Last season I kicked off April with some early trade reviews from the Ottoneu community, and today I’ll do the same, hoping to peek under the hood of some early player perceptions as transactions start to take shape across the fantasy baseball world.
As a quick reminder, Ottoneu is a keeper system by design that shifts the balance just short of traditional dynasty leagues, and offers a variety of scoring systems (including H2H).
I once took an excellent training course on effective communication. At the beginning of the course, our teacher started with a game:
In my hand is an envelop with a $10 bill inside. I want one of you in this room to take the deal I’m offering you. I’m going to ask you a simple trivia question and, if you get it right, you get the ten dollars. But if you get it wrong, you owe me two dollars. However, if you don’t know the answer, you can ask one person in the room for help. Who wants to volunteer?
After a few moments of people looking at each other wondering what the catch might be, I volunteered. “How many states make up the United States?”, he asked.
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.
You’ve just signed up to play Ottoneu – now what?
Ottoneu is growing, and while you’re going to see a lot of ink spilled here on RotoGraphs about this premier fantasy game, the learning curve for rookies can be a little steep. Below are ten critical tips you should consider when embarking on your first Ottoneu fantasy baseball season. What follows is based on the assumption that you’ve either joined an existing Ottoneu league or are creating a new league and are now preparing to draft in your first spring auction.
1) Join the Ottoneu Community
One of the best aspects of Ottoneu is the massive contingent of game players discussing all things baseball (and football) 24/7/365. You can find the most active Ottoneu gamers on the official community site and on Slack. Complementing the already feature-rich platform, the Ottoneu community brings all owners together in one place to crowdsource player information, trade feedback, auction tips, keep/cut decisions, enhanced league communications, and a forum for recruiting new league owners. Even if you don’t play Ottoneu (yet), the community is a goldmine of daily baseball dialogue, strategy, and advice, and it also the perfect place to dip your toe in if you have any interest in learning more about playing and joining Ottoneu. When you do play Ottoneu, you’ll want to get acquainted with the community as soon as possible, as it is an excellent resource for new Ottoneu players.