The Fantasy Infirmary, with Dr. Otto Neu, M.D.

You just finished up your first ottoneu auction. You read up on all the strategies, you set your values, and you left the draft the proud owner of one Kyle Schwarber. Fast forward a few weeks and one outfield collision: Schwarber is out for the season, while you’re left looking at a hole in your lineup big enough for Yoenis Cespedes to ride a horse through. What do you do? Because of ottoneu’s large roster size, the waiver wire is usually sparse, and handling long term injuries can be a tough proposition. There are a few common courses of action you can take, and they all have their own strengths and weaknesses, depending on your team situation. Let’s dive in:

Become a seller

Time to rip the band-aid off: it’s possible a key injury will simply be too much to overcome. In Schwarber’s case, the damage to your team probably isn’t catastrophic, since you should be able to mix and match outfielders for a few weeks while you decide what to do. But if you’re unlucky enough to suffer an injury to your team’s best player, or multiple major injuries (let’s say you owned A.J. Pollock, and Jhonny Peralta, and then lost Tyson Ross for an unknown amount of time), the reality is that you may need to start thinking about 2017. Before you make that decision though, you’ll want to think critically about your situation. Are you really out of luck, or do you have enough depth to ride out a less disastrous injury to a single player? This is one area where thinking about the math of ottoneu comes in handy – an injury to one player isn’t likely to hurt your rate production badly enough to sink your season overnight, but if you find yourself in danger of missing your games cap at a position, that can add up to trouble very quickly if you can’t find a replacement. That’s because settling for a lower rate production might only cost you a fraction of a point per game, and while that isn’t great, missing your games cap can cost you as much as 4 points for every game you leave unplayed, because you’re getting zero points, instead of at least getting some points, even a below-replacement amount. (Assuming you’re playing FG or SABR points – in ottoneu’s roto formats missing your games cap at a position isn’t quite the same handicap) On the pitching side, the situation is similar, but with one saving grace – you can make up missed innings much more easily than missed games in the outfield, for example. This is because, while you can start up to five pitchers at one time, you generally only need to start one or two each day to meet your innings cap. If you find yourself behind pace, you can bring in reinforcements and start 3 or more pitchers some days, and make up ground. This tactic is much less effective in the outfield, where meeting your cap of 810 games means you need to start five outfielders on the vast majority of days throughout the entire season. So, if your ace goes down to Tommy John surgery, you have a bit more time to look for a replacement than if you lose one of your core hitters.

If you do decide to sell, follow some of the key guidelines we’ve encouraged for a selling or rebuilding team – try to stay patient, and make sure any deal you make provides clear benefit to your team.Think specifically about the value you’ll be adding to your team, and that you’ll be sending away. Set a clear target: If you were planning to contend in 2016, maybe you can retool a bit around your core players and shift that window to 2017, instead of just rebuilding for the generic “future”. Don’t let yourself get sucked into a panic move – there are few more surefire ways to kill a team than by making a rash decision that you regret a few weeks later. Patience, padawans.

Buy a replacement…

…or, more accurately, trade for a replacement, since in ottoneu there aren’t likely to be many starting options available on the waiver wire. Go ahead and check, though, sometimes you’d be surprised who is available and overlooked by your leaguemates! If there’s nobody available (or, nobody good), it’s time to talk trades, especially if your team is a contender for this year.

Before deciding to make a deal, think hard about your team and what your production will look like for the rest of the season. You generally don’t want to spend resources on acquiring a top replacement if your team is out of contention, but if you’re trying to win it all this year, it will be important, perhaps critical, to find a replacement for an injured star at some point. Many teams already buy aggressively when they’re contending, so you may need to be equally aggressive to replace your lost production and keep up with the other contenders. If your team is on the fence between buying and selling, a major injury will force your hand a bit – you may have hoped to wait a but before deciding whether to buy or sell, but now you’ll need to make a decision more quickly, especially if you want to stay a contender deep into the season. There’s no easy answer, but as always, slowing down your thought process and thinking critically can help you avoid a rash decision and make the right move for your situation.

Once you’ve decided to buy, again, you should follow some of the same strategies outlined for a seller. Consider the material impact to your team, and don’t let yourself get sucked into a panic move. You don’t want to trade all your prospects in an emergency move, only to find yourself wishing you had kept them and reloaded for 2017 instead.

What do you do with the injured player?

Depending on your situation and the player’s salary, an injured player might have a wide range of value. For example, when Pollock went down in spring training, many owners had him for prices below his average salary of $15, while the general consensus was that his true value was above $20 or $25. At those prices, an injured Pollock still represents a certain amount of value, especially to a team targeting 2017 for contention. Another player who has considerable trade value in many leagues is Greg Bird – despite missing the 2016 season, the fact that he was owned for only a few dollars in most leagues means that many rebuilding teams still have interest in trading for him.

If you’re one of those owners with an injured player over ten dollars, it’s often tempting to cut the player loose and use the salary savings to win another auction. But there’s a good chance you can get a better return if you shop your player around, and try to find out who else in your league is interested in stashing him. I’m going to sound like a broken record, but yet again the best way to judge a deal is to make sure to think about exactly what it offers you. If you’re sending Pollock away, are you getting someone who could provide you equal value in 2017, or in 2016, if you’re trying to compete this year? There aren’t perfect answers to those questions, but by pausing to consider the value of each player involved, you’ll have an advantage over other owners who might be more prone to making a rash decision.

It’s also possible your injured player will have little to no value – if you just completed your first ottoneu auction and you own a player like Schwarber, Pollock, or Ross at far above their average price, you’re probably not going to find a buyer, at least in the traditional sense. You may still have options, though! First, dropping the player will clear up half of his salary in cap space, and if someone else goes ahead and picks him up at half price, you’ll get the other half of your cap space back. One downside is that if you drop a player, you can’t bid on him at auction, so you may be forced to watch as another team picks him up at a great stash price. A creative strategy that owners have explored recently is the idea of essentially splitting the free cap from a cut with another owner: as part of a larger trade, you can send an expensive injured player (and a loan for part of his salary) to a leaguemate, with the understanding that they’ll cut him. This gives you a chance to bid on him at the reduced price and keep him next year at a more reasonable salary, while giving your trading partner a chance to free up some additional cap space when they cut him.

A word about the 60-day DL

The 60-day DL is a common buzzword among ottoneu fans, because it holds a special place in the rules of ottoneu. Any player placed on the 60-day DL automatically goes on the ottoneu disabled list as well, giving you a free roster spot to acquire another player. However, players on the 15-day DL receive no such special treatment, so for less serious injuries, you’ll need to either operate using only the depth already on your roster, or consider cutting or trading a player on the 15-day DL to free up space for a new acquisition. The 60-day DL can be unpredictable, because teams often do not add players to the 60-day DL until weeks after an initial injury – this is because teams are only allowed add players to the 60-day when they need to make use of his 40-man roster spot to bring in another player, and not before. During the season, this can lead to some frustration as ottoneu owners hope for an MLB team to move their injured player to the 60-day, but all you can do is stay aware of the rules and play with them in mind. One way you can be proactive is to prepare thoroughly for your annual auction – we often see owners draft a player expecting to see him hit the 60-day DL, only to have to wait weeks or months, and you can avoid getting stuck in that kind of situation by doing some research on official DL statuses before the draft, and never assuming you can predict whether a player will go on the 15- or 60-day DL.

Unfortunately, injuries are an unpredictable part of the game, just like they are in real life, and if there’s one thing we can say for sure about injuries in ottoneu, it’s that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for how to proceed. Three different teams could own Kyle Schwarber at the same price, but if one is contending, one rebuilding, and one came into the season on the fence, those owners will have very different needs when it comes to their next move. If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of a major injury, the best thing you can do is slow down and think critically about exactly what your team needs, and how to try and reach that goal. Best of luck, and may your players stay as healthy as possible!