Auction season is nearly upon us, which means many of you are scouring the web to find your draft projections, auction values, sleepers, and more. And, scour as you might, you are not finding anything that even closely resembles ottoneu auction values.
But we here at RotoGraphs are nothing if not obliging and so, for the second year, I am going to present you with auction values for all ottoneu formats.
Fantasy owners all have their little quirks. Every league has the guy who drafts closers way too early, or the owner (or owners) who just cannot stay away from their hometown team.
But me, I am the guy who builds a roster full of players with heavy platoon splits. I am the guy who will go the extra dollar for Matt Joyce, sign Brandon Moss and target Justin Morneau. I know full well that these players often ride the pine or put up ugly stats when left in the game for the wrong matchup. But I don’t care.
And not caring has served me well. The reality is, in certain circumstances, these players are vastly undervalued in fantasy. And this happens for a number of reasons.
First, there is just the general buzz around them. “Yeah, his stats are okay, but you know he can’t hit lefties at all.” Suddenly a lot of owners take a $10 player and discount him because he struggles in 30% of his PA. Forget the fact that the stats used to value the player already take his ugly split into account.
Second, the player’s numbers get deflated. Matt Joyce fell two home runs and three stolen bases shy of a 20-10 season in 2013 and without a doubt hitting those milestones would have impacted his standings. The fact that you could have used him in the 109 games he started and gotten 17 of the HR and all seven of his SB, and still had 53 games – a full third of a season – with another player to make up the difference, that fact somehow gets ignored.
The goal of any fantasy auction/trade/roster building exercise, though, should be to accrue the most production at the lowest cost, and platoon players can help you do that. Here is a perfect example:
Every year, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of articles, blog posts, magazines and more offering up auction values for fantasy baseball. And almost all of these fit a fairly specific set of rules – rosters in the mid-20’s, budgets in the mid-$200’s, traditional 5×5 stats. ottoneu, however, lives in a different universe and plays by its own rules. We scoff at your tiny rosters and insignificant budgets! We do not settle for your traditional 5×5 roto scoring!*
So often, I am asked how to translate a $31 Justin Verlander or a $37 Miguel Cabrera (their actual values in 2012, according to the system devised by Zach Sanders) into a fair price in ottoneu. This is an issue I struggle with every season, particularly as we start talking about the second or third seasons of a league where more than half the dollars and roster spots are often taken up before the auction.
Around this time last year, FanGraphs announced a partnership with ottoneu, bringing a new fantasy baseball format to the masses: year-round auction dynasty without need for spreadsheets.
I am a member of the original ottoneu league, which launched in 2006 in response to frustration with the mainstream platforms. In year one of that league, most of us went through the auction and season as if it were a typical fantasy league, just one with really big rosters.
More than likely, most first-time ottoneu players did the same in 2011. Sure, there are some clear differences -– almost all leagues probably saw a few trades that would never happen in a typical keeper league, as cellar-dwelling owners tried to build for the future. And some prospects that wouldn’t deserve a second look in most leagues were probably owned.
But as I enter year seven of the original league, I’ve come to realize that, in terms of signing players at auction, setting lineups, etc., there are actually some strategies that are hard (or impossible) to pull off in most leagues that play quite well in ottoneu.