Mock Drafts and Draft Bots

Today I’m happy to announce that Ottoneu now has Mock Drafts. Mock Drafts bring the exact same functionality of the league auction draft room with none of the overhead of running an Ottoneu team. Use them to get acclimated to the draft room, get some practice in the early pre-season, or see how values may have changed as the season gets going.

Mock drafts will be limited to only 8 active mock drafts at a time, with any user only being able to create one at a time. They will only be available on weekdays during March, as league auction drafts have priority from a server resources perspective. They will continue to be available year round for free - there is no requirement at this time to even have an Ottoneu Fantasy Baseball team to participate in a mock draft.

Due to their limited availability, please promptly end your mock drafts when you are done - those of you who don’t will lose the privilege of using this system.


In addition to mock drafts, today I’m extremely excited to share that Ottoneu now has Draft Bots. Draft Bots can be used to fill out a mock draft with a computer participant or proxy for human-controlled teams. They are only available in mock drafts at this time, but I hope to bring them to league auction drafts next season. Using the Draft Bot is a bit more complicated, so let’s break it down:

Draft Bots as a proxy for your team

If you join a mock draft, you’ll see a robot button.

Screen Shot 2023-03-09 at 10.45.49 AM

If you click this button, you’ll be taken to the Draft Bot values page for your team in this mock draft. Here you can set specific max values for a player that the Draft Bot will not go over:

You can also upload a CSV of player IDs and dollar values, the draft bot proxy will set these as its max bid amount for all the players in the CSV. The format required is:

Ottoneu Player ID, Max Bid
For example, a .CSV file containing the line:

6805, 70

would set a max bid of $70 for Mike Trout (Player ID 6805). Max bids must be in whole dollar amounts.

Back in the mock draft, you’ll see a new checkbox that only exists on the mock draft page:

Screen Shot 2023-03-09 at 10.49.35 AM

If this box is checked, your team name will become light blue in the team list and the Draft Bot will take over bidding and nominating for you. It will bid +$1, +$2 or +$5 up to the defined max bid for a given player. It will attempt to nominate the top player availalbe at $1. Any player that is not explicitly defined on the aforementioned Draft Bot Values page will be bid up to a certain default number that I’ll dig into a little bit further down.

Everyone who makes draft prep tools: time to make Draft Bot Values exports! This is super exciting and obviously has huge potential for league auction drafts down the line.

Draft Bots to fill out a mock draft

If you create a mock draft and can’t find enough people to fill it out, you can add a draft bot to your mock draft and let it bid independently.

First you need to click the gear icon:

Screen Shot 2023-03-09 at 10.56.12 AM

On this page you’ll see another Robot button next to a label that says “Add Draft Bot”. Once you click this, you should see a Bot added to your draft:

Screen Shot 2023-03-09 at 10.57.04 AM

You will also see a column to the right with a Bot icon header - checking a box in this column brings a Bot online to control the associated team, and unchecking the box turns the bot off for this team. You will know a bot is online if the associated team name in the mock draft turns light blue.

Screen Shot 2023-03-09 at 10.58.01 AM

Draft Bots that are independent will nominate the best available player and bid up to a generated max amount. As I mentioned above, this is also how a Draft Bot proxy will bid for a team unless the team explicitly sets a max bid using Draft Bot Values. The amount the Draft Bot will bid is dependent on its team’s current depth chart and the player’s average salary in first year leagues, with some variance built in. It is meant to be simple but a somewhat accurate reflection of current valuations with minimal context, which will make the default Draft Bot not quite as good as a human, but an able proxy in a pinch.


TL;DR Mock Drafts have come to Ottoneu and Draft Bots that will auto-bid on behalf of a team can be tested in Mock Drafts

Mock Drafts will live here:
https://ottoneu.fangraphs.com/mockdrafts

During weekends in March, you will not be able to visit this part of the site, but once the season starts I’ll do my best to make this available 7 days a week until March 2024. I’m excited about both of these features and how the community will take advantage of them.

Thanks to @chy924, @vibbot and @mmaude for helping me out with early testing and feedback, and the whole #mock-drafts crew on Slack, especially @emptyflight, @kaufmana315, @jasonmycoff and @leifer for user testing over the last 2 days and for the great suggestions that made everything flow better.

And of course, thanks to all of you for supporting Ottoneu Fantasy Sports!

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Question / idea – is there a way to compile the results to create a new average salary listing on player pages? Something like: “2023 Mock Draft Average” and “2023 Last 10 Mock Draft Average”?

I plan on doing this once I see what the nature of mocks are that people run - that is, if it is useful-ish data.

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Wowza! Thanks @nivshah !

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Are the players’ costs in the mock drafts excluded from the players’ average and median player costs? (total and Last 10).

Yes, they’d be a separate metric if they are ever presented

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As a reminder, Mock Drafts are available on site until Saturday morning.

https://ottoneu.fangraphs.com/mockdrafts

After Opening Day, they’ll be available 7 days a week.

I’ve unlocked this feature for everyone’s