Ottoneu arbitration begins today, and it is one of the highlights of the fantasy season. Much has been written about the various arbitration (usually via allocation) strategies available to owners over the past few winters, but if you’re entering your very first Ottoneu off season, or just researching how the game works before joining a new league, here is the official breakdown of how arbitration works:
In the interest of maintaining competitive balance, there are two distinct arbitration options:
Allocations
The allocation system gives a $25 budget to each team in the league.
The team must allocate this budget towards players on other teams.
Each team must allocate at least one dollar to every other team, and no team can allocate more than $3 to any other team.
At the end of the allocation period, all players have their salary increased by the amount allocated towards them.
Allocations take place after the initial offseason salary increase, so any allocations will be in addition to the $1 or $2 increase each player gets at the end of the season.
If a team does not allocate at least one dollar to every other team, none of their allocations will count and it will be as if they did not participate at all.
If a team does not allocate all $25, none of their allocations will count and it will be as if they did not participate at all.
Vote Off
The vote-off system gives each team in the league the ability to vote on a player on each other team.
The player that receives the most votes collectively on each team is turned into a restricted free agent that can be bid on by other teams during the auction draft.
In the case of a tie, the standings of all the relevant voting teams is examined. Whichever player has the team with the worst standings voting for them is the restricted free agent.
The team they were voted off from will get an automatic $5 discount towards that player, so if they get the player back, they will get the player for $5 under what they bid.
Players who have been voted into restricted free agency cannot be traded.
Players who have been voted into restricted free agency will not appear as free agents on the site.
The majority of Ottoneu leagues now use the Allocation system referenced above since it is the most engaging and usually the most disruptive.
As arbitration kicks off, I’ve provided links to a few strategic arbitration resources below. However, taking it one step further this year, I’m releasing a list of players I expect will receive the most arbitration allocations across Ottoneu leagues. Since player salaries are league-dependent, I’ve used average current salaries across all FGPTS leagues to estimate the attractiveness of these players and their likelihood to be hit with allocations from your league owners. As a practical application of the list, you could say I see a $31 Anthony Rendon as more valuable than an $8 Marcus Semien, for example. In this case, I think you should apply more of your allocations to Rendon instead of Semien.
If you own these players for salaries below the average salary listed, for example, expect their chances of receiving allocations to increase, moving them up the list compared to others. Roto values (particulary 5 x 5) would be reflected differently, and I would recommend posting those specific questions to the community here.
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