The Joy of Six Picks

When Niv Shah re-launched Six Picks as part of the Ottoneu family, I wrote both about what Six Picks is and how I play Six Picks. With another season underway, I wanted to talk about Six Picks again, but honestly, you should just go back and read those two pieces if you want that info. Instead, today I just want to talk about why I love Six Picks (with some thoughts on things you can do to make sure you love it, too).

Six Picks is a unique part of my fantasy playing. Across all my fantasy leagues, I play in only one redraft league and, to be honest, I think I am going to stop playing redraft in the future. Everything else is dynasty or keeper, mostly Ottoneu.

And then you have Six Picks, which is as far from dynasty or keeper as you can get. Six man rosters, picked daily. Forget year-to-year keepers, nothing sticks around from one day to the next. I don’t do any other daily fantasy, so this isn’t something I have much experience with. In some ways, I think Six Picks is unique in the fantasy world in general, because so much daily fantasy is about winning money.

Which brings me to the reasons I love Six Picks.

1. It’s low stress, or at least it can be. You could choose to stress about it, if you want, but the day-to-day, low-stakes nature makes it easy to just play for fun and not worry. I try to take all my leagues seriously and so I get frustrated when things aren’t going well, when trades don’t come together, when I miss out on a free agent. Six Picks, when things don’t go well, I can just laugh at my bad luck (and bad decisions) and move on.
2. It gives you an interesting view into the fantasy baseball market. Each day, you can see which players are picked the most, which players score the most and which players have had the biggest recent price changes on the Big Board. You can also view an individual player to see their price and production. Average salaries in Ottoneu and roster rates in other formats are slow to react for many players. If Shohei Ohtani struggles for a bit, he won’t get cut in any leagues. But he might get picked less in Six Picks, which will show up in his price adjustments and give you a sense of how much (or how little) the market has actually moved on him. It’s a fun little bonus and you don’t even have to play Six Picks to get it.
3. I never miss out on that exciting young star. Only one person can have Junior Caminero in each of your leagues. Only one person in each league was the first to believe in the Mark Vientos breakout. Only one person had the cash to spend on Paul Skenes after he was drafted. Across all my leagues, I don’t have any of those three on any of my teams. But in Six Picks, I have a daily chance to pick up and cheer for one of those three, or any other player I feel like supporting that day. It’s a nice cure for my FOMO.
4. The salary structure makes it easy to pick a random player on a random day, just because. Sometimes I want to take a chance on a prospect I once loved who hasn’t panned out (I’m looking at you, Jarred Kelenic). Sometimes I want an excuse to watch an aging veteran I used to love (Mitch Haniger, come on down). And spending $0.50 of your budget on a guy like that means you can go big on other spots, which means it doesn’t kill your day. I would never want one of those guys in my lineup in a season-long league, but a single day of Six Picks? Yeah, why not?
5. You can tailor your team to your personal schedule. If I am headed to T-Mobile to see the Mariners play the Tigers, like I was last week, I can load up on players in that game and give myself a little extra stake in the game. If I know I will be around in the afternoon and can watch a Wednesday getaway-day game, I might grab players from that game.
6. You can take days off, or not set a serious lineup, or anything else, without negatively impacting a league or setting yourself back. Whether Head-to-Head or Roto, a team that is checked out is both hampering themselves and creating a less-than-ideal dynamic for the league. But in Six Picks, you can take a day off, miss a week, come and go as you please, and you haven’t really hurt yourself. There are leaderboards for the season and for “sessions” and the top of those leaderboards will be mostly people who play daily, but if you don’t want to…you don’t have to.

There are a bunch of other things I like about Six Picks but, of course, I had to pick six. If I left out any, feel free to add in the comments. It didn’t make my list, but one of the best parts of Six Picks is that you can make it what you want – try to spend all $120, or limit yourself to $6; stack your favorite team or stack against them to try to spark them into better performance; put together an entire team of players age 23 or younger or maybe age 35 or older. I’d love to hear how you make it your own.