While it’s true that Ottoneu never sleeps, some are often surprised to know that January and February are among the busiest months of the year for this growing fantasy sports platform. This winter frenzy period for baseball is refreshing because it keeps owners engaged even as they await free agent signings, and it is highly active because so many new leagues are forming. If you’re thinking about playing Ottoneu this season, here are some key resources for review:
2018 is here, and the dawn of a new year is the best time to reevaluate your overall fantasy strategy. But before digging into the finer points of roster construction, auction value calculations, and post-post-hype sleepers, January is also the perfect time to step back and ask whether it might be time to trade in your entire fantasy experience for one of the more advanced, up-and-coming fantasy platforms around.
This is a shameless plug for Ottoneu, a fantasy sports platform so addicting that it has also launched a community of more than 1,000 hardcore baseball fans that sleep and eat baseball year round. But don’t take my word for it. There are many reasons why you should try Ottoneu (including some exciting new features launching in 2018), but today I want you to hear from some of the “rookies” who just finished up their first full year of Ottoneu in 2017. This growing community of raving fans is a big part of the Ottoneu experience, and their Season One feedback may help you make the final decision to drive your own league to Ottoneu in 2018.
As we close out 2016, we’re nearing that point in time where we look forward to what the future holds and then solidify commitments about changes we plan to make. From a fantasy perspective, there are few things to look forward to more than the annual Ottoneu auction, so whether you’re anxiously anticipating your very first or are committed to improving upon your second or tenth, preparation is everything. As in life, you rarely get the chance to make a second first impression, so recovering from a poor draft can be a challenge that plagues you all season long.
I covered the mechanics (many of which have since been upgraded) of the Ottoneu auction last year here. We’re still roughly one month from the keeper deadline (1/31), but today I want to offer some practical suggestions (especially for those new to the game) for how to begin preparing for your auction draft. If you’re thinking about playing Ottoneu for the first time in 2017, leagues are forming daily here and here.
For those following along, Ottoneu is at it’s busiest during these winter months leading up to the start of the next baseball season. It’s designed that way, and the year-round activity of Ottoneu is one of the features that help set it apart from other fantasy platforms. As Joe mentioned recently, there are plenty of reasons why you should give Ottoneu a chance this year, but today I want to assume you’ve already seen the light and are ready to sign up. So, what’s next? Here are a few practical ways to get started once you plug into this great game.
Select Your Game Type
First things first: you’ll need to decide which scoring format suits your interest. Ottoneu offers a nice range of scoring options that include:
Classic: This is rotisserie-style 5 x 5 built into the basic foundation of Ottoneu, which (like all formats) includes 40 man rosters, $400 salary caps, daily lineups, off-season arbitration, and auction-style economics. If you’ve been playing traditional Roto for years and have interest in Ottoneu, this is a great place to start.
Old School: This is considered the original Ottoneu (4 x 4) format, and was designed with a sabermetric bent and geared toward power hitters and power pitchers (OBP, SLG, HR, R and ERA, WHIP, HR/9, K). You can find an example of 4 x 4 standings here.
SABR & FanGraphs Points: Based on linear weights scoring, these two sabermetrically-inclined options are very popular, and it isn’t uncommon to see owners playing in multiple points leagues. Tons of resources and tools are available if you decide to try your hand in one of these advanced scoring leagues. Standings for a points league look like this.
New: Head to Head is coming to Ottoneu in 2018!
ICYMI, head-to-head will be an option in @ottoneuBaseball in 2018. https://t.co/UsTO21a9kE
— Ottoneu Fantasy Sports (@Ottoneu) December 18, 2017
(This is part one of the “Ottoneu 101” series)
Spring is almost here, which means pitchers and catchers (and fantasy drafts) are just around the corner. Today I’ll walk you through an Ottoneu player auction (thanks to the guys in League 100) so you can be fully prepared before your own league draft gets underway in the coming weeks.
We’re starting to roll out Ottoneu FGpts rankings today. We will start with catcher and work our way through the rest of the positions by the time auction drafts are in full swing. In the context of Ottoneu, perhaps rankings are a misnomer, because you really want to know the dollar value each player is worth. We’ve included this information as well. In all, these rankings should help to give you a spread of four dollar values for each player, as well as a comparison to average prices (post-arbitration, pre-cut deadline) within the Ottoneu FGpts universe. Each player’s Ottoneu eligibility (5GS, 10 appearances) is included as well, though players are ranked at their most valuable position. If you have questions on a specific ranking, or a question for a specific ranker, feel free to let us know in the comments.
