Ottoneu Rankings Season – What do you want to see?
With arbitration behind us, trade season upon us, and cut decisions looming, it is rankings season for your favorite team of Ottoneu writers. The last couple of seasons, you have gotten tiered rankings for Ottoneu FanGraphs points leagues both from Jake Mailhot and from me. We’ve focused on FanGraphs Points because it is the most popular Ottoneu format, and because the combination of our rankings and 5×5 rankings from other writers are enough to create a decent set of rankings for 4×4, 5×5 and SABR Points Ottoneu leagues. But you know what we haven’t done? Asked you what you want?
My initial thought for this off-season was that I should present rankings for all four scoring formats – FanGraphs Points (FGPTs), SABR Points (SABR), 4×4, and 5×5. But the reality is there are actually at least six formats:
- Season-long FGPTs
- Season-long SABR
- Season-long 4×4
- Season-long 5×5
- H2H FGPTs
- H2H SABR
Why did I say “at least” six? Because you can play 4×4 or 5×5 for the “regular season” with a H2H points-based playoffs in September. Because the H2H leagues can use a games-started-per-week cap or can have unlimited starts but only two SP slots. Because the H2H games-started-per-week cap can vary by league. All of those things can impact player values.
Now, I am not going to offer to create tiered rankings for dozens of different combinations of settings, but there are a few different things I could do.
- Stick to FGPTs tiered rankings, with comments on every player, as I have done in the past. This likely means you get two sets of rankings (mine and Jake’s) for the same format.
- Do the same tiered rankings but for a different format (likely 4×4), with the same player comments. This would give you my rankings for 4×4 and Jake could still do FGPTs.
- Cover all four scoring formats with individual rankings, though likely without the depth of individual player comments (simply due to how time-consuming that process is and how much my wife and kids still prefer to see me).
- Cover the six formats listed above with their own rankings, again without the individual player comments.
If I do #1 or #2, I would try to write an article outlining what I would do differently for the other formats, so you can adjust on your own. If I do #3, I could talk about how H2H differs, as well.
I am also working on something on the FanGraphs Auction Calculator, which would help you think through creating your own values based on projections available at FanGraphs.
I am also open to feedback that the tiered rankings aren’t that useful and something entirely different would be better. But let’s use this comments section (or you can ping me on Bluesky or anywhere else you know to find me) and let me know what would be most useful.
A long-time fantasy baseball veteran and one of the creators of ottoneu, Chad Young's is the Managing Editor for RotoGraphs, and can be heard on the Keep or Kut Podcast. You can follow him on Bluesky @chadyoung.bsky.social.
I think one thing that might be nice, in addition to the tiered rankings for the upcoming year would be an additional ranking of prospects, or players who we anticipate may not contribute or will contribute only minimally in the coming season. We know that the standard strategy would value most of these players at a fairly low dollar amount, and so the ranking can appear somewhat flat, but I’d love to have a top 25 or top 50 of how you all would rank them for this format. Would take into account proximity, floor, ceiling, context, etc. Just an idea!
I can honestly say that without your guides when I first came into Ottoneu four years ago life would have been so much harder as they allowed me to understand the differences between Otto and non Otto (i play FGpts) More than everything i appreciate the brief text explanations behind each player explaining the rating. Lastly I even appreciated your First year draft thread in Bluesky. I wonder if you compare you rankings to the FG Auction calculator, and if so if you would explain why you value a player higher or lower. In any case thanks to you and Jake
i vote for option 1
1 or 2 for me, I personally prefer 1 and I think the individual player comments are priceless in value when using your rankings. Really sets it apart from most lists.
My vote is for #1 – I find the little contextual blurbs at least as valuable as the price tiering so I definitely wouldn’t want to take away from your ability to write those. And selfishly I only play FG points and so don’t really care about 4×4 but I’d at least prefer that to losing the comments.
I like #1, but I don’t have a 4X4 team, so there is that.
I vote 1, would also be interested in some sort of prospect primer maybe a few for each positon well based on proximity and talent level (break camp, midsummer, september or 2027+…)
Please, not more rankings. I find them mind numbing and useless. Chose a few players at each position and explain why your value is different from the consensus. This is a site for analysis.
I think you’re best off sticking to the FGPTs. Knowing you’re a PitcherList guy, Nick’s list is great because he stresses the context of rankings. His advice might be there’s 40 SP you should draft with plans to not drop. Everyone after that can be useful in the right situation. What does that look like in Ottoneu? At most positions, I’m not going to stress at the top ~X (10?) players at a position. I do care about how I should utilize the next Y players. Roster management and handling rookies/platoons/etc can play such a large role in Ottoneu. Bottomline, I think I care about the players ranked ~11-30 (at least at non-pitching positions), and how I should use those players throughout the season to maximize P/G (especially when this diverges from the output given from the auction calculator).
Stick to FGPTs with all of the notes you can manage. And rate players I’m on the fence about much higher or lower than I have them so I feel better about my rankings.
#2. If we will still get the comments.
Just a list of rosterable prospects would be interesting. There really are only maybe 30-40 guys at most that should actually be rostered to start a season. Getting an idea of where those are at and how much one should hold them for would be extremely useful. Is a $7 Made a keep? Would love your thoughts.
That Made is an example. Not looking for specific input here on the comment board.
#1 please!!
Option 2 appeals to me. No SB’s, no saves, no wins, and OBP is an improvement over BA. I play 4×4 and that crazy hybrid #5 which I think defies preseason rankings … it’s basically two distinct games.
#1 Please. As far as the article about what you might do differently in different formats, I’m in a FGPTs H2H league, and keep trying to adjust for weekly SP start limits rather than IP limits (obviously favoring workhorses), but am not sure I do a great job of it.
Are you guys writing a replacement level write up or did I miss it?
I would vote for option 1. Thanks!