Arbitrary (ar·bi·trar·y)

1. based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

My Ottoneu arbitration strategies have varied over the past few years. I’ve been overly analytical, downloading .csv after .csv, splicing and merging and concatenating until there was more data than I cared to actually do anything with. I wrote last year about measuring salaries against the average and tipping the scales on already overpriced players. Sometimes it can be more fun to simply add a few dollars where it feels right. That’s what I did this year. Here are a few notes and thoughts I recorded as I dished out my dollars Read the rest of this entry »

The season is barely over, but we are already on to 2025, and some of the most useful tools for Ottoneu managers are out to help us. Early Steamer Projections are out and Justin Vibber has pulled them into the first push of the Ottoneu Surplus Calculator (SC) which means we have some early, rough values on players for 2025.

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Sometimes, you set out on a journey, not knowing the destination and you wind up, well…nowhere. I think that may be what happened to me this week, but as the saying goes, “It’s the journey, not the destination,” so maybe there are some interesting nuggets to be gleaned from this somewhat aimless wandering.

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Writing about fantasy baseball twice per week typically comes with a self-inflicted expectation of actually being good at playing fantasy baseball. I had some “W’s” this season (also known as dubs) and plenty of “L’s”, as the kids like to say, but being right in the middle feels worse. You can be the derelict, the scummy sewer rat who dwells at the deepest depths of the league standings. Or, you can be the king, looking down upon the peasants who hunger and thirst. But, being in the middle? It doesn’t lend itself to much insightful advice or analysis. “Write something actionable!”, I hear in the deepest REM parts of my sleep. Well, here I now hover, attempting to write something of the sort. In four parts, I’ll help you understand your options, if, like me, you are stuck in the metaphorical bathyal zone, swishing your dorsal fin back and forth hoping to make it up a few levels.

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Some years just aren’t your year. Sometimes that is because you don’t get the breaks you need. Sometimes you just run into better teams in a bunch of leagues. And sometimes you load your rosters up with unproductive players and pay the price.

Each year, I take a moment before the season to review the players I roster most. And now, looking back that article…uh…yikes.

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One of the most common questions I get in the off-season is around how many players a team should keep. Do you want to keep as many as possible, limiting your dependence on the draft and its fickle nature? Do you want to keep only the very best keepers, and take advantage of the values that creep up at a draft? Does it not matter, because everything that matters happens in-season?

The answer I almost always give is that it depends. You should keep as many players as you have that are worth keeping. You should depend on the draft as much as you need to. You should work in-season moves, as well. How you balance those things, I have argued, should be based on a combination of your team, your league, and your preferences. But I never had any data to back that up. Now I do.

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Calling them the losers is kind of mean, isn’t it? These players are not losers. But they did lose position eligibility and so the word is pretty apt. I hope they don’t mind.

Yesterday we covered everyone who gained positional eligibility in Ottoneu this year and today we’ll look at the opposite: players who had eligibility from the 2023 season that carried over into 2024 but won’t be kept for 2025.

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As the calendar turns to October and we turn our attention to the playoffs, Ottoneu quietly moves on to 2025. Niv Shah will keep us updated on off-season activity in his annual MegaThread (which is also a great place to ask him questions) and you can see there that the first step includes positional eligibility being updated.

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The 2024 version of Hot Right Now will typically include three sections:

1. Current Auctions: A closer look at players being auctioned at a high rate.
2. Roster Adds: Analysis of players with high add% changes.
3. Hot Performers: Players with a high P/G or P/IP in recent weeks.

The FanGraphs Ottoneu team plans to run this feature weekly, updating fantasy managers on the biggest movers in Ottoneu leagues with an analysis of how these players could or could not help your roster.

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The end of the regular season is quickly approaching and that means it’s time to get those final auctions started in your Ottoneu leagues before rosters lock for the first phase of the offseason. Any auctions you start before Friday will end before the end of the season which means it’s your last chance to add any prospects, injured players, or even a pitcher for the final weekend of the season. Here are a few recommendations of players owned in less than 70% of Ottoneu leagues in a few different categories.

Prospects

If you’ve got a favorite prospect or sleeper who has quietly had a strong season in the minor leagues, now’s your chance to add them to your roster. One thing to remember about adding any players at this point is that they’ll be subject to the same salary inflation as any other player rostered, but that inflation is halved for prospects. You’ll need to remember to build in that extra dollar into your auction bid if you’re looking to keep the prospect into next year, but it’s also just as easy to cut them at the keeper deadline if the salary ends up being too high.

Here are a few prospects who you might consider adding, though I’m certainly not a prospect expert and am usually reluctant to actually roster a large number of prospects on my Ottoneu teams.

Personally, I’m more interested in rostering prospects that are closer to the majors who could be potential contributors sooner rather than later. That means I’m usually not looking at players below Double-A, though there are certainly a few interesting names on the list above that are finishing the season in the low minors. Of the players above, I’m most interested in rostering guys like Sebastian Walcott or Bryce Eldridge; both of them had huge minor league seasons and will be quickly knocking on the door of the big leagues as soon as next year.

Injured Players with Keepable Value

Another category of players who could be nice pickups if you’re looking forward to next year are those players currently on the IL and on track to be healthy by the time spring training rolls around. For the most part, that list is populated by pitchers but there are a few injured position players who could be interesting keepers too.

One thing to note about adding these players to your roster is that if they’re on the 60-day IL, they’ll be activated right as the MLB offseason begins and they’ll end up taking up an Ottoneu roster spot as a regular player would. Some leagues have rules about the shape of your offseason rosters, specifically to enforce a team hoarding a ton of 60-day IL players at the end of the season and then entering the offseason with more than 40 players on their roster.

Picking up any of these injured pitchers is a real gamble since their recovery isn’t guaranteed. Take Luis Garica for example: he was supposed to return from his Tommy John surgery sometime this season and actually started a rehab assignment, but after a couple of setbacks, he’s now looking to regain his health over the offseason. If you really like any of these players and think they can be contributors next year, it might be worth throwing a dollar or two at them at the end of this season, but they’ll be hit by the $2 salary inflation and will most likely be available in the draft anyway.

Last Gasp Players

The final group of players I’ll highlight are for those of you in an extremely close battle in your standings heading into the final weekend of the season and you desperately need a small boost to get you over the edge.

SP/RP Brant Hurter – 42.6% roster%
I wrote up Hurter a few weeks ago and he’s turned in another couple of solid outings since then. He’s being used as a bulk pitcher behind an opener which means you’ll have to monitor his usage and ensure he’s in the right roster slot in Ottoneu, but he should line up to face the White Sox this weekend which is an extremely juicy matchup.

SP Andre Pallante – 21.94% roster%
Pallante has quietly had a really solid second half of the season — 3.60 FIP since the All-Star break — and has turned in two brilliant outings in a row against the Pirates and Guardians. He’s on track to start in San Francisco during the final weekend of the season and that’s as good an environment you can find for a streamer.

SP/RP Landen Roupp – 11.91% roster%
Opposing Pallante in that final series in San Francisco is Roupp, though he’s slated to pitch on Friday. The Giants have been giving Roupp a longer leash out of the starting rotation to finish the season and he’s responded by putting up some decent numbers across three starts.