Ottoneu Offseason Checklist

It is now that time of year when your inbox pings and dings with notifications from Ottoneu. Is that a good trade proposition? Should you keep player A? Are you over-paying player B? These are all questions you should be asking yourself this off-season. Luckily, FanGraphs has all the data you need to make informed decisions. Here are three easy steps you can take this offseason to ensure you’re ready for your Ottoneu re-draft.

1. Merge your league rosters with new 2023 projections.

In order to do this you need two things:

(a) a fresh .csv download of auction calculator values (both pitchers and hitters) using steamer projections, tuned to your specific league settings.
(b) your league csv, which you can easily download by clicking on the tools icon at the top of your Ottoneu league page.

From there, you’ll need to merge your new 2023 values with your current players. Here’s an example from one of my teams:

Current Salary vs. Projected Value
Name Position(s) Current Salary 23 Steamer Projected Value Diff
Taylor Walls 2B/SS/3B $4.00 -$51.36 $55.36
DJ LeMahieu 1B/2B/3B $24.00 -$17.67 $41.67
Josh Donaldson 3B $23.00 -$15.31 $38.31
Eddie Rosario OF $9.00 -$27.42 $36.42
Cody Bellinger OF $24.00 -$10.59 $34.59

You can do two things with this table. First, you can compare the salary you’re paying a player with what Steamer 23′ thinks a player is worth. Clearly, I am overpaying Taylor Walls. Steamer thinks he’ll be worth negative value, so realistically if I wanted to keep Walls going into 2023, he would need to only be $1 with a lot of upside for that keep to make sense. Second, you can use the same process to see where your league mates stand. If you know your competition is underpaying a few players, you could target them as off-season trade candidates.

2. Use the roster organizer to place cuts on any over-paid players and decide if any players have trade value.

From the way my top five over-paid players table looks, I’ll be clicking over to the “Roster Organizer” tab and making a few cuts. This is a nice tool because it allows you to see how your budget changes depending on what cuts you make. Not all over-paid players need to be cut, but most of them should be cut or traded. Maybe you’re only overpaying by a few dollars and you think a league mate might be interested, slot them into the trade category. On the flip side, you can look for a few players that you are underpaying, but don’t believe in. It’s possible your hunch could be right, but it’s pretty hard to outsmart the projection systems.

3. Analyze your team’s needs for the upcoming season.

Now that you have your roster all organized and tidy, it’s time to figure out what you need for next season. Take your team exactly how it is and calculate the points your players will provide per category. My Ottoneu leagues are all FanGraphs points leagues, so I can take a steamer projection .csv, merge on my players and total out the points they will score based on the projections:

My Team's Projected Points (Bar Chart)

Without being able to compare to other teams, this bar graph only gives me a general sense of my offensive projections, but what I can tell is that my team is full of high-average players. Here’s a breakdown of where my points are coming from:

My Team’s Points Categories as a Percentage of the Total
Category Points Percentage of Total
H 13546.4 60.8%
Doubles 1412.3 6.3%
Triples 182.4 0.8%
HR 3543.8 15.9%
BB 3009 13.5%
HBP 372 1.7%
SB 209.0 0.9%
Steamer Projections

From what I see above, I believe I’ll need to shop for some power this off-season. It’s time to start looking for low-power/high-average players that I may be overpaying and use them as trade chips to acquire more power.

Breaking your and your league mates’ teams down in this way will give you the opportunity to make informed keep/cut, trade, and draft strategy decisions.





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sakiehl
1 year ago

Do you see a benefit to balancing average and power in a points league?