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).
Welcome to the Ottoneu keeper deadline, 2018 edition. Today (11:59 PM EDT) is the final day to make that difficult decision about your on-the-bubble players before rosters lock and you set your sights on your upcoming league auction. Per the rules:
Between the end of the Major League Baseball regular season and the end of arbitration, players may be cut. Between the end of arbitration and the keeper deadline, players may be cut or traded. After the keeper deadline and before the auction draft, teams may not cut or trade any players.
Since the keeper deadline also serves as a de-factor trade deadline, I’ve lined up a few final resources for you below and I’ve asked a handful of Ottoneu experts (Justin, Chad, Brad) to check your questions and comments periodically throughout the day to offer their input on your toughest decisions. You don’t play this game? You should, but even if your non-Ottoneu keeper deadline is still a few weeks away, feel free to fire your questions below and we’ll do our best to give you feedback (for context, don’t forget to let us know details about your league format).
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.
For me, there’s nothing more fun about a fantasy baseball season than the constant trade chatter that goes back and forth between owners. While the goal is, obviously, to walk away with a deal that you consider favorable for your team, I can feel just as good about a discussion that fails to culminate in a trade, but is still filled with good, old-fashioned baseball talk. It’s like spending a whole day fishing, not having caught anything, and still feeling good about the time spent. But nothing, I mean nothing, sucks the joy out of a spirited trade negotiation more than having to deal with a trade bully.
You know the guy I’m talking about. It’s not just the fact that he believes that he has the best players or that his strategy is the best way to win the league. It’s when you turn down an offer of his and, rather than try to re-negotiate the deal, he spends the rest of his time trying harder and harder to push you into it.
First, he’ll start by running down your guys. It doesn’t matter if it’s an up and coming rookie or a multi-year veteran, he’ll find a dozen different ways to cut down your player and explain to you how trading him now is your best course of action. Not for the value you think he’s worth but for some “realistic” value that he has somehow assigned. The guys he is offering, on the other hand, are the absolute best and you are a fool for passing them up. Usually that comes accompanied by some condescending comment about how you really should watch this guy play and if you knew anything about the game you would know the value he brings to the table.
You then try to counter his offer and rather than even listen to what you have to say he tells you that the players he’s offering are involved in other deals and you have to act now or he’s going to trade them away. He’ll tell you that he doesn’t want to because he likes your deal better, but he’s not going to have a choice. He has to act now. That’s when you get the time limit — “I’ve got some stuff to do right now. I’ll be back around three, so just let me know by then, otherwise I’m going to have to make the other deal.” More often than not, there is some indignant tone aimed at making you feel bad for not jumping at his “once in a lifetime” offer.
Later that day, you’ll receive some sort of an email or text asking you if you’ve thought about the deal some more. How it’s really the best move you can make for your team and that he hasn’t heard from the other guy yet, but he’s got to get a deal done today, so these players aren’t going to be available soon. When you politely decline his offer again, you receive that immediate message telling you to have fun finishing in 8th place.
But just when you think you’re done and that this guy is out of your hair, he’ll make yet another run at you. This is usually when he starts to endow his years of fantasy wisdom on you and explains the nuances of this particular league. Doesn’t matter that you’ve been in the same league for multiple years, you apparently just don’t understand how to play or see what this deal is going to do for you.
He’ll start telling you exactly what you need, how to run your team, and what you should be doing — all under the guise of friendship and good sportsmanship. Suddenly he’s going to help you. He knows more about your team and your strategy than you do and he’s going to help you finish in the money. You guys will finish first and second. But has he changed the deal at all? No. It’s still that same crappy offer designed at stacking his team and doing nothing for you.
When you decline again, you’re told you’re making a huge mistake. Your team is going to flop. You’re going to look back and wish you made this deal. Are you sure you don’t want to do it? This is the last chance because he’s going to have to do this other deal he’s been working on. You decline one last time.
“Fine. Good luck trying to get a deal done this year. Thanks for your donation this year,” he says in his parting shot and you’re finally free from the worst trade talk possible.
Atleast until he comes back to you the following week with the same exact deal…..