As we mentioned on a recent episode of OttoGraphs, May is traditionally the month where contenders and re-builders start buying and selling with gusto in ottoneu. With that in mind, I want to highlight a handful of players I would be looking to acquire as a contender and with a look to the future, specifically in ottoneu points leagues (although most of these players offer value in the rotisserie leagues as well).
Starting in July of last season I began posting monthly power rankings for ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues, taking up the mantle of work previously done by Nate Emmerson (who was gracious enough to share his process and python scripts with me). With April in the books, it’s time for the first edition of the 2016 power rankings, and this time I am including rankings for all four ottoneu formats.
The first ranking I’m going to present shows the top individual teams in all FanGraphs points leagues based on their Pace, which is a metric I calculated by taking each team’s Pts/G and Pts/IP and multiplying them by their projected games (max of 1,944) and innings (max of 1,500).
In this episode of OttoGraphs, Tom and Joe discuss some players who have changed their value in the early going, specifically with respect to the Ottoneu FGPts format.
Feel free 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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In Ottoneu, like any fantasy format, small sample sizes to begin the season drastically impact the standings. The team with the worst pitching in your league has probably allowed more homers than expected. While the team in last place has likely has pitched the fewest innings. It’s easy to blow off these types of starts due the unsustainable performances that aren’t likely to continue (or to front-loading innings). I thought it would be fun to take a different approach today. So let’s play a game…
The rules: Pick 5 SP, total salaries for this rotation of $30 or less based on Ottoneu average values (round up $1 dollar). No picks with an average salary over $12. Arbitrary limitations, I know.
The goal: Build a 5 man rotation assuming you can bank all points that have occurred thus far with the goal of accumulating the most Fangraphs points by seasons end. Let’s make some picks.
| Name | Avg. $ | % Owned | P/IP | FPTS | IP | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | ERA | FIP |
| Drew Smyly so far | $9.00 | 99% | 6.21 | 178 | 28.2 | 10.36 | 1.57 | 0.94 | 2.51 | 2.80 |
| Drew Smyly ROS | $9.00 | 99% | 4.93 | 601 | 122 | 9.52 | 2.56 | 1.11 | 3.28 | 3.50 |
| Season Total | 5.19 | 779 | 150 | 9.68 | 2.37 | 1.08 | 3.14 | 3.37 |
I find early season performances fascinating (or perhaps it’s our responses to these performances that’s fascinating.) With every owner competitive and paying attention in April – maybe for the only time all year – league wide perception of talent levels can be unrealistically altered. For example, Trevor Story hits 7 home runs in his first 8 games, then precedes to hit .200 over his next 60 plate appearances. That’s about as stark a difference as you can find in a player’s performances this early in the season. Given this, how do your league-mates value him? My wager is that they value him more as the 7 HR guy that the .200 hitter, but that’s just a guess. Would the view of Story be different if those 7 HR in 8 games occurred in July?
This is all hypothetical conjecture on my part, but it does help to show the crazy swings in performance that occur over small samples. If a player (especially a prospect) has a hot start, their trade value can be boosted by that helium all year. However, some hot starts still fall through the cracks, and many players who have performed well can still be bought relatively cheaply. Hopefully this will help you consider buying some of the players who’ve had great starts to 2016. Some of them appear to have made core improvements thus far.
One of the updates I run weekly is to look at the plate discipline and batted ball leaderboards here on Fangraphs. I look for players who are swinging less than last year, while also making more contact. Eno covered some of this in his post last week, but this early in the season it can be difficult to have enough data to make any concrete conclusions about player performances. A disclaimer – at the time I wrote this I didn’t realize how similar it was to Eno’s analysis. His piece goes into more detail and you should definitely read it.
The general premise: I want to find players who are being more patient than last year, but are also making contact at a higher rate. I also track changes in hard hit percentage, but admit that I don’t focus on this nearly as much. I plan to start incorporating exit velocity and launch angle, but have not been able to at this point. This is far from a full proof method or some statistical wizardry, but it’s a quick sniff test. Given that swing% becomes reliable around 50 PAs, and contact rate around 100 PAs, I would put a little more weight on those numbers at this time. I use this to help me bid in the early season Ottoneu FA auctions, or to help target players in trades. The last thing I want to do is waste precious dollars or trade assets on what is likely to be a mirage. (This is probably more important in Ottoneu than other formats where cap penalties can hamstring you if you aren’t careful). Anyways, here’s the list of all players swinging less, making more contact, and hitting the ball with a higher hard hit frequency in 2016. Read the rest of this entry »
In this episode of OttoGraphs, Tom, Trey, and Justin discuss the Standings Dashboard, a tool that helps you analyze your team’s performance and compare it to the league. Later, we talk about how to handle a hot or cold start from your team, and our strategies for buying and selling in April.
Here’s a link to the standings dashboard. Save the file to your own google drive, then open it up, enter your league number and check out how your team stacks up against your competitors! Right now the standings dashboard only works for Fangraphs Points leagues, the most common format – we’ll be sure to let everyone know when we have an upgraded version that works for SABR points as well.
Editor’s note: We’ve gotten some good feedback about the audio quality, and I hope it’s been getting noticeably better the past couple episodes as we improve our on-air and editing skills. Thanks for bearing with us as we work to get better (and sorry in advance for a little audio hiccup in this episode)! Feel free to continue letting us know how we’re doing, and to comment with any other 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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This post requires some “class participation”, so if you’re reading along I would really appreciate you weighing in on what has become a highly active debate within Ottoneu leagues. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, the concept of ambiguous fantasy league rules applies to all, and today I’m looking for potential (creative) solutions on how to enforce the following rule:
Rule 1a: Each team should maintain at all times a roster of 22 major-league players that can fill out a starting lineup. The remaining 18 roster spots can be used for reserves, consisting of both major and minor leaguers.
In this episode of OttoGraphs, we discuss some common questions new owners have early in the season, including lineup strategies and how to value free agents in 48-hour auctions. We also talk about some notable performances from the past two weeks, and what they mean for ottoneu owners, before finishing up with a quick guessing game about some of 2016’s worst performers to this point.
Feel free 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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The season is only a little over two weeks old, and all the rote small sample size caveats apply, but some hitter performances in the early going have been enough to move the needle when looking at rest of season projections. I’m specifically going to be looking only at hitters in this article, mostly because rest of season projections aren’t quite as quick to adapt to changes in talent for pitchers. I’m also going to be presenting this information through the lens of ottoneu Fangraphs points leagues, which utilize linear weights scoring.
In this episode of OttoGraphs, Tom and Trey interview Niv Shah, the creator of Ottoneu.
We discuss a wide variety of topics, including, but not limited to:
If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out Episode 5 of OttoGraphs as well, in which we’ve re-released an older interview with Niv from about a year ago. Joe and Trey covered some of the same topics that we’ve discussed in this episode, and it’s really fascinating to see how much Ottoneu has changed over the course of just one year.
Feel free 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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