Examining Some Close Ottoneu Races

Five days. That’s all that separates a small subset of ottoneu owners and a championship. As these final days play out, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the closest races across ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues as of this morning using the same standings pull that I run when creating the power rankings.

Closest two team races

These are the leagues with the smallest difference between first and second place as of this morning (across all FGPTS leagues the first place team has an average lead of 639 points).

The league with the smallest gap between first and second place is League 160, with a minuscule 3.5 points separating the top two squads.

lg160

As with most of these races, the winner will likely be determined by a combination of small sample size luck and the ability to maximize IP over the soft cap. In this case Old New New York Mets has IP in hand over Arctic Kiwis, but the Kiwis might be better set up to maximize the amount they could exceep the 1,500 soft IP cap.

Our next league is League 683, with only 9.8 points separating first place and second place.

lg683

It’s a shame that In Pain, Call Shane is only at 1,268 IP, since even 100 IP of below replacement starting pitching would give them a comfortable lead heading into the final weekend. As it is this likely comes down to whoever squeezes a better performance out of their lineup and pitchers over these five days.

The league with the third closest race between first and second place is League 40, with a 10.6 margin.

lg40

The Montreal Expos are looking to win back-to-back titles, while The Summer of George is looking to keep their Bizarro-Giants even year streak alive after winning the league in 2012 and 2014.

Closest three team races

First, a quick note- across all FGPTS leagues the average gap between first place and third place is 1,222 points. These leagues all feature three teams within 100 points of each other, which makes for an exciting multi-team finish.

The league with the smallest difference between first place and third place is League 693, with only 46.5 points separating them.

lg693

It’s probably not a surprise that we’ve had a couple first year leagues with exceptionally close races, as having all twelve teams start at square one typically makes for a more even and competitive playing field. Sir Mix-a-Lot’s House Party needs to pick their spot to go over the IP cap, and hope that they can squeeze out enough extra IP to offset the 28 IP that Notorious PAPI has in hand.

The league with the second closest three team race is actually one mentioned above, League 160 has only 66.7 points separating first and third.

lg160

I did Sale Price a disservice not mentioning them when discussing this league in the two team race section, but that was intentional as I wanted to save it for now. This is another case where Sale Price has the disadvantage of fewer IP to throw to get to the cap, but possibly the advantage of lining up their SP over one of the last few days to go over the soft cap (are you sensing a theme yet??).

The league with the third closest three team race is League 435 with an 85.9 point gap.

lg435

You see that team highlighted in green? Yeah, that’s my team. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to keep up with IP and that mismanagement is going to cost me a chance of being in the mix in this league. I’ll Never Let Yu Go is looking to repeat as champion, while Be Here Now and The Bryce Is Right are gunning for their first title in this third year league.

Bonus Four Team Race

There is only one FGPTS league with first and fourth place separated by fewer than 300 points, and that is League 171 which incredibly has only 248 points separating the top four teams.

lg171

It won’t be easy for The Fosse Scream to leap from fourth to first, but I think this is the only FGPTS league where four teams could still conceivably win the title. It looks like all four owners have done an admirable job of maximizing their games and innings. The California Sierras are trying to win their third title in this league, but each of the other three teams would be first time champions.

So a challenge to the commenters- who do you think pulls it out and wins the title in each of these six leagues?

 

 

 





Justin is a life long Cubs fan who has been playing fantasy baseball for 20+ years, and an ottoneu addict since 2012. Follow him on Twitter @justinvibber.

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Arctic_Kiwis
7 years ago

A couple of other notes to mention about #160: Adam (Mets) took over one of the crappiest teams available & has almost won a title. Anthony (Sale Price) has hauled in 250 of a 300 point lead in a week or two.

Whereas I’m totally choking, starting Boyd, Cobb and Bartolo in the past few days (all -ve points)