Ottoneu Arbitration’s Final Day

The day after arbitration ends is one of my favorites of the off-season because it feels like everything can start. Salaries are locked, rosters are set, trading is open and we are off to the races for the next couple of months, before we pause again to prep for auctions.

But before we get to wake up to newly updated salaries tomorrow, we have to get through the final day of arbitration today. And that means there are things to do!

What you need to do today is something of a choose your own adventure:

Are you a league commissioner where not everyone has completed arbitration? Make sure to remind them. Do that now. Seriously, stop reading, go remind them. By the time this article publishes there will be about 13.5 hours until arbitration ends, which means if you are reading this right now you are wasting precious seconds. Go post and remind people.

Are you a league commissioner where at least one team is NOT going to get to arbitration? Ask for a proxy. If you are in the Ottoneu slack community, you can ask there. You can ping me or @ottoneu on Twitter and we can try to help. You can go to the Ottoneu Forums and ask there. But it’s good to get arb done for all teams, even if a team is missing a manager right now.

Are you a league commissioner and everyone in your league has completed arbitration? Throw a party! Buy some pizzas and a big “We Did It!” banner. Invite everyone over. But also, a quick “hey, last day to update your arbitration before everything locks” isn’t a bad idea.

Have you finished your arbitration? If so, I would go back and see how things landed, especially if you did your arbitration back in October. For vote off leagues, this is less important, but in allocation leagues, you want to be sure the economics haven’t changed such that you don’t love your allocations anymore. Maybe you put $2 on a $65 Aaron Judge, thinking he was well worth $70. But if five other managers did the same, he is now a $77 Aaron Judge. That might be fine, but that might mean you can go in and put those $2 on someone who seemed less deserving in October but is more deserving now.

Have you started your arbitration but not finished? Go finish! This is crucial because partial arbitration allocations are not processed. If you allocated $20 of your $25 and forget to cover the last $5, or if you allocated to some teams but not all, that is the same as allocating $0. The reason is to avoid imbalance. You don’t want a manager putting $3 on each of 8 teams, not finishing, and basically punishing those teams while letting the others off the hook.

Have you not done arbitration yet? Go do it! It’s important! It might not seem important, but when a team fails to complete arbitration, that impacts the league economy. If depresses prices on players (not on your team, only on the other teams) which therefore increases inflation. By not doing arbitration you are artificially deflating salaries on the 11 other teams in your league and –  because they have more to spend – you are increasing the cost of the players you pick up at auction. Plus, no one wants a manager in their league who skips important tasks. So go complete your arbitration.

And then get ready to start trading!