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).
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.
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.
It’s cliche, but January is as good a time as ever to consider changing some behaviors (probably in response to learning from our mistakes). Let’s dive into how this annual opportunity to manufacture inspiration can help us improve our fantasy trade skills by reviewing why we trade in the first place.
The foundation of trade is mutual gain. It really is that simple. Whether we’re discussing economics or fantasy sports, trade is beneficial because it enables each party to get more of what they want at a (perceived) cost lower than what they could produce it for themselves.
If trade is mutually beneficial, it stands to reason you should consider doing it more often. In the context of your Ottoneu league (where trading is active and sophisticated), if you’re going to make more trades, you’re going to have to make more trade offers. Some owners are reluctant to make trade offers, so let me encourage you to live a little more dangerously this year because, in addition to improving your roster, making trade offers will provide you with a lot of additional benefits.
I’m in 6 different leagues this year and every league has a different set of rules, rosters, waiver restrictions, etc. But the one common thread that ties and binds all things fantasy here is the moronic trade offers that get thrown around at this time of year. Forget about sample size and statistical history. Apparently those mean nothing to the trade hungry vultures just waiting to swoop down and pick off the carcass of stupidity. Read the rest of this entry »