Another week and another innovation at ottoneu headquarters. Now you can browse any ottoneu league you like, right here. A few recommendations include the FanGraphs Staff League, the original ottoneu league, Justin Merry’s league (for you linear weights players, since he’s the scoring system creator and all), and, yes, the Expert’s League. Use the feature to learn a little more about what you should do in your league.

For example. A little ride over to the commissioner’s team page in the Expert’s League can show you what our group of prognosticators decided Brian McCann was worth ($33). Or how many minor leaguers a seasoned ottoneu player owns (zero in this case). Lastly, since Commissioner Chad Young has his Amateur Hour team in seventh place, it can show you what another ottoneu team trying to decide whether to buy or sell looks like.

It’s an interesting team, you might find when you’re looking at his set lineups page. He’s got J.P. Arencibia and Brian McCann, two very good young catchers, both playing right now. And yet he only has 13 games left to play at the position. Is McCann going to be worth $35 next year? Will someone want Arencibia? This is a clear position of surplus for Young.

His team is not that old, though. Sure, he has Vladimir Guerrero ready to head to the bench for good, and of course no minor leaguers, but he also boasts Eric Hosmer, Hunter Pence, Domonic Brown and Mike Moustakas as position players. But the Vlad injury forces him to play Rajai Davis in the outfield. He could use an outfielder if he’s going to go for it this year.

His pitching is strong. Roy Halladay, Jered Weaver, Jeremy Hellickson, Shaun Marcum and Jair Jurrjens are the headliners, but Julio Teheran and Ryan Dempster make for a good bench. If he goes for it, a $10 Marcum might have great trade value without requiring him to sell his top pitching prospect. If he calls it quits on the year, a $43 Roy Halladay may not be keepable, as much of a machine as the Doc is.

The old adage is that “Nobody cares about your fantasy team.” The irony is that you can learn a lot from looking at other people’s fantasy teams. And before we get too up in arms about Chad’s team, we should go softly. He’s about to return from his honeymoon to discover that Guerrero broke his hand. As if returning from a honeymoon wasn’t difficult enough.

Oh, and the offer still stands! Fill an ottoneu league now, and the entire league is free. Contact ottoneu founder Niv Shah if that sounds interesting to you (on twitter or at help @ ottoneu.com).

It’s been awhile since we’ve done one of these. Let’s get right to it and take a look at some shortstop performances over the past two weeks.

Risers:

Hanley Ramirez

He’s actually steadily improved every month, but even his improvements were still far less than we’ve come to expect from Ramirez. His wOBA by month are .245, .312, .324, .516. Needless to say, July has been pretty kind to him. In his 61 plate appearances this month he’s hitting .392/.492/.706 with 4 HR, 17 RBI, and 7 K to 10 BB. The four home runs tie his high for a month this year and the 17 RBI are already eight more than he had back in April. It’s only been 61 plate appearances but it looks like Ramirez may finally be turning the corner we’ve all been waiting for. For all of us who have stuck by him this entire season I sure hope that’s the case.

Jeff Keppinger

His month of June was actually pretty amazing. He hit .297 in 105 plate appearances, but only managed a .681 OPS. He was the definition of an empty batting average. So far his July is pretty amazing as well. In his 42 plate appearances he has a 0.0% walk rate and 0.0% strikeout rate. Somehow he’s been able to run into two homers and banged out three doubles, giving him one less extra base hit than he had in June. He’s never hit for much power over his career, but has been able to maintain a decent enough average to retain value in deeper mixed or NL only leagues. He’s currently hitting .314 and is available in 93% of Yahoo! leagues.

Fallers

Starlin Castro

When Castro isn’t hitting for average he provides very little to your lineup. He doesn’t hit for any power and doesn’t walk enough to pick up any steals. This month he’s hit just .236 with zero steals and zero home runs. His strikeout rate has ballooned to 21.4% in 56 plate appearances. For someone that is owned in 91% of leagues you need better production out of him. If someone like Keppinger is available in your league you may be better off adding him until Castro can get back to his normal self.

Alexei Ramirez

They’re having shortstop issues on the south side of Chicago as well. Ramirez has been falling since June, putting up a .265/.311/.343 triple slash line with 1 HR and 11 RBI that month. That was after a hot May in which he posted a .389 wOBA. Unfortunately for him, he seems to have carried over the woes of June into July. He’s hitting .217 in the month, and while he does have two home runs his OBP is a horrible .265. The worst part about his season has been the lack of stolen bases. Ramirez had averaged 13 in his first three seasons but has only three so far, meaning he’s unlikely to reach double digits which severely damages his fantasy worth.

This week, we’ll cover two Padres and a Dodger. In other words, those of you in NL West-only leagues are in luck.

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The All-Star break is as good a time as any to update our American League Outfielder Rankings. (Note: That means outfielders who play only in the AL, so please don’t flood the comments with oblivious flabbergastery over the complete and utter disrespect for not including Jay Bruce. For that, go here.) Given the timing, let’s go ahead and call this our second-half ranks. While performances to date do matter, the intent here is to, as Doc Brown might say: “Get a clear perception of humanity (i.e., fantasy performance). Where we’ve been (April, May, June), where we’re going (July, August, September), the pitfalls (Carl Crawford), the possibilities (Curtis Granderson), the perils (Shin-Soo Choo) and the promise (Mike Trout). Perhaps even an answer to that universal question: Where is [insert name here] ranked?”

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Ug. In the FanGraphs home league on ottoneu, the fantasy guy in the room has been embarrassed. It’s a Perm needs to open up its doors and sell, sell, sell. I hang my head in shame. My team of old dudes that take walks didn’t take enough of them and proved to be too old.

Maybe you guys can help me spot my most sellable veterans. So far the sharks are circling for Jonathan Papelbon, mostly. He’s not real old, but I have to think about possible returns too. Help me out here. And if you do, I’ll give you a tip on a good deal.

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By now you’ve read about our RotoGraphs deep-league Pick Six-like draft. For a refresher, here’s Mr. Bender’s rundown of the process and his draft strategy, as well as the method to the madness behind Mr. Sarris’ selections, and if you’re looking for the full draft recap, check Mr. Zimmerman’s post. Now allow me to explain my choices, starting with No. 2 overall.

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Back on April 21st, I wrote a Kicking Rocks piece entitled, “Don’t Chase the Ace” in which I lamented going pitching heavy in my draft.  I was disgruntled with the fact that my offense was anemic while I continued to watch my ratios explode with each and every start from my supposed stable of high quality aces.  While there were several of you that felt my pain, there were also many of you that criticized me for my concerns so early on in the season.  I was then asked to re-visit this 3 months into the season, so as we get ready to head into the All Star Break, here we go… Read the rest of this entry »

Late Wednesday night, the Mariners called up Kyle Seager. In a related story, this edition of Mining the Minors got much more interesting just before midnight.

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Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve written two pretty similar pieces on third basemen. One of which has made me look like a genius — the other has made me look like a total idiot. That’s one of the main issues with making predictions here on RotoGraphs. You try to come to the best conclusions based on stats, player history, etc. — but sometimes you still end up with egg on your face. Hindsight being what it is, I would like to look back at my methods in each instance and try to determine where I went wrong and what aspects of the process I had correct. I think this exercise will help the readers understand my methods and will let me know the areas where I can improve in the future.
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Another top-notch prospect made his long-awaited debut this week. No point in keeping you from getting better acquainted.

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