It’s all good and thanks for the help. Just didn’t realize the difference.
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Commish for 2nd year beginner league. Couple of quick questions.
Lineups page doesn’t show who the matchup is for week 1, or a matchup schedule. Will there be some sort of side by side matchup page? Will there be a schedule so we can see the matchups going forward?
I understand the 2SP slots, no min or max innings pitched for each week. Is there still a 1500 total innings pitched limit for the season?
Just passing on some league questions I wasn’t sure enough to answer myself. Thank you for doing this!
Three posts up:
This includes season-long limits as well as matchup-long.
I’ll make sure the top post of this thread reflects the game / inning limit conversation that’s been had on the forums.
Matchups should be coming next week - I was hoping to get them out earlier, but I’m still tweaking the scheduling system. I plan on having a schedule page and the current scoreboard on the homepage as well.
That is what I thought, just wanted to be sure. Thank you.
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Given that H2H is new this year, can anyone confirm that the positional game limits still apply to those league formats?
Confirmed in this post.
Hey there, I’ve played fantasy baseball for 16 years and this is my first year trying Otteneu. While I read through the rules and several Otteneu articles in preparation for my draft, there was nothing indicating only 2 SP spots would be available each day in H2H. It was only after the first session of our inaugural league draft that this became clear. Had I known this, my draft strategy would have been much different.
As it stands, on opening day I will have to sit one of Scherzer/Severino/C. Mart. I understand wanting to prevent streaming, but I feel like this is a bad way to do it. I chose to invest pretty heavily in a top of the line rotation only to find out that I may not get to start my aces every time they pitch. I play in another league where each roster typically carries 6-8 SPs, and there is usually one day per week where at least three of those pitchers overlap. Over the course of a season, that’s a lot of lost points, especially if your strategy is to spend on elite pitching. Every league I’v played in has had at least 5 spots (either SP or P) where an SP could be started, and each has had either an innings cap or weekly starts limits to preventing streaming. Both work well.
I know I’m not the first to bring this up, but I’m wondering if a change could be made so those of us who spent $ on elite pitching won’t lose out on points. Is it possible to switch to an innings cap before the season begins? I’ve seen 60IP/week thrown out there and think it makes perfect sense.
Thanks for your consideration. I really look forward to the Otteneu challenge.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that other sites have glitches with the starts and IP limits. These are a problem. There are days where teams can go into Sunday having used 6 of 7 available starts and then have 4 SPs pitch that day. In my ESPN league, we prevented intentional streaming by limiting the number of transactions allowed. While teams will naturally have those 3-4 start days a few times per year, nobody streams pitchers because the transactions are too valuable.
I’m no tech guru and don’t understand the intricacies of programming, but isn’t there a way to have stats stop accumulating once a 60IP limit has been reached? Again, maybe this is much harder to do, but I honestly wouldn’t know.
There won’t be a change to the number of SP slots.
I wrote something a while ago about the technical limitations to preventing streaming:
http://about90feet.com/2014/06/10/lineup-records-innings-caps-and-scaling/
These aren’t bugs by the other providers - the soft cap is a conscious technical choice. Avoiding it is a big reason why the 2SP spots were compelling.
I also am not sure spending big on SP is negated by 2SP lineup slots, but that is for the season to find out. @ballnglove82 has more experience with that kind of format and he didn’t seem to think that having good SP would be a liability. Worst case, I would consider trades if you really think you have too many SP - someone out there probably doesn’t have enough.
Schedules have been released for the 8 H2H leagues that have drafted, and will be generated for leagues that haven’t drafted as soon as their draft is complete.
Please reach out to me directly if you see some weirdness with your schedule, as schedule generation is one of the hardest parts of this H2H release and I want to make sure there aren’t any glaring issues I overlooked.
I should note that while it isn’t a purely unbalanced schedule, the algorithm does lean towards scheduling division games, as long as you’ve played all the other teams the same number of times.
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I have been designing and running H2H versions of the ottoneu game on both Yahoo and ESPN for going on seven years and have used multiple rules/settings in trial-and-error to find combinations that had a balanced and agreeable game-play.
With more than 2 active SP slots and an IP limit, the incentive to carry an excessive number of SP’s and exceed the weekly limit is too great. It ultimately robs the FA pool of SP depth while Hitters who should be rostered get swapped out in favor of the extra arms; teams will even go with one or two empty Hitting spots on the active roster because the edge in those additional ~5pts/IP x 10-20 IP’s over the limit is greater than the ~5pts/G x 4-6 Games you’d be getting out of the Hitter. Inevitably, owners who are slow to the game or didn’t see this advantage before the draft will feel shorted, and the season will be lost for at least half of the league.
As @dfinan points out, there are other ways to compensate for this with other services- however, Ottoneu is different. For example, the payroll cap functions in lieu of a transaction limit- which actually adds some strategy to the game as you could potentially stream SP’s in an important matchup to try to get the most starts out of your week if you have the budget space to do so and don’t mind being out any player you cut for (at least) 30 days. The one thing that can’t be done, as Niv describes in the links he posted, is a hard limit on the number of IP or GS- and that’s true of every fantasy service.
This is why the natural limit of 2 SP’s is appropriate; more than that and the format will skew heavily toward pitching, regardless of an IP limit. There will be times when more than 2 of your SP’s start on the same day, but as it plays out over the season- because of off-days, rotation differences, weather-postponements, etc.- those three guys that start on Opening Day aren’t going to line-up on the same day every week. With all the variables that go into each matchup, a 2 SP limit does not impact the league half as dramatically as a few teams controlling the SP market and exceeding the IP limit every week does.
So you’ll have to make tough decisions on who to start each day just like any other baseball manager with an excess of talent at one position does- and everyone else in the league is on the same level playing field in doing the same thing. A balanced game centered around strategy is the Ottoneu way; welcome to a better brand of fantasy baseball!
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Why are there games played caps? That’s a really weird design decision. Basically, we’re supposed to sit hitters in blow outs so we have enough games left for the playoffs? Hitters, if anything, are less abusable than pitchers. I agree with the decision to not have an innings cap. Why didn’t that philosophy carry over to hitters too?
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There isn’t a huge swath of teams hitting 162 game caps for position players in early September - that cap is far harder to hit than the 1500 IP cap. If the game cap is hit at all, it is hit in the last few days of the season.
However, it makes a small correction towards less roster turnover and less position streaming.
If it turns out to be a huge obstacle, I’m happy to revisit it next season, but I really don’t think it will have an adverse affect on lineup choices in May.
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Apologies if I missed this somewhere more readily available, but does the 162 game positional limit for hitters apply through the playoffs for head to head leagues? Further, for a H2H league with Wildcard playoff settings, when do the playoffs start/end?
Yes, the 162 game limit for positional players is for the entire MLB season. It is not until just September 2.
Playoffs start on September 3, 2018.
There has definitely been ample information explaining the 2 SP roster decision, as well as the IP and GP rules. I’d say 11/12 players in our first year H2H FGPoints draft understood the rules beforehand. I’m a first time player and I found it, despite being old struggling with computers in general…
Ottoneu seems to provide a more realistic baseball experience than some of the other platforms. Anything that provides additional layers of strategy is a positive bonus, and that’s exactly what the 2 SP limit does. No need to gravitate towards the mean.
Here are a few of my initial thoughts on how the 2SP’s will affect things, they probably won’t be very helpful, and will undoubtedly prove inaccurate. The math is rough, at best.
- It’s going to be really hard to hit 14 GS each matchup.
- Assuming a 5 man rotation and an average of 6 games a week for a team, a SP should average about 1.2 starts per matchup.
- It will take 11-12 SP to have any shot reaching 14 GS most weeks.
- 12 teams x 12 SP =144 needed minimum.
- Only 150 dudes have rotation spots at any one time…
- I’m targeting 14-15 SP to try and make sure I hit GS max each week.
- There will be a lot of value in high IP relievers, just like real life!
- There are 5 roster spots for RP and no IP caps, it’s the one part of your roster that is open to streaming in this format! I’m targeting 8-9 RP.
- If everybody rosters a large pitching staff, its going to be very hard to hit 162 games played per offensive position because benches will be thin.
- This alone adds tons of value to multi-position eligible players.
- Benches should be thin! MLB teams don’t have backups for every position, the Giants are probably starting the season with only 4 guys on the bench…;(
MLB 25 man rosters are approximately 50% pitching/hitting. I’m thinking these rules will lead to similar roster ratios in H2H leagues.
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The season starts tomorrow, which means the official debut of H2H gameplay to Ottoneu Fantasy Baseball. Please be patient if there are any unexpected issues - I’ll be around when the first games start to make sure scoring works as expected, etc.
I also want to give a shoutout to this thread that spanned most of 2016 with ideas and suggestions for how to build a H2H Ottoneu game. I’ve granted a few users from that thread the Genie badge due to their helpful comments and feedback.
Keep giving me your feedback and keep building that wishlist! I’m always looking to improve Ottoneu. I hope 2018 is the best season yet.
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