With 2016 leagues in the books, I’d like to present some league-wide season-ending stats to see what kind of conclusions we can draw about success in the very data-driven game of Ottoneu. The focus here is one of the more popular scoring formats, FanGraphs Points (FGPTS), and the numbers you see in each of the first two charts represent the average standings data for all teams/all leagues by final 2016 finish.
The fantasy baseball season has closed, but the game of Ottoneu continues long into the off-season (one of the hallmarks of its year-round appeal). Following Justin’s take on what happened with some of the best teams in Ottoneu this year, I’ll focus today on how one team mastered this game, presenting you with an interview from the of the 2016 Ottoneu Champions League winner, Brent Daily.
On Wednesday I lamented about how my year-long infatuation with prospect Nick Williams blinded me from seeing offensive value in other places that would likely have put my team in a better position during a rebuild. Today I’ll take the same approach, focusing on the pitching side, and will use Jose Berrios as my prospect scapegoat. Like Williams, I’ve owned Berrios since well before the 2016 season began, and invested fully into the scouting reports of a potential #2 starting pitcher. Better yet, I was convinced Berrios was more “polished” than most prospect pitchers, and that his strong command would quickly smooth out the inevitably bumpy transition through MLB lineups. Fast forward now to mid-September and Berrios has a 9.27 ERA in 44 IP, which includes 28 BB’s and 2.0 HR/9. And yet, I still own him…
Using Ottoneu ownership and average salary data as of September, I limited my filter to all players currently owned for $3 or less, and then hand-selected a few pitchers who (using FIP and P/IP as quick standards for YTD value) appear to have enough future value to be at least as interesting as Jose Berrios once was to me so long (not really) ago.
I have owned Nick Williams in a very competitive Ottoneu league since mid-January. Effective today, I am cutting bait on Nick Williams.
Actually, Nick Williams is really just a proxy for all those glossy prospects we fall in love with. Exiting the 2015 season, I was coming off a championship but knew I’d be staring headfirst at a very difficult rebuild. So, entering the spring of 2016 I did exactly what I usually advise new fantasy owners to avoid: stock up on a bunch of prospects and let hope fill in the strategic gaps.
Earlier this season I introduced the Prospect Scorecard as a way of better comparing and identifying the best fit prospect value for your specific fantasy league. Today I’ll get a head start on my own 2017 prospect rankings by using the Scorecard methodology to rank the current top 50 prospects for Ottoneu. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu specifically, the 4 x 4 and FGPTS prospect rankings can serve as a good proxy for most OPS or wOBA-centric fantasy leagues, and the traditional 5 x 5 prospect rankings should cover a large portion of the rest.
As mentioned in the past, Ottoneu is a deep but enjoyable game of fantasy baseball economics perfectly suited for the FanGraphs reader. However, the learning curve in year one can be steep, so consider this point a primer on how “loans” work in Ottoneu leagues.
All Ottoneu teams, regardless of the format (5×5, 4×4, FGPTS, SABR) are bound by both a 40 player roster cap and a $400 salary cap applied between the annual league player auction and the end of the MLB regular season (these caps do not apply in the off-season). Exceeding either of these caps will result in a “frozen” roster thereby preventing the owner from bidding on players, making trades, or even setting lineups until the issue is resolved, per Rule 1b. In other words, your only option when faced with an illegal (“over-cap”) roster is to cut players until you get to 40 or fewer players or $400 or less in total salary. For new Ottoneu players, keep in mind you should never willingly exceed these limits (per Rule 1c), and each of your 40 roster spots inherently costs $1 each, so you really only have $360 in “free” roster salary to play with (see Rule 1bi) at any given time (including during the annual auction).
Entering the 2014 season I knew my fantasy team was setup to succeed. After all, I had just spent the entire 2013 season tearing it down and building it back up again, so I had the benefit of a full year of preparation, collecting as many assets as I could along the way to ready myself up for another shot at the title.
Unsurprisingly, at least three other teams in my league also appeared to be possible front-runners, so I knew it was going to be a hard fought battle towards the top. My roster looked great on paper, but what I really needed was an edge, a small but real advantage that would work in my favor and help me outlast some very savvy Ottoneu owners. So, I decided I would be obsessive about daily roster management…and I built a spreadsheet to help me track my team’s performance (by player) over the course of 180 days of baseball. If I was going to win a tight race, I would need more than just excellent players. I needed to know that I was effectively managing those players, too.
I ended up winning the championship in 2014 and owe a ton of credit to the daily roster tool I built to help me track it. You can view the tool here. I’m doing the same thing this year, so here are four roster management lessons I’ve learned that might be helpful for anyone playing daily fantasy baseball.
I have made a lot of trades in my fantasy baseball “career”. It’s one of the parts of the game I enjoy most, but I’ve learned over the years that there is a wide range of comfort among owners when it comes to shaking up their rosters via trade. For some fantasy owners, the process and preparation required to put together a good trade is a burden, and for others the uncertainty of the resulting impact (“will this really help my team?”) and/or the feedback from their league (“did I win or lose this trade?”) is enough to cause anxiety.
Part of the reason I enjoy fantasy trades is because I’ve had the benefit of corporate negotiation training throughout my professional career. While it’s certainly true that my fantasy baseball experience has had a positive impact on my professional bargaining skills, there is no doubt my vocational training has made me more confident (and successful) in the fantasy “trade room”, too. Today I’ll share a little of what I’ve learned throughout my own trade history in hopes of offering something you can use as well.
How to Talk Trade
All too often it’s not necessarily what you say but how you say it that makes the difference. What follows are some alternative ways to phrase common trade responses that might make the difference between closing a deal or stopping one early in it’s tracks.
If you’ve been following along you’ve probably discovered that the game of Ottoneu is a mathlete’s dream. It’s an advanced economic system built for fantasy baseball that only gets better over time. And while the Roto options will feel very familiar, the “points” scoring options (FanGraph Points and SABR) have become popular to the point where they are almost synonymous with the game itself.
Ottoneu is especially designed for the FanGraphs audience, but even the most sabermetrically-inclined fantasy players will find their first season or two of Ottoneu “points” to be a (worthy) challenge. Navigating a full auction draft, understanding the relationship between player scoring and player values (salaries), and trying to build a roster flexible enough to maximize games and innings over the course of a long season are just a few of the early lessons that need to be learned quickly. But few things are more puzzling to new owners than interpreting early season league standings, so today we’ll review the Standings Dashboard, a custom tool built to dig deeper into your league’s standings so you can properly evaluate whether you’re a contender or pretender.
Using a first year Ottoneu league (“Brinksmanship“) as our benchmark, here’s a glance at the league standings through May 12th, 2016:
This post requires some “class participation”, so if you’re reading along I would really appreciate you weighing in on what has become a highly active debate within Ottoneu leagues. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu, the concept of ambiguous fantasy league rules applies to all, and today I’m looking for potential (creative) solutions on how to enforce the following rule:
Rule 1a: Each team should maintain at all times a roster of 22 major-league players that can fill out a starting lineup. The remaining 18 roster spots can be used for reserves, consisting of both major and minor leaguers.