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 »
Many times in life we convince ourselves to spend money on name brand items. The impact of this can be extremely wide ranging – look at the choices people make for where to attend college, what car to drive, what clothes to wear, or even what food to eat. Regardless of the area of life in which these choices are present, it is hard to ignore the impact that branding has had on our culture. While the choice to spend money on name brand items can be conscious or subconscious, it is usually extremely difficult to seperate out the inherent biases that people have toward specific products. (Try convincing a Pittsburgher they don’t need Heinz ketchup for example).
This brings me to Ottoneu. If someone asked me how to succeed at the format (besides knowing the rules well) I could go into any number of nuanced strategies that could helps someone be successful, but if I had to boil it down to an oversimplified piece of advice, I would probably tell them to “Buy the same things as other teams, while spending less money” or to rephrase, try to ignore the name brand items and buy generic instead. Today, I want to look at a name brand item I see within Ottoneu, and a generic item I would be just as happy with.
| Name | G | PA | BB% | K% | ISO | BABIP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ |
| Mr. Name Brand | 141 | 555 | 10.30% | 26.50% | 0.267 | 0.297 | 0.251 | 0.330 | 0.517 | 0.354 | 115 |
| Mr. Generic | 61 | 238 | 4.60% | 19.30% | 0.218 | 0.345 | 0.307 | 0.342 | 0.524 | 0.366 | 134 |
On Wednesday I lamented about how my year-long infatuation with prospect Nick Williams blinded me from seeing offensive value in other places that would likely have put my team in a better position during a rebuild. Today I’ll take the same approach, focusing on the pitching side, and will use Jose Berrios as my prospect scapegoat. Like Williams, I’ve owned Berrios since well before the 2016 season began, and invested fully into the scouting reports of a potential #2 starting pitcher. Better yet, I was convinced Berrios was more “polished” than most prospect pitchers, and that his strong command would quickly smooth out the inevitably bumpy transition through MLB lineups. Fast forward now to mid-September and Berrios has a 9.27 ERA in 44 IP, which includes 28 BB’s and 2.0 HR/9. And yet, I still own him…
Using Ottoneu ownership and average salary data as of September, I limited my filter to all players currently owned for $3 or less, and then hand-selected a few pitchers who (using FIP and P/IP as quick standards for YTD value) appear to have enough future value to be at least as interesting as Jose Berrios once was to me so long (not really) ago.
I have owned Nick Williams in a very competitive Ottoneu league since mid-January. Effective today, I am cutting bait on Nick Williams.
Actually, Nick Williams is really just a proxy for all those glossy prospects we fall in love with. Exiting the 2015 season, I was coming off a championship but knew I’d be staring headfirst at a very difficult rebuild. So, entering the spring of 2016 I did exactly what I usually advise new fantasy owners to avoid: stock up on a bunch of prospects and let hope fill in the strategic gaps.
In this episode of OttoGraphs, Tom and Joe try out a new format, digging a little deeper on some players who are especially relevant in ottoneu, as compared to some of the other fantasy formats. Joe breaks down the case for Josh Bell and Nick Franklin, who are just a few games away from locking in valuable positional eligibility for next year, while Tom takes a look at Aaron Judge and David Dahl, two top outfield prospects who have achieved varying levels of success in the big leagues so far. Plus, we discuss some guys who are so deep on the fantasy radar that they may actually be free agents in your ottoneu league, including Dan Vogelbach (owned in 62% of leagues) Scott Schebler (16%), Dario Alvarez (only 6%, an incredible feat in ottoneu’s extra-deep format!).
[Editor’s note – I promise we didn’t know Vogelbach was about to be called up when we recorded this over the weekend!]
As a reminder, OttoGraphs is now available on iTunes! Subscribe using this link or the one below, and if you like what you hear, we’d happily accept ratings or reviews to help us reach new listeners, and potentially recruit some new Ottoneu players! Plus, don’t forget to check out the new Ottoneu Community, where discussions are really beginning to take off! Feel free as always to comment with any questions or suggestions you may have about this episode or future topics. We can be reached individually on Twitter:
Lastly, special thanks to Treemen who provided our intro and outro music. If you like what you hear, please check out their other work at http://treemen.bandcamp.com/
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We are nearing the homestretch in the baseball and ottoneu season, and this will be the last in-season power rankings. The next time power rankings are released, they will be final 2016 results, and I plan on releasing the full team/league standings files for each format at that time as well.
The ottoneu community is quickly growing into a hub of ottoneu analysis and discussion that supplements our longer form analysis on Rotographs. Today, I’d like to give a little preview of some of the additional discussion going on over at the community, led mainly by Justin, Trey, and Joe, as well as by some more adventurous members of the community who have been interested in trying their hand at writing. While the community certainly isn’t intended to replace any of the rigorous analysis done here at Rotographs, the hope is that it can serve as a less formal complement to the traditional content produced here, with a variety of forum-like features that encourage discussion, debate, suggestions for new ottoneu features, and plenty of friendly banter.
In this episode of OttoGraphs, Tom and Joe discuss some strategies for the final month of the ottoneu season. For contending teams, strategies like being aggressive bidding on pitchers and previously cut players can help you gain an edge and catch a close rival, or keep other teams from catching you in the final weeks. For a rebuilding team, looking ahead to the offseason can help you target valuable fliers and players that can help you put yourself in the best position to win next year.
As a reminder, OttoGraphs is now available on iTunes! Subscribe using this link or the one below, and if you like what you hear, we’d happily accept ratings or reviews to help us reach new listeners, and potentially recruit some new Ottoneu players! Plus, don’t forget to check out the new Ottoneu Community, where discussions are really beginning to take off! Feel free as always to comment with any questions or suggestions you may have about this episode or future topics. We can be reached individually on Twitter:
Lastly, special thanks to Treemen who provided our intro and outro music. If you like what you hear, please check out their other work at http://treemen.bandcamp.com/
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