Consider this your very early, subject to change, Ottoneu pricing cheat sheet.
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Ottoneu is a smarter, better brand of fantasy baseball. By design, it’s a fantasy platform engineered for the hardcore baseball fan that doesn’t enjoy the term “off season”. Ottoneu is the perfect fit for FanGraphs readers looking to join a competitive fantasy baseball league with a lot of cool features, a sabermetric-economy, and a massive community of raving fans.
You can read first-year feedback from Ottoneu players here. You can also learn a lot more about the game from the FAQ, but here are the top 10 reasons you should consider joining or moving your fantasy baseball league to Ottoneu this year:
As Eno pointed out the other day, six of us from FanGraphs/RotoGraphs joined up with six writers from The Hardball Times to do battle in a 12-team rotisserie league for both bragging rights and charity. The winner gets to donate the prize to the charity of his choice while the site for which he writes gets to reign supreme in the fantasy universe. Sounds like fun? Well, you weren’t there for the four-plus hour auction.
For those of you that have never given an auction league draft a try, I highly recommend that you do so this year – there are still plenty of public leagues looking for fantasy managers. Yahoo Fantasy Baseball has free live auction drafts for the first time and I joined a random league yesterday and participated in the auction draft. It’s also designed to help those who are uncomfortable with auction values, as the draft program tells you A) The estimated player’s value, as well as B) The average going rate this draft season.
In this draft we had a 10-team league (with a $260 budget) and three managers failed to show up, which was disappointing because it meant we had to battle three automated picks. The evil computer bid hard and fast early in the draft with one team snapping up Tim Lincecum ($47), Roy Halladay ($41), Ryan Howard ($36), Chase Utley ($33), and Evan Longoria ($33). That, of course, is a lot of money to spend on five players on a 21-man roster and it ended up with 13 $1 players.
My player nomination approach was fairly simply. I tossed up players I had little-to-no interest in as an effort to get the fantasy managers to blow their cash in bidding wars. I also looked to get the mangers to fill up at certain positions so that when the player that I really wanted came up, many of the teams had already filled that spot.
The most expensive player taken was Albert Pujols at a whopping $55. I did not get involved in the bidding. My top five spends were Upton, Ian Kinsler ($27), Grady Sizemore ($24 – I think he’ll rebound and be a steal), Jimmy Rollins ($20), and Joey Votto ($22). My biggest over-spend was $11 for Jason Heyward but I left $14 on the table at the end of the draft so I feel pretty good about the gamble.
I did not worry too much about pitching; my big man in the rotation is Ricky Nolasco ($17) and I grabbed Joakim Soria ($11) as my closer. My worst pick was wasting $3 and a roster spot on Ben Sheets, but to be honest I was trying to push the bidding and no one bit… so I only have myself to blame. The biggest blow is that I wanted to use that roster spot for a $1 buy on sleeper Ian Kennedy. I also ended up with too many first basemen with Votto, Derek Lee (for $18, which I considered good value at the time), and Carlos Pena ($5 was too good to pass up, yet again).
As a thrifty shopper, I was also thrilled to get Curtis Granderson ($14), Scott Baker ($7), Matt Garza ($3), Carlos Quentin ($2), Elvis Andrus ($2), Dan Uggla ($2), and John Danks ($1). You can round my roster out with Pablo Sandoval ($19), Mike Napoli ($1) and David Aardsma ($6). I ended up with a good mix of speed and power even though I went with well-rounded players rather than wasting space on one-dimensional sluggers (Pena, aside) and hollow-batted speedsters.
The one player I really, really wanted and didn’t get was Brett Anderson. I was laying in the weeds on him for the entire draft and he didn’t get nominated until the 18th round. I was feeling pretty good about it, as I had $23 in my pocked with two players left to get and I was OK with spending $1 on the other spot (a reliever… it would have been Kennedy). I had Anderson for $3 right up until four seconds before the bidding expired and then a bidding war ensured with my now least favorite person in the world and I lost Anderson at $22 (about double his estimated value). Garza was a pretty good consolation prize, and a steal for three bucks.
If you’d like to share any good auction draft stories, feel free to post ’em… and if you have any auction draft questions, feel free to ask.