All 13 Tampa Bay Rays fans in attendance last night almost got a little too much excitement with their “closer” once again. Romo and Colome were both warming in the bullpen, up by three runs, as the Rangers threatened with two on, two out in the bottom of the eighth.
In November I used the Prospect Scorecard to take an early look at the top 100 fantasy prospects for both Roto leagues and Ottoneu’s wOBA-heavy FanGraphs Points leagues. In February I also added a quick fantasy spin on Eric and Kiley’s great preseason work ranking the top 100 prospects in baseball. Later this summer (July) I’ll update the top 100 for fantasy purposes, but today I want to briefly check in on a number of prospects that I think are rising (⬆) or falling (⬇) in value for various reasons in 2018.
As we enter the weekend, the Milwaukee bullpen continues to be the most volatile situation to speculate for saves. The word from the Brewers today regarding Corey Knebel was unfortunately bad news. According to the Milwaukee manager, Craig Counsell, Knebel will miss “a minimum of six weeks” with his left hamstring strain. For those who missed the injury, it was a lot worse than it sounds. Knebel fell to the ground after delivering a pitch in the 9th inning down 6 to 0 in Thursday night’s game against the Cubs.
One of the great things about Ottoneu is the high level of engagement by the growing community of owners. Few topics get the masses talking more than crowd-sourcing feedback on recent league trades, so today I want to highlight a few of the more interesting trades I’ve seen recently to get a pulse on how some player values are already shifting early this season.
As a quick reminder, Ottoneu is a keeper system by design that shifts the balance just short of traditional dynasty leagues, and offers a variety of scoring systems (including H2H this year).
Few players have seen their value shift as wildly as Shohei Ohtani over the past few weeks. What he’s managed to do to start the season with both the bat (1.286 OPS) and off the mound (97.8 mph fastball) has at least verified that he’s as talented as the world thought he was, but the fact that he now looks less raw than he did just a few weeks ago in spring training tells you everything you need to know about the upward trajectory of his value in fantasy baseball leagues. If you don’t happen to own Ohtani already, he’s going to be one of the hardest players in the game to acquire over the next 30 days. He’s young, exciting, and just for the cool factor of clicking between batting and pitching stats on his FanGraphs page makes him the hottest commodity in the game right now, especially if you have the flexibility of slotting him into your daily lineup or your rotation like Ottoneu provides.
We’re already four games into the season! We know that fastball velocity stabilizes quite quickly and while it’s too early to all out panic about anything, it’s far more acceptable to panic, or get excited, about a pitcher’s velocity than anything else. Obviously, not every pitcher has thrown a pitch this season yet, and stats are only updated through Saturday’s games as I type this. So this obviously isn’t a comprehensive comparison, but we’ll keep rolling out updates.
Only a few games into the season and the relief pitcher body count has already started to mount. No, none of your fantasy arms died tonight but injuries to some top rated arms seems almost unavoidable in today’s game. Earlier today the Phillies placed Pat Neshek on the 10-Day disabled list with what the Phillies are calling “Right Shoulder Strain”. This only a day after Philadelphia placed late inning reviver Tommy Hunter on the 10-Day DL as well. Neither of those two were lined directly up for save opportunities but it leaves Hector Neris on a closer island all by himself with a somewhat secure ninth inning role, even after his implosion just a night ago.
Last week I wrote about a few lesser known opportunities within Ottoneu to maximize salary cap space, which is important to understand before your fantasy season begins. However, by the time you read this post the fantasy season will have already begun, so I want to focus your attention today on strategies that will help you in-season as you attempt to squeeze every bit of value out of your team during what is sure to be a long but very fun Ottoneu season.
Today, I’ve prepared for you a fantasy roster served two ways. The first is a reduction of ottoneu with a head-to-head sauce. For the second, I took advantage of the manager’s special on expiring meats to plate a premium meal on a budget. Enjoy.
Ottoneu auction leagues are drafting furiously to finalize rosters prior to the start of the regular season. Earlier this week Justin touched on the best way to build out a roster. Head-to-head is also coming to Ottoneu in 2018. The Ottoneu community is buzzing with prospect junkies and interested owners looking to join new leagues.
Needless to say, Ottoneu is now in full swing, so if you’re still on the fence about trying out the game this year, now is the perfect time to jump in with both feet. With so much activity in March, most of our Ottoneu content is geared toward helping new owners learn the basics of the game. However, today I want to detour and offer a few tricks of the trade that veteran owners have figured out over time that might benefit those who are trying to take their Ottoneu game to the next level this season.
Trading for players you intend to cut…for cap space.
No matter how good your pre-auction plan, it’s not all that uncommon to exit an Ottoneu draft with less cash that you had hoped to save for future transactions. While a good rule of thumb is to keep about $10 in cap space, it’s easier said than done when some of the better bargains find their way into your hands at the end of a long draft night. What do you do when you’re up against a tight salary cap to start the season?
This past weekend I was again honored to be asked to participate in the 15-team Tout Wars auction held bright and early on Saturday morning at Staten Island’s Richmond County Ballpark. After a short ferry ride, I caught up with old friends and then auction began. Like last year, it rolled at a fast pace and ended in about four hours later. While my final team’s roster doesn’t resemble any team I’ve previously rostered, it has a nice chance to compete.
Prep
The biggest decision I made when constructing this team happened months ago when I looked back at my 2017 fantasy teams and found my pitching way outperforming my hitting.
To help offset this final imbalance, I decided to go with a 70%/30% hitter/pitcher split. Over the past few seasons, this league’s split has been 67.8%/32.2%. The difference works out to a $6 difference. I am not married to reaching this exact mix at the auction but it gives me a general guideline to follow. It had a side effect I didn’t fully understand but the anomaly ended up driving my auction.
