The Easiest Way to Start Ottoneu: Claim a Team
As draft season ramps up, one of the most common questions I get is how to get started with Ottoneu. It can, admittedly, be overwhelming if you don’t know what you are looking at. Starting a new league is a challenge – you need 12 managers committed to a long-term venture together. Building a roster from scratch can be a challenge. And so I recommend people start by claiming a team.
The teams at that link have been abandoned for one reason or another, typically because a manager determined they needed to cut back to fewer teams or simply has less free time this summer than they have in the past. But they are existing teams, in existing leagues, with existing rosters, and that makes them a really nice entry point for someone new to Ottoneu.
When looking for a team to claim, the first thing I would do is determine what price tier you want to play at. Maybe you should start with league format, but I think price tier matters more. The lowest price, non-prize leagues cost $20 and it goes up from there, with $50, $75, $100 and $250 leagues that have prizes paid out by Ottoneu. The advantage of a prize league is that everyone is dedicated and committed to winning but, if it were me, I would be looking to start with a $20 league – keep the cost low and learn the game before going after the prizes.
As for format, the Ottoneu FAQ has a brief rundown of each scoring format, plus you can choose season-long or H2H points leagues. This is all about comfort. My favorite format is 4×4. The most common is FanGraphs Points (FGPTs) and there is more content out there about FGPTs than the others. Some people prefer to start with 5×5 since it is what they are most used to. My opinion is that you shouldn’t stress about this – you can learn any scoring system – but you should find one you are excited about.
Next, I would sort that page by “League” and look for leagues with fewer openings (1-2) instead of more. The caveat to this is that if you are trying to join with friends – maybe you have 3-4 people excited to check out Ottoneu but not the 12 needed for a fresh league – you can find a league that has space for all of you. But if it is just you, finding a league that has 11 dedicated managers and needs one more is a great way to start. It’s also not a bad idea to visit the league page, click on “Standings” and see how long the league has been around. A league with a long history and one spot open is probably a safe bet to have little turnover the following year, but a league with a shorter history might be easier to team-build.
Then I start looking at individual teams. And we can poke around at a few right now.
Lazy wOBA – this team is in a Yippee Ki Yay, a FanGraphs points league entering year 2. This league has a unique structure, as it starts as a points league, but switches to H2H for the playoffs. This could be a fun way to get started because you can build a decent team, learn the format, and if you can sneak into the top 6, have a shot at a title in year one. This team has already made cuts to get legal, but if I took over, I would have a few more. I love Adley Rutschman for $42 is a bit much. I am definitely out on $39 Eloy Jimenez and $18 Andrew Vaughn. There are a few others I would move on from, as well, but this team has a decent core and you can definitely build something strong.
RV Slumlords – Here is a 4×4 team in an established league that definitely struggled last year but has some good parts. It needs a lot of work, but guys like Edwin Diaz, Bo Bichette, Rafael Devers, and Salvador Perez are either going to help you win or be very attractive parts to trade over the summer as you go into a rebuild. Blake Snell, Zach Eflin, and Ryan Pepiot is a potentially very fun rotation to build around. This team has more money tied up in the bullpen than I like for 4×4, but you can work with that and make it a strength.
Over-nite Sensation – This is both an established league and I can confirm this league has a good commissioner. This team finished dead-last in 2023, but it really has a strong core. You have to clear out a lot of cap (see you later, George Springer, Francisco Lindor, Brandon Woodruff, and others) but you will enter the auction with a strong OF and a legit top-of-the-rotation ace. Depending how the auction plays out, it may be a tall task to contend this year, but you can get a haul for Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole if you decide to sell.
Clay Guida’s Heart – Want to go big right off the bat? This is a $250 team and it needs some work, but it has a solid IF and you could probably clear away enough unnecessary pieces and cap to be able to spend aggressively on SP and OF in the auction. Will you win in year one? Probably not. But it isn’t impossible to imagine either!
A long-time fantasy baseball veteran and one of the creators of ottoneu, Chad Young's is the Managing Editor for RotoGraphs, and can be heard on the Keep or Kut Podcast. You can follow him on Bluesky @chadyoung.bsky.social.
For those on the fence, I did this in 2017. I looked for how competitive the league was. They had had 6 different champions in 6 years. Claimed the vacant 11th place team, drove it to a 2nd place finish and never looked back. I now play 3 different Ottoneu leagues and enter one of those 3 teams in the Ottoneu Prestige League where 240 teams compete for big prizes and bragging rights.
Are these leagues universally auction drafts? I have never done one before and am not sure how keen I am.
I believe the answer is yes, but auction drafts are a lot of fun; the largest downside is that they take longer, but even that is mitigated in Ottoneu after the league’s first year because most team only have 10-20 roster slots to fill after keepers. You can also practice auction mock drafts on another platform like Yahoo to get more comfortable with them
I think auctions are much better than snake drafts. They enable more strategies and more often result in players landing with the team that actually values them most. They also enable more trade options over the season because price matters. Claiming an existing team also allows you to start with a simpler auction – less time, fewer players, etc – as you’re learning
Or it’s an orphaned ghost team that was abandoned. A ghost team is used to move better players to a friends team or in a few cases a team where an owner owns two teams in the same league under different email accounts. It is usually done in a $$ league where the team can be claimed for free at certain times of the year. This is a problem that Ottoneu need to clean up. Which is why I’m only in a couple of leagues this year and abandoned three others. ALL leagues should insist that a new owner pay for the team when claiming it. If it is already paid for the money could be added to the current prize pool.
If you see examples of this, can you point them out? You suggest this is widespread but commissioners have all the tools to remedy this and it’s not an issue that gets reported often, if at all. I believe there are checks in place to avoid the same person managing two teams in a league, even using different email addresses, as well. If you’re seeing this happen, point it out on the Ottoneu forums cause it can and should be addressed. But I don’t see any evidence that this it’s an issue with any of the teams I looked through (and I looked through a bunch).
I’ve heard and read about this for years and I’ve always thought it was too much for me. Seeing how much I’ve dove into minor leaguers over the past few years and have learned more about the game of fantasy and baseball itself I may finally look into this more. I love the team building aspect of the 3 keepers I’m in and last year I finally did something and finished 1-2-2-3 in my 4 leagues, 1 of them being redraft. I might be ready for a new challenge. Keep up the awesome work, I can say without a doubt FanGraphs is a major reason I’ve done and learned so much. Thanks everyone for their great, and sometimes not so great, insights.
I think if you are playing multiple keeper leagues with minor league players, you can easily handle Ottoneu. Give it a try!
$20 is worth the price of checking something out, which is what I did last year. Ottoneu is a fun challenge!
Over-nite Sensation has been claimed.
If anyone is interested in the above mentioned Clay’s team, I’m willing to throw them a $50 coupon (through Venmo or paypal) to join. Also, free cuts to make the team more of your own heading into the draft.
I’m the league manager and we have our draft quickly approaching – March 3rd. We are a group of serious and active managers that have been a lot of fun to play with. We would like to find someone to own (claim) rather than proxy for the draft.
Claim the team and shoot me a note saying you saw this!! I’ll get you the $50 and help to get your cuts done.