Is a $65 Mike Trout a keeper in ottoneu? What about a $59 Mike Trout? What if I told you that I kept a $65 Trout but decided not to inquire on a $59 Trout as a trade target. And that it had nothing to do with available cap space or team makeup?
It was all about scoring format. ottoneu comes in four flavors (two points systems, 4×4 and 5×5) and each has it’s own unique traits. But the reason to pass on that $59 Trout might surprise you.
(This is part one of the “Ottoneu 101” series)
Spring is almost here, which means pitchers and catchers (and fantasy drafts) are just around the corner. Today I’ll walk you through an Ottoneu player auction (thanks to the guys in League 100) so you can be fully prepared before your own league draft gets underway in the coming weeks.
Below is the Third Base installment of our 2016 Ottoneu FGpt rankings.
Previous Rankings: Catcher/First Base
In the context of Ottoneu, perhaps rankings are a misnomer, because you really want to know the dollar value each player is worth. We’ve included this information for our benefit. In all, these rankings should help to give you a spread of four dollar values for each player, as well as a comparison to average prices (post-arbitration, pre-cut deadline) within the Ottoneu FGpts universe. Each player’s Ottoneu eligibility (5GS, 10 appearances) is included as well, though players are ranked at their most valuable position. If you have questions on a specific ranking, or a question for a specific ranker, feel free to let us know in the comments.
Consider this your very early, subject to change, Ottoneu pricing cheat sheet.
Read the rest of this entry »
Below is the First Base installment of our 2016 Ottoneu FGpt rankings.
In the context of Ottoneu, perhaps rankings are a misnomer, because you really want to know the dollar value each player is worth. We’ve included this information for our benefit. In all, these rankings should help to give you a spread of four dollar values for each player, as well as a comparison to average prices (post-arbitration, pre-cut deadline) within the Ottoneu FGpts universe. Each player’s Ottoneu eligibility (5GS, 10 appearances) is included as well, though players are ranked at their most valuable position. If you have questions on a specific ranking, or a question for a specific ranker, feel free to let us know in the comments.
Consider this your very early, subject to change, Ottoneu pricing cheat sheet.
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s crunch time. Trades and keepers for all ottoneu league are due in just a little over two days. An offseason of reshaping your roster is about to be locked in place for all of 2016. Are you ready?
We’re starting to roll out Ottoneu FGpts rankings today. We will start with catcher and work our way through the rest of the positions by the time auction drafts are in full swing. In the context of Ottoneu, perhaps rankings are a misnomer, because you really want to know the dollar value each player is worth. We’ve included this information as well. In all, these rankings should help to give you a spread of four dollar values for each player, as well as a comparison to average prices (post-arbitration, pre-cut deadline) within the Ottoneu FGpts universe. Each player’s Ottoneu eligibility (5GS, 10 appearances) is included as well, though players are ranked at their most valuable position. If you have questions on a specific ranking, or a question for a specific ranker, feel free to let us know in the comments.
Consider this your very early, subject to change, Ottoneu pricing cheat sheet.
Read the rest of this entry »
Fantasy baseball is an inherently analytical game – you are trying to use a scarce resource (either dollars or draft picks) in a wiser manner than your competitors. And so it is no surprise that fantasy players have become big fans of the projection systems from ZiPS to Steamer to PECOTA and beyond. Just last week, Justin Vibber shared his ottoneu Surplus Calculator which uses Steamer projections to find expected values for MLB players.
In the ottoneu Slack community, the surplus calculator and other similar tools have become the primary manner of determining player value – if Steamer says a player will produce $30, that is the baseline. And this creates an opportunity to profit by ignoring projections.
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Hard to believe, but it’s almost February. Almost all the top free agents have signed. It’s almost prospect season, and it’s almost time for pitchers and catchers to report. All these things add up to a baseball season that is almost here.
Patience.
But patience is a luxury we don’t have these days in fantasy leagues like Ottoneu that have a keeper deadline (January 31st) fast approaching. Auction formats make player valuation even more complex, and now that it’s crunch time, tough decisions need to be made. How comfortable are you hanging onto that $20 Corey Dickerson while the risk of a possible trade out of COL remains a real possibility in February or March? Despite the power and the incoming fences, how does Giancarlo Stanton’s unavoidable injury history influence your decision to keep at $56? How much value, if any, has Zack Greinke really lost moving to Arizona? Is he a $35 starting pitcher? Everybody loves Kyle Schwarber as the next best thing (C and OF!), but where’s the line? $20? $25? $30?
Am I keeping too many players? This is a question I am constantly asking myself as the Ottoneu keeper deadline approaches. Typically, Ottoneu leagues keep over 200 players (around 230-240) but what is the optimal amount? Certainly it’s extremely league dependent, but is there a general way we can get an idea of how many players actually should be kept? First, we need to answer a couple questions.
Why does it matter if I keep too many players?
Ottoneu championships can be difficult to win. If you want to increase your odds in the offseason, the main way to do so is to acquire players who are underpaid via offseason trades. These surplus assets allow you to enter the auction with more flexibility, often allowing you to purchase more talent at market value than your rivals. However, trading for surplus assets is only half the battle. Throughout my 4 years playing Ottoneu, I have witnessed many teams trade for surplus talent only to “waste” the benefit they receive from these players by keeping overpaid or marginal players. The two often negate each other. We want to trade for underpaid players, but we also want to be conscious of the impact of keeping overpaid players.
Let’s say that you currently own Francisco Lindor at a $10 salary and you believe he is worth $15 (a $5 underpay). On the same team, you also own Salvador Perez at $8 and Brandon Phillips at $6 (both of whom you think are worth $3). Perez and Phillips combine to be overpaid by $8. This a simple example for convenience, but the net impact of owning these 3 players is to overpay the group by $3. Each non-surplus asset owned counteracts the surplus assets you have worked hard all offseason to acquire. Owning a $10 Lindor is fun, removing the benefit you receive from a $10 Lindor before the annual auction even occurs is far less fun.
How many players should be kept?
As mentioned last week, ottoneu is a deep fantasy game that comes in a variety of formats (5×5, 4×4, and two flavors of linear weights based total points), but one thing that all ottoneu leagues share is the $400 salary cap and keeper process. While ottoneu may not be a dynasty league in the literal sense, it does function as a very flexible auction keeper league, where the only limit on how many keepers a team can have is the need to stay under the salary cap and 40 man roster limits.
History of the Surplus Calculator
Even before I started playing ottoneu, there was a process I went through for every auction keeper league I was in. With every team in the league entering the auction with keepers that theoretically are worth more than their salary, I wanted a way to compare my keepers against my competition. In order to do that I would go through each team’s roster and determine the players I expected to be kept, and using dollar values I created for the league I could tally each team’s projected keeper salary and keeper value. Ranking teams by how much surplus (total keeper value less total keeper salaries) they had would allow me to identify who had the best selection of keepers, and therefore went into auction with the best chance to build a strong team.
As I played in more and more ottoneu leagues, I quickly realized that I needed a way to automate my keeper ranking process, and that automation is what led to the creation of the ottoneu Surplus Calculator. Ottoneu is uniquely suited to making this calculator easy for everyone to use, as ottoneu owners can go to their league page and download a rosters.csv file that includes their entire league rosters by team that includes salary info and Fangraphs IDs. Having that exported roster file means not having to manually assign players to teams, and makes tying the player values to the rosters a simple matter of a vlookup function.