Archive for fantasy baseball strategies

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

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If you’ve been following me over on Twitter, then you’ll know that there’s nothing I love more during the offseason than a good ol’ mock draft. I love researching players and setting myself up with my own set of rankings and Draft Day depth charts, but one of the best tools for in-draft decisions is understanding public opinion.

It’s one of those rare instances in life where what everyone else thinks does, in fact, matter. Does no one seem to believe in this guy, so I can easily wait a few more rounds for him (i.e. my earlier Travis Wood dilemma)? Is he a recently outed sleeper whose public opinion has grown more mainstream thus forcing me to take him earlier than I had originally thought? These are always questions we ask ourselves during drafts and given that they usually hit us when we’re under the gun and have no more than a minute and a half (usually) to make that decision, knowing the answers ahead of time make it all the more easy to think and act on the fly.

And since we’re still talking starting pitchers over here this week and mock draft season is just getting underway — I’ve actually done six already, if you can believe that — I thought that looking at how pitching is already being viewed by many would be a good start. You’ll get a jump on things in the early goings and it also might help you make some of those tough keeper decisions you probably have sitting in front of you. Read the rest of this entry »

As we sit and wait for all the big-named free agents to find themselves new homes, it’s time to start thinking about strategy for next year.  There are numerous of ways to go about drafting your team and you’re going to hear plenty of do’s and don’ts from a variety of people.  So allow me to chime in here first and tell you why punting saves should not be in your plans when developing a proper draft strategy.  Some people see no harm in it and tell you to just bulk up elsewhere.  I disagree.  It’s an automatic concession of points to your competition and immediately puts you at a disadvantage.

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