still hard to imagine in baseball, but if the 23 year old Ohtani does become the first player since Babe Ruth to make a regular impact on both sides of the ball, he will change the landscape of fantasy baseball, too.

Ohtani 😱 pic.twitter.com/YXJJ8954Hs

— Vladimir Guerrero (@VladGuerrero27) December 8, 2017

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Unlike many fantasy baseball formats, there really is no offseason in ottoneu. After the season ends there are arbitration allocations to be made, off season trading, and a keeper deadline to occupy the long months between the end of the season and the time auctions occur in the spring. We have posted before on how to get started with ottoneu, but today let’s discuss exactly what you should probably be doing during the ottoneu “offseason”:

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A fantasy baseball roster is an exercise in educated gambles. There are some players, like Clayton Kershaw, who are capable of singlehandedly delivering your team to the promised land – especially in a format like ottoneu FG points.

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I once took an excellent training course on effective communication.  At the beginning of the course, our teacher started with a game:

In my hand is an envelop with a $10 bill inside.  I want one of you in this room to take the deal I’m offering you.  I’m going to ask you a simple trivia question and, if you get it right, you get the ten dollars.  But if you get it wrong, you owe me two dollars.  However, if you don’t know the answer, you can ask one person in the room for help.  Who wants to volunteer?

After a few moments of people looking at each other wondering what the catch might be, I volunteered.  “How many states make up the United States?”, he asked.

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Imagine it’s March of 2017 and you’re getting ready for your ottoneu auction in a first year league. Obviously with the benefit of hindsight we know you should target the breakouts of ’17 like Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, and Cody Bellinger, but is there a macro level strategy that you could have employed to take advantage of the inefficiencies of the auction market? In this post I’m going to examine the average auction values for 30 first year FanGraphs points leagues from ’17, compared to the real value those players provided (based on my retrospective ’17 dollar values).

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I recently received an invitation to join Dave Cameron’s Screw Cancer league on ottoneu (I’m A New Owner To Exploit). It’s been in existence since 2012. Any time one joins a longstanding dynasty league, you’re likely to inherit a steaming pile. In this case, former owner Joe Douglas was kind enough to hand me some very solid assets as part of an incomplete roster. He didn’t leave the league due to the usual reasons – poor performance, rigged rules, and/or frustration. Instead, he was hired by an MLB team. Congrats to him.

My new ottoclub includes plenty of players I don’t want to keep. When considering the current state of the roster, it’s tempting to pursue a complete rebuild. My advice, resist the temptation to rush into a remodeling job. Take this opportunity to learn how to use players you don’t like. At the very least, make sure you maximize your trade returns. Let’s take a closer look at my situation.

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It’s probably been awhile since you’ve read a traditional “buy low, sell high” article.  In today’s golden age of baseball analytics where complex physics and statistics can be boiled down to a few simple indicators accessed instantly using one hand, it’s not very often that we (readers, fans, fantasy players) find ourselves in possession of knowledge before the masses.  For example, try “selling” Avisail Garcia and his recent .375 wOBA around your league without getting some type of response that includes “yeah, but he had a .392 BABIP”.

Thankfully, despite all the data available at our fingertips, the one ingredient that will always play a critical role in the mixture of value is the human element of perception, which can swing wildly in different directions depending who you’re dealing with.  Today I’d like to isolate a few players who’s perception may be suppressing their actual value a little more than it should be, which may represent a buying opportunity for savvy fantasy owners prepping for 2018.  The good news is you don’t have to stand in line to land these deals, but you will still need to get them early.

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