Final Standings: Chronicles of ottoneu

The inaugural season of ottoneu on FanGraphs is over. Let’s take a look at the final standings, dissect the winning moves, and congratulate the winners!

FanGraphs Staff League
Congratulations to Jesse Wolfersberger for winning the first edition of the FanGraphs Staff league. I blame linear weights points (and my infamiliarity with them) for my poor showing, but Jesse didn’t have a problem with it at all. It came down to five points on the last day, and one hit is worth 5.6 points. A photo finish!

Wolfersberger had an obvious value star in a $10 Jacoby Ellsbury. He’ll probably lose him to arbitration, especially since he doesn’t have any other obvious targets. Mostly, his team managed to avoid the completely useless star player. $44 Mark Teixeira might not have returned all that value, but he did play most of the year and only gave his owners 50 points less than he did in 2010. You could say the same of his $27 Jayson Werth — crappy but not completely devoid of value. He still managed 715 points. Brandon Morrow was terrible in regular leagues, but linear weights uses the FIP inputs, and Morrow’s 3.64 FIP was fine.

There’s your narrative: If many of your top acquisitions are going to have bad years, make sure they do it in a way that doesn’t kill their FIP or wOBA too badly. That’s why guys that walk are obvious linear weights boons — they’ll always give you some value even when they aren’t doing well. Who knows why that didn’t work for my It’s a Perm squad ($26 Geovany Soto and $31 Dan Uggla, I’m looking in your direction).

FanGraphs Experts League
Here is the full list of competitors, and the draft results. A long battle saw Neil FitzGerald from BaseballHQ keep his lead despite a challenge from Jeff Erickson and Peter Schoenke of RotoWire. It was another photo finish actually. In fact, on September 25th, Schoenke, FitzGerald and Tufts professor Andy Andres (Dyersville Nine) were within two points of each other. The next day, the Earl Webb team put three points between it and the other two teams and never looked back.

Two of the top four teams (save Earl Webb) made acquisitions for the stretch run. Dyersville Nine bought $21 Neftali Feliz, $2 Kyle Farnsworth, and a $1 Jason Bourgeois from our own Chad Young for Michael Pineda ($15), Cory Luebke ($1) and Trayvon Robinson ($1). I bought Vladimir Guerrero ($17) and Ichiro Suzuki ($23) for Kyle Blanks ($1), Jarred Cosart ($1) and Nick Swisher ($7) in a couple deals that didn’t really work out for me. At least I don’t have a ton of remorse about the players I gave up.

How did Earl Webb to it? Not by avoiding the big-ticket gaffe — His most expensive player (Alex Rodriguez at $42) did not provide him much more than a third of his price tag. B.J Upton was probably not worth $28, and Victor Martinez seems a stretch at $31. That’s three of his four most expensive players. Even at $36, though, Matt Kemp was a great buy. And he had plenty of values on his team as well. Josh Beckett ($5), Bartolo Colon ($1), Mark Trumbo ($1) and Jhonny Peralta ($1) all gave more to his team then they cost at auction.

His wrinkle may have been sneaky smart or unsustainable: Earl Webb has only Lorenzo Cain ($1) as a ‘prospect.’ Not worrying about minor league players allowed him to fill his roster with useful part-time players like Sean Rodriguez ($1), Johnny Damon ($2) and Ben Revere ($1). But what does it mean for the future of his franchise?