The 2016 ottoneu season has come and gone, so it’s time to take a look at the final power rankings of the season. How many teams broke the FGPts record? Where did your league(s) end up in the rankings? Let’s find out!
For reference, here are links to prior editions of the power rankings (April, May,June, July, August).
In what has become an annual tradition, today I will hold myself accountable to you the reader by publishing the results of my 2016 fantasy season.
In the 2015 version of this post, I decided I did too many leagues to give any the proper attention they deserved. Even though I whittled down my total commitments, an increase in dynasty-type formats meant I had needier children.
The Ottoneu respite is almost over! Arbitration starts tomorrow! While I’m sure most of us needed no vacation, someone who plays in 10 leagues probably needed a break. Anyways, the action is about to continue. Arbitration is one of my favorite times of the Ottoneu calendar but, for anyone who has not experience it before, can seem daunting. Today I wanted to run down my thoughts on arbitration as a whole. There have been several arbitration primers here on Rotographs in the past. Chad and Brad have each touched on it a couple of times and have talked about the tactics they like to employ in arbitration, but seeing as I’m not Chad or Brad, my tactics may be slightly different.
First lets start with the basics. Each of the 12 teams in your league will get $25 dollars to allocate to the other 11 teams. Each team may allocate a max of $3 and a minimum of $1 to the other teams. Allocations are blind (you can’t directly see who is allocating to you). Last year, nearly 450 players were allocated to in arbitration. That’s a lot. Certainly the heavy hitters were your big names going into 2016 offseason the offseason Correa, Bryan, Arrieta, etc. but there are always lesser known guys who get a dollar or two. On top of this, post arbitration leagues typically have between 120 and 140 surplus assets. With this in mind, lets talk through two schools of thought that I see applying to the vast majority of teams as they enter arbitration. I will be applying both of these over the next week.
Ottoneu arbitration begins tomorrow and runs through November 15. This omnibus is a one stop shop for all the strategy and tactics you need to get through the next month. The following omnibus is a recreation of the one I published last season. While we’ll likely have a couple new articles on the topic, we’ve mostly said everything there is to say over the course of over 10,000 words. But first, some background.
Perhaps I jumped too quickly into the details. Ottoneu is the award-eligible fantasy platform hosted by FanGraphs. Think of it as dynasty-lite. You get a 40-man roster, a $400 payroll, and way too much freedom to manage your team your way.
Over the offseason, the price of every major league player increases by $2. Minor leaguers increase by $1. Then there is an arbitration process that can be done one of two ways. Most leagues use the allocation process which ultimately adds an additional $11 to $33 per team. This omnibus is intended for both forms of arbitration, but the allocation process does open more possibilities for strategery and thus has more words dedicated to it.
As I mentioned, there are two systems of arbitration: voting and allocation. An asterisk indicates that the article is intending for voting leagues. I’ve organized the omnibus into sections: intro, intermediate, and advanced. Read the rest of this entry »
In March, I covered my Bold Predictions for 2016. Today we’ll keep score. No half points or gimmicks. Most of these will be incorrect. If most of them weren’t incorrect I’d probably be doing this wrong – wouldn’t be bold enough. Like at the time, the purpose was hopefully to give you some insight into why I liked specific players for 2016. Hopefully that was helpful.
1. Domingo Santana will be a top 15 OF.
In March, I pegged Santana as a guy I liked a lot, betting on him to finish in the top-15 OF in Ottoneu FGpts leagues. At the time, I thought he could outperform the likes of Nelson Cruz, Yasiel Puig, Carlos Gonzalez, Charlie Blackmon, Starling Marte, and Adam Jones… Oh boy… None of those guys were good this year, right (wincing)?
Then Domingo hurt is elbow. So, this one looks bad in retrospect. I actually liked his production this year at a .343 wOBA and will probably buy again this next year (given the expected price drop). That being said, if you invested heavily, you were probably disappointed – even though he was a capable 4th/5th OF when on the field.
0 for 1
2. John Jaso will be a viable 2nd OF
At the time I cited playing time. Claining that I liked Jaso to play more games than he had over the past few season. I was correct on that front. Jaso played 132 games in 2016. However, he only started 100 of those 132 and his playing time was cut by year end. Looking forward, the outlook is bleak for Jaso. He didn’t retain 1B eligibility and the team also has Josh Bell. So it looks like playing time will be an issue going forward. Jaso did provide a .335 wOBA for 2016 – that’s still a useful role player – but a ways off of a number 2 OF I thought he could be at the start of the year. Add him to the dollar bin of guys for next year.
0 for 2
3. Vince Velasquez will outproduce Raisel Iglesias
It seemed like Iglesias was everyone’s favorite sleeper to start the year. Then he got hurt. Then shifted to the bullpen.Velasquez ended up outscoring him by about 80 points on the year (Iglesias got some RP innings that boosted his total) and produced $5 more of value. If you invested in Velasquez – esspecially if you sold on his early season success – you probably turned a nice profit for yourself. The key for Ottoneu is if can cut down on the HR (14.9% HR/FB) and last longer into outings (on average he lasted just over 5 IP per outing).
1 for 3
4. Edwin Encarnacion will be a top-4 1B
Encarnacion had a good year – Scoring 1000pts in a season is nothing to sneeze at. You were probably happy with the production if you owned him. However, everyone hit in 2016 and David Ortiz, Freddie Freeman, Joey Votto, Miguel Cabrera, Paul Goldschmidt, and Anthony Rizzo outproduced him in 2016. Those are some good names. Certainly Encarnancion wasn’t disappointing, but we will chalk another one up to the loss column here.
1 for 4
5. No RP will produce $20 of value.
Another loss. Kenley Jansen was fantastic. Zach Britton didn’t allow a run for most of the year. Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller were both traded out of New York, which helped their value. Each of those name comfortably surpassed $20 of value and there are a couple of other you can probably make a case for Melancon, Betances, Familia, etc. The one thing to take from this is that there was decent turnover after the most elite tier of RP. The elite guys are great, but there were a ton of pop-up candidates as well Addison Reed, Will Harris, Kyle Barraclough, etc. Those guys churned some large profits in 2016.
1 for 5
6. Danny Valencia will be a top-60 OF
Another win! According to end of season values, Valencia was the 50th Ranked OF in 2016. If you invested in him cheaply – he didn’t cost a ton preseason – you were probably able to get some nice value out of him (4.96 PPG and a .342 wOBA) . He only played 130 games, but given Ottoneu’s large rosters and platoon ability he was (at worst) a perfect depth piece.
2 for 6
7. David Peralta will be a top-8 OF
I still like you David. I just need you to stay healthy next year. Currently on the 60DL, Peralta only saw the field for 48 games in 2016. The production was dismal (.308 wOBA and 4.1 PPG). I would bet that some of this production was due to his injury, but regardless – if you invested heavily in Perlata, it was crushing. I really like him as a cheaper piece in 2017, but he isn’t worth much at this point.
2 for 7
8. No rookie will produce $15 of value
Well hello there, Corey Seager. I thought he would make me look dumb on this one. What I didn’t count on was Gary Sanchez, Trea Turner, Trevor Story, and Aledmys Diaz also topping $15 of value. On the pitching side Edwin Diaz came close, I’ll give it to him (with rounding). It wasn’t the historic Rookie class of 2015, but each of these players are likely pillars of any team they are on.
2 for 8
9. Maikel Franco will be a top-2 3B
This is probably the worst of all of them. Franco ended the year as the 14th ranked 3B. His .311 wOBA and 4.53 PPG is close to the definition of replacement level. On top of that, several other 3B outproduced what I expected at the beginning of the year – Beltre, Seager, Longoria, Lamb, Turner, Castellanos, and Healy were all great sources of production. If this one hurt you, you weren’t alone. Franco burned me as well in 2016.
2 for 9
10. By season’s end, Justin Vibber will own 85% of all Clayton Blackburns in Ottoneu
This one was mostly for fun. Clayton Blackburn had a down year and didn’t make the majors,and Justin cut bait on all his shares. Blackburn is only owned in ~4.5% of leagues, so if Justin kept his shares I may have actually got this one right. Justin, I blame you personally for not letting me hit .300.
It’s that time of year again where we look ourselves in the mirror and admit defeat. Some of these predictions are pretty ugly.
Disclaimer: these projections
arewere bold (at least they’re supposed to be), and most are made in the context of Ottoneu fantasy baseball.
1) Yangervis Solarte will outscore Rougned Odor in 2016.
From a Roto standpoint, Odor was the better player in 2016, breaking out for a .271 AVG with 33 HR and 14 SB’s. This prediction was made in the context of Ottoneu however, and it’s wOBA-weighted scoring format didn’t love Odor nearly as much. Looking back, this prediction now just appears to be poorly worded, since Odor (818 points, 150 games) outscored Solarte (570 in 109) by nearly 250 points, almost entirely with the benefit of a healthier season. Solarte (2.5 WAR, 118 wRC+, .346 wOBA) was the superior player to Odor (2.1 WAR, 106 wRC+, .336 wOBA) in almost every other advanced offensive metric, so this one was kinda close.
This was my first year publishing my bold predictions, and I have to admit that it was difficult to balance making truly bold predictions while still offering useful insight for fantasy owners. Let’s take a look and see how my predictions look now:
Ottoneu owners have less than 12 hours (or possibly 36) to add players via 48 hour auctions before the regular season ends, so the title of this post more accurately should have been “Ottoneu Waiver Wire: The Final Countdown”. Obviously any pickups made at this point won’t contribute in 2016 but are purely speculative with an eye towards next year, so let’s take a look at some players owned in less than 50% of ottoneu that might offer some keeper potential:
Five days. That’s all that separates a small subset of ottoneu owners and a championship. As these final days play out, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the closest races across ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues as of this morning using the same standings pull that I run when creating the power rankings.
In recent articles, I’ve mentioned several times that Ottoneu uses a soft innings cap of 1,500 for the season. This allows you to go past the the cap on the day you reach it. (This is hardly specific to Ottoneu as Yahoo uses the same rules with innings caps). However, given the point structure many Ottoneu leagues implement there is an inherent advantage of pitching more innings that does not exist in 5×5 or 4×4 leagues. In 4×4 or 5×5 you could maybe boost your W, SV, or K (counting stats), but you could also lower your ratios if the stack of pitchers you employ have a sub-par outing. FanGraphs and SABR points leagues are a little different. In points leagues, as long as a pitcher doesn’t go negative (perform very badly) you will accrue points just by pitching more innings. As we enter the final week of the season I wanted to provide a list of all probable pitchers till the end of the year to help your schedule out those final 50-80 innings. Read the rest of this entry »