Ottoneu Arbitration Technique #3: The Simplest Approach

Lucas Kelly has offered two interesting Ottoneu arbitration techniques already this week, and I want to hit you with a third before the weekend. This technique isn’t my favorite – it isn’t the most strategic or most impactful – but sometimes you just can’t do everything you want to do. You don’t have time to identify player values and figure out who has the most surplus. You don’t want to compare salaries to average salaries. Or you just got caught up in non-fantasy-baseball-life and time ran out. When that happens, this approach can be a lifesaver.

This image shows the top of the team arbitration page for negative EV, the team managed by Ottoneu creator Niv Shah in league 1, the original Ottoneu league. There is nothing particularly special about this team (I mean, it is a good team that finished second this year and recently won a title, but nothing beyond that), but it is a perfectly cromulent team to use as an example.

At the very top, you see the allocations I have made (none) and then you see a roster, default sorted by current salary (and cut off here after 7.5 players). Note, if you will, that I said default sorted. That is because you can re-sort this table! By clicking the headers, you can sort by Name, Original Salary, Other Adjustments, and New Salary, all of which can be useful. Maybe you are looking to see if this team has Corbin Carroll and sorting by name helps. Maybe you just want to find his cheapest players, so you sort by Salary ascending.

But today, I want you to look at that “Other Adjustments” column. That column represents all allocations made by other teams in your league to that team. Here is that same team sorted by Other Adjustments.

Now instead of seeing his most expensive players, I see that other teams have already allocated $5 each to Bryce Harper and Royce Lewis, $3 to George Kirby and $1 to Gerrit Cole. Only five teams have completed their allocations in this league, so by the end of the arbitration period, this list will either be longer or have bigger numbers.

But the important thing is by simply going to the arb page and sorting by “Other Adjustments” I now have a very easy, no-research method for identify arbitration targets. And I can now, if I so choose, just pile on. Personally, I think Cole at $45 in 4×4 is already a decent price, but Kirby feels cheap and $39 isn’t enough for Harper, so I’ll probably slap a dollar on each of them, and maybe a second on Kirby because why not?

Isn’t that pretty thin logic? Is there a much better target lower down the page and I am missing them completely? These are great questions and the answers are “Yes,” and “Maybe.”

But the beauty of this method is that it is simple and quick. And sometimes what you need is simple and quick.

Again, I am not recommending you prioritize this method over any others. I certainly wouldn’t. I probably won’t use this technique myself. But if it is pushing to mid-November and you haven’t done arb and life won’t let you invest much time, this technique is infinitely better than not doing arbitration at all.