Ottoneu May Power Rankings
With another month of the baseball season gone, it’s time once again to present the ottoneu power rankings. Much of the history and methodology of these rankings was explained with last month’s post, so be sure to read that if you haven’t already.
Without further ado, the FanGraphs points league team rankings:

| LgNum | TeamName | Points | Pts/G | Pts/IP | pGP | pIp | PACE |
| 194 | The Murder Boners | 7,143.5 | 5.91 | 6.53 | 1,934 | 1,500 | 21,224 |
| 240 | Miguel’s Caballeros | 6,795.0 | 5.94 | 6.45 | 1,942 | 1,498 | 21,200 |
| 207 | King Kang | 6,912.1 | 5.90 | 6.46 | 1,933 | 1,500 | 21,098 |
| 430 | Britton rYu Crazy Diamond | 6,815.7 | 5.78 | 6.55 | 1,944 | 1,500 | 21,061 |
| 562 | Free Agent Fodder | 6,939.5 | 5.87 | 6.39 | 1,944 | 1,500 | 20,996 |
| 184 | The Gold Standard | 6,979.5 | 5.85 | 6.34 | 1,944 | 1,500 | 20,882 |
| 198 | Blue Suede Schus | 6,663.4 | 5.96 | 6.75 | 1,919 | 1,386 | 20,790 |
| 357 | Larry Bernandez | 7,082.4 | 6.38 | 5.55 | 1,944 | 1,500 | 20,728 |
| 40 | The Summer of George | 6,587.0 | 6.43 | 5.63 | 1,912 | 1,467 | 20,551 |
| 107 | El Festival de Batazos | 6,596.9 | 5.92 | 6.02 | 1,944 | 1,500 | 20,538 |
Three teams retain their top 10 ranking from last month, including the reigning #1 team. In addition, ten teams are on pace to eclipse the ottoneu FanGraphs Points league record of 20,530, an increase from the eight that were on pace to do so after April. Offense continues to be up from last year, with a 5.13 Pts/G average across all teams versus 4.92 Pts/G in 2015. Pitching, predictably, is down with a 5.09 Pts/IP average this season against a 5.14 Pts/IP last season. Congratulations to RotoGraph’s own Brad Johnson, whose team in the FanGraphs Staff Two league is ranked #6.
Now for the FanGraphs points league rankings, but first I want to explain a change in methodology I made for this month. Based on some feedback I received, and the very subjective nature of the components and relative weights of the old league rankings method, I’ve decided to simplify things a bit. All league power rankings for all four ottoneu scoring types will follow the same process, and that is a simple average of the individual team rankings for all teams in the league, and then scaling that average against the average league (think of wRC+). I believe that this method better represents what I have been trying to accomplish with the league rankings (identifying which leagues have the greatest collection of team quality), is more consistently applied month to month, and also allows us to compare league quality across different scoring types directly.

| LgNum | LgName | AvgRnk | Rnk+ |
| 347 | MVP Baseball 2005 | 455.9 | 132.2 |
| 649 | Brinksmanship | 468.2 | 130.4 |
| 195 | Wins Above Figgins | 482.7 | 128.2 |
| 93 | ottobros | 488.2 | 127.4 |
| 380 | Don’t Be Chi | 507.5 | 124.5 |
| 532 | A Small Sample | 512.0 | 123.9 |
| 530 | Ottoneu Champions | 539.1 | 119.8 |
| 120 | Fourteenth Inning Stretch | 549.0 | 118.4 |
| 637 | So…Ottographs is a thing? | 553.1 | 117.8 |
| 389 | >League Name Goes Here< | 555.9 | 117.3 |
Let’s take a look at the #1 ranked league, MVP Baseball 2005. The twelve teams in that league have an average overall team ranking of 455.9 (there are 1,344 teams), so the league receives a 132.2 Rank+, which is the same as saying the teams in that league are on average 32.2% better than what we expect from a completely average league (672.5 average team rank).
Up next, the SABR league team power rankings. I’m only going to show the top five teams/leagues as there are much fewer SABR leagues than FanGraphs points leagues.

| LgNum | TeamName | Points | P/G | P/IP | pGP | pIP | PACE |
| 301 | SABRmagician✨ | 6,587.1 | 6.29 | 5.75 | 1,944 | 1,433 | 20,466 |
| 331 | Yeah Jeets | 6,524.4 | 6.10 | 5.57 | 1,944 | 1,500 | 20,213 |
| 37 | The Naturals | 6,390.1 | 6.06 | 5.39 | 1,930 | 1,500 | 19,780 |
| 412 | Surplus or Minus | 6,434.9 | 5.72 | 5.75 | 1,944 | 1,500 | 19,745 |
| 164 | BI 720 | 6,465.1 | 5.47 | 5.87 | 1,943 | 1,500 | 19,432 |
And the top five SABR leagues, using the same method I did for the FanGraphs points leagues:

| LgNum | LgName | OvRk | Rnk+ |
| 25 | Super Serious Fantasy Baseball | 83.5 | 127.1 |
| 159 | Cooperstown – The Jack O’Ryan Memorial League | 87.3 | 123.7 |
| 571 | Effectively Wild (Dynasty) | 95.8 | 116.3 |
| 186 | Fantasy By the Book – An OttoNeu Experience | 102.2 | 110.8 |
| 164 | B. Selig Blue Ribbon Glee Club | 106.8 | 106.8 |
For context, there are 228 SABR teams, so the average league would have a 144.5 average team rank. One quick note, league 25 actually has only 11 active teams, but even after assigning the empty 12th team a ranking of #228 they still grade out #1.
Up next are the two rotisserie ottoneu formats, starting with the traditional 5×5 leagues. To calculate the top teams, I treated the entire population of teams as one big league, and gave every team points for every category based on where they ranked against every other team.

| LgNum | TeamName | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | IP | WINS | SV | K | WHIP | ERA | POW |
| 56 | Blue Whales | 379 | 112 | 380 | 61 | 0.290 | 481.2 | 36 | 51 | 456 | 1.08 | 2.86 | 455.2 |
| 326 | NY Swallows | 355 | 108 | 368 | 47 | 0.269 | 547.1 | 44 | 44 | 556 | 1.14 | 2.94 | 442.8 |
| 101 | Beam Me Up, Piscotty | 348 | 106 | 348 | 52 | 0.264 | 512.0 | 34 | 64 | 522 | 1.08 | 2.99 | 429.2 |
| 83 | 5TOOLERS | 331 | 107 | 342 | 38 | 0.268 | 495.2 | 47 | 40 | 579 | 1.06 | 2.71 | 417.9 |
| 328 | The Lollygaggers | 340 | 93 | 341 | 46 | 0.270 | 552.2 | 41 | 43 | 527 | 1.12 | 2.91 | 416.8 |
| 491 | Meekrats | 332 | 84 | 339 | 56 | 0.280 | 477.0 | 35 | 68 | 487 | 1.06 | 2.58 | 413.1 |
| 586 | Deal It & Duck | 379 | 114 | 355 | 48 | 0.288 | 476.2 | 33 | 61 | 452 | 1.20 | 3.30 | 412.6 |
| 362 | Dr. Boom | 356 | 103 | 337 | 35 | 0.293 | 504.2 | 37 | 40 | 495 | 1.09 | 3.19 | 411.9 |
| 87 | Wally 31 | 386 | 102 | 374 | 48 | 0.293 | 422.0 | 28 | 62 | 427 | 1.09 | 3.05 | 410.3 |
| 326 | The Black Sox | 356 | 98 | 370 | 39 | 0.281 | 513.1 | 36 | 39 | 529 | 1.16 | 3.52 | 403.3 |
And the 5×5 league rankings based on the same average team ranking method as previously discussed:

| LgNum | Name | OvRk | Rnk+ |
| 495 | Ultimate Foul Balls | 200.3 | 120.6 |
| 225 | Hard Core Baseball | 204.2 | 119.1 |
| 537 | Roto style | 211.4 | 116.2 |
| 328 | Old School Hardball* | 213.3 | 115.5 |
| 672 | Church of Baseball | 214.8 | 114.9 |
| 642 | 5×5 Champions | 215.6 | 114.6 |
| 569 | Mark Convoys Pepper Palace | 217.5 | 113.8 |
| 678 | Dynasty League | 220.3 | 112.7 |
| 450 | Hughes Your Daddy | 221.5 | 112.2 |
| 580 | You Gotta Be Bleeping Me! | 221.9 | 112.1 |
Please note that league #328 has only ten active teams, and teams #11 and #12 were assigned a rank of 500.
Last, but not least, here are the rankings for the top teams in ottoneu 4×4:
| LgNum | TeamName | R | HR | OBP | SLG | IP | K | HR9 | ERA | WHIP | POW |
| 72 | Gas House Gorillas | 360 | 103 | 0.348 | 0.481 | 510.1 | 605 | 0.78 | 3.05 | 1.04 | 212.6 |
| 1 | Last Years Leftovers | 341 | 109 | 0.350 | 0.497 | 509.1 | 526 | 0.58 | 3.23 | 1.09 | 212.4 |
| 317 | Master of the Domain | 354 | 107 | 0.369 | 0.530 | 489.0 | 497 | 0.81 | 3.33 | 1.15 | 208.6 |
| 16 | Cal Rikken | 329 | 110 | 0.344 | 0.476 | 529.0 | 608 | 0.80 | 2.81 | 1.08 | 206.0 |
| 34 | Zeezils | 355 | 100 | 0.348 | 0.470 | 571.1 | 647 | 0.84 | 3.06 | 1.14 | 202.4 |
And the rankings for the top 4×4 leagues:
| LgNum | Name | OvRk | Rnk+ |
| 123 | Wendy Peffercorn Fantasy Baseball League | 90.9 | 120.5 |
| 1 | original ottoneu | 97.6 | 114.7 |
| 645 | Surplus or Scrub | 98.3 | 114.0 |
| 170 | Triple Fantasy | 98.8 | 113.6 |
| 366 | For Centaurs Only… | 98.9 | 113.5 |
Feel free to leave any comments or questions about these rankings!
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.
I am in so many of these leagues. My deepest apologies to parity.
Burger time!
Good post, sir. ?
Mr. Brinksmanship approves
I would be interested to know how the team rankings would change for the points leagues if you adjusted for league quality. I don’t know how that would work, exactly, maybe something like (TeamPace)*(LgRank+)/100 or something like that. If you’re putting up reasonably high point totals in a good league, you’d think that would generally be better than putting up a ton of points in a weak league…
That’s definitely an interesting idea, maybe I will play around with a quality adjusted Pace ranking for next month.
Sounds great, but only if it doesn’t kick me out of the top 10. 😉
Ditto. I know it would since one of our teams is tanking. We don’t follow the rule about maintaining a full active roster.
I like the spirit behind these rankings, but the pace measure seems flawed. Why would you assume that teams will maintain their current production until the end of the season?
First- the pace number isn’t meant to show what a team will do, but rather how good that team has been so far extrapolated out to a full season. Otherwise the teams that have thrown 200+ extra innings would look a lot stronger than they really are. I will readily admit that there are flaws built into that calculation (it’s agnostic to roster quality, it assumes G/IP paces will continue as is, etc.)
Second- using a pace calculation is the best method I can think of that is also trivial to calculate. The ideal team quality ranking would incorporate roster quality and rest of season projections, but that would be a nightmare to compile across 1,300+ teams (and that’s just FGPTS!).
Appreciate the reply. Ok, that’s reasonable. I make the same adjustments to the rankings in my leagues for the same reasons.
It’s just that when you put end of year totals under “pace”, it looks like your projecting forward, as opposed to just making a statement about where things stand right now.
And yes, it would be a nightmare, especially when you factor in how different owners manage platoons, and all the other idiosyncrasies of roster management styles.
Justin,
Great work. Is it possible to add a column for salaries? Maybe salary used and cap space?
I think it would be interesting as all hell to see how many of the top teams are close to $400 in salary, and how many have traded for talent. I think the results will surprise tbh.
What I find extremely interesting: of the top ten teams in FGP:
2 teams had $132 and $204 of incoming loans (each had at least $10 available)
2 teams had $41 and $44 of incoming loans (very little cash to spend)
1 team had $11 in loans ($3)
4 teams didn’t need to buy a championship or make a loan trade. (Not much cash)
I team was able to get $57 in loans and has $42 to spend.
The real tell for me though was to go look at those leagues in general and see the ridiculous amount of money left out of the player pool at midseason. Just a lot of cash to spend on not a lot of people.
I tried to tell people they’d be stuck with leftover cash (or forced to waste it) when I was shopping Trout, Kershaw, and Goldy over the winter. Everyone thought they’d have a chance to spend.
That’s rare. And I think a big lesson of the surplus discussions
also noticing a LOT of vote off leagues for the top teams with 0 trade dollars. Also,
8 OF THE TOP TEN TEAMS OWN CLAYTON KERSHAW.
IN 9 OF THE 10 LEAGUES OF TOP POINT TEAMS, MOOIKE BETTS IS OWNED BETWEEN $7 AND $16, AND HIS HIGHEST PRICE IS $25.