Ottoneu Arbitration: First Pass
The arbitration season of ottoneu is upon us and will last through November 14. Often, the best way to teach is via example. Today I’m going to provide my list of bids and the thought process behind a few notable selections. In some cases, I’ll discuss non-selections as well. Remember, these picks can be changed at any time and aren’t finalized until the conclusion of the arbitration season.
FanGraphs Staff Two is a 12 team points league. Owners get $25 to allocate across their 11 rivals with a maximum bid of $3 per team. So far, half of our league has submitted bids. A total of 56 players have drawn fire, 21 of those from me. I was the first owner to select allocations and have not revised my picks since other owners spent their shekels. Below is the complete list of my allocations.
I chose to spread the pain, by making $1 bids to 18 players. That should leave my allocations in circulation for a long time. I tend to agree with fellow ottoneu writer and league rival Chad Young about prospects – don’t bid on them. I did make an exception for Jorge Soler who I believe to be a special case. As they say, all rules are made to be broken, especially rules of thumb (nobody says that latter part).
I make frequent trades, which is a reason why I’ve consciously targeted first basemen. My roster contains Paul Goldschmidt, Edwin Encarnacion, Steve Pearce, Adam Lind, and Justin Morneau. It’s unlikely that I’ll trade for a first baseman next season. As such, I won’t inadvertently hurt myself with my bidding.
My $3 bid to Jose Abreu has more to do with the roster in question than a desire to pile on to Abreu. Sure, his $15 price tag deserves correction, but he’s also the only player outside of a $47 Andrew McCutchen I considered targeting. And if I have my way, I’d like to acquire McCutchen via trade this offseason.
Hunter Pence’s owner has several players I’d like to acquire – most notably Chris Sale. If I see his $28 price tag bid past bargain territory, I’ll probably chop up my allocation to Pence. He’s one of the older guys I’ve allocated to, so I don’t intend to keep both dollars directed at him.
Chad’s $19 Rizzo isn’t a rousing bargain, but I covet several lower priced players like J.D. Martinez and Devin Mesoraco. I don’t want to step on my own toes. In others like Corey Dickerson, I’m not confident they’ll produce at the same level in 2015. Even if Chad trades Rizzo, I know somebody will keep the Cubs slugger. It won’t be me.
In my estimation, the most notable player I didn’t bid on is a $7 Jonathan Lucroy. He’s clearly a massive bargain as a frequently played catcher. My team currently has just Evan Gattis at catcher, so I need to add some depth. Lucroy is another target of mine, hence I abstained from bidding on him.
In the case of all these targets, I’ll be attempting to open negotiations in the next couple weeks. If I don’t think a deal is possible, I’ll probably re-allocate to some my trade targets. Ideally, I wouldn’t be revealing my intentions so clearly on a website they all read, so I’ll just have to hope there is no counter-subterfuge.
Alternatively, I could have shown an early bid on my trade targets as a means of protecting them from other bids. Theoretically, if I $3-bid Lucroy, my rivals should pay more attention to other players on that roster. I can then remove my bid at the last moment. Another consideration to keep in mind: my roster has about $200 available to spend. If a $3 bid on McCutchen changes his owners disposition, it might reduce his acquisition cost by more than the value of $3 per season. I don’t need to worry about dollars and cents, but most of my rivals do.
In case you’re curious, here is what’s been sent my way. We sort of talked my rivals decision in the fantasy puzzle published a couple weeks ago.
I’m a bit surprised Kluber’s been heavily targeted. I thought he’d get through the whole process with just $1 or $2 attached. He’ll now cost the same as Jon Lester and the bidding could continue. Meanwhile, my $4 George Springer is completely untouched. I think if he was on just about any other roster in this league, he’d be a primary focus.
You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam
Just curious as to why you consider Jorge Soler an exception.
If I understand the workings correctly, even if Soler has a breakout year, you can always “make up” for his value by allocating more money to him next year.
It just seems the worst case scenario is the other owner gets Soler extra cheap for one year. The only exception I could see is that the owner has a roster of players that will likely only be kept for another couple years at most.
For one, I’m convinced Soler is at least a $10 player. For two, his owner has very little worthy of a bid. Aside from Nolan Arenado, his team is entirely prospects.
That is what I suspected. If there is not a minimum you need to spend on a team, wouldn’t the $1 be better used elsewhere?
You are required to spend at least $1 on every team.
Thanks.
Yea, it’s a minimum $1, maximum $3 and you have $25 total to allocate to 11 rosters ($2.27 per team). So you are quite restricted in the pain you can inflict to any one individual.
I don’t like the idea of choosing not to allocate to players you hope to acquire in a trade. You would need to have a compelling reason to believe that a certain owner is interested in trading a certain player. I can dream of acquiring a rival’s $7 Jonathan Lucroy, but that doesn’t mean it is going to happen.
Even if I wanted to trade for Lucroy, the difference between $7 Lucroy and $10 Lucroy isn’t that significant. If anything, it would make the opposing manager more likely to deal him.
The idea makes sense, though, when we’re talking about prospects you like who either far away from the majors (ex: $2 Tyler Kolek, $4 Lucas Giolito) or mediocre players you expect to have a bounce back season (ex: $6 Jed Lowrie, $7 Wilson Ramos). In all four cases, I don’t think those players would attract many arbitration dollars anyway.
A team should allocate based on the players who are in most need of correction. Taking possible trades into consideration seems like it could lead to less than optimal decision making.
If I were changing my overall allocations to the team, then I would agree with the sentiment. As long as I’m putting dollars on long term assets, it doesn’t matter where they go. Part of not allocating to a Lucroy is seeing what 10 other owners do with their money. I still expect him to draw ~$10 of bids even without mine.
Optimal decision making isn’t important during the initial allocations. There are still revisions to be made.
Optimal decision making is extremely important during the initial allocations.
Though you expect other people to increase Lucroy’s salary, what if that doesn’t happen? What if everyone thinks the other teams will allocate to Lucroy but no one does. Aside from lobbying on the message boards or messaging owners, you have no influence over what other teams decide to do.
If everyone allocates based on the allocations they already see, there is a much better chance that the players who need to be increased actually get increased.
If Brad doesn’t see the allocations on Lucroy he’s expecting, I think he’s suggesting he’ll move some of his allocations to Lucroy. You’re free to change your allocations as much as you want until the deadline.
I don’t (unfortunately) play ottoneu, but I also don’t agree with not spending money on players you’d like to acquire, especially if they are massive bargains. The cost of a $7 Lucroy (or any other massive bargain) would be high enough that getting him would mean giving up a ton for him. And at $7, the owner might not be willing to deal him at all. By pushing the cost up a little to where he is not quite such a fantastic bargain, the owner will probably be more willing to deal him and accept less talent in return.
Of course, another factor here is what type of financial situation each team is in as well. It’s possible he can’t afford to take on anything more than $7 for Lucroy.
I disagree with the idea of spreading out arbitration allocations. The cluster method is more effective.
The idea of arbitration “attrition” sounds good in theory, but it is flawed. Yearly Ottoneu roster turnover is fairly high with trades, cuts and busts and retirements factored in. Allocating $1 to three players may give you a better chance of seeing your money 3-4 years down the road, but at what cost?
The tradeoff is that your money has no immediate impact. If I like a player at $X price, having to pay $X+1 to keep him is a no-brainer. It’s a little different when it changes to $X+3. A larger jump in a player’s salary fundamentally changes the nature of that asset. The effect is even greater when multiple owners join in. An asset at $X+9 makes more of an immediate impact on a roster when compared to nine $X+1 assets.
Forcing a manager to cut an $X+9 asset this year affects more than just the one manager’s roster. Using $30 Jose Altuve as an example, say three managers combine to increase his value to $39. Say the Altuve owner makes a cut. That owner is now a buyer and will likely bid on other top second basemen during the auction, which will inflate the cost of other second basemen/middle infielders in the player pool.
Clustering allocations is the best way to get the most out of your money.
About a third of my allocations were $2 and two-thirds were $1 bids, so my mindset matches fairly closely with Brad’s.
First, adding $1 to a player is not painless. If your team takes on $30 in bids, but they are spread out such that you still plan to keep the players you would have kept before arbitration, then that’s $30 less to spend in the draft, which would be one really good player or a couple decent ones. My overall strategy, and the one Brad is touting, is to target allocations to decrease the amount of money the other teams have to spend going forward.
The alternate strategy, which you’re mentioning, is bidding a player past the keeper point and forcing other owners to cut players they otherwise would have kept. The owner can just buy the player back at a cheaper price in the draft. In the Altuve example, the owner can just buy him back in the draft for $30 or $35, and keep the difference. I’d rather have him eat three dollars spread out across three players than be able to get his player back and negate my allocation.
“An asset at $X+9 makes more of an immediate impact on a roster when compared to nine $X+1 assets.”
I don’t agree with this mathematically. Assuming no players are traded, the effect is identical.
There are time – like the cheap Jose Abreu – where a cluster of bids can change a player from an elite keeper to a decent keeper. Otherwise, I don’t want to cluster my bids unless I’m trying to coax a cut. I like that strategy more than some, but it’s still a rare ploy for me. Currently, I haven’t identified ANY players I want cut.
Additionally, in the initial allocation, spreading funds signals to other owners which players you think have value. It draws attention to them, which might give me the freedom to reallocate in another, bitchier way.
I think Brad hit on this a bit, and Tom did as well, but you are really allocating to a TEAM more than a player. If you cluster your allocations on that Altuve, like you mention, and he gets cut, at least $1 you allocated was literally wasted, perhaps more. Maybe that owner was NEVER keeping a $30 Altuve? In that case, you have basically given that owner a $9 gift – they get to duck $9 in arbitration money, out of a max of $33.
At the end of the day, a team goes into the auction with $X to spend and Y spots to fill – your goal with allocations should be to minimize X/Y and nothing more. Allocating in bunches doesn’t help that.
One team in my league has a $14 Lucroy, $11 Puig, $5 Mesoraco, and $4 Arrieta. A couple teams chose instead to allocate their arbitration dollars towards: a $53 Giancarlo, $6 Gregory Polanco, and $5 Julio Urias. Sigh.
Perhaps link Chad’s article about prospect bids in the message board 🙂
I don’t really have a complaint with a bid towards Stanton. I like forcing tough decisions with elite players, even if my money might end up wasted. You can’t force a mistake unless you force a decision. I’d probably go for the layup and target the underpriced guys, but a Stanton bid is at least defensible (Polanco and Urias are not).
$5 Urias is already overpriced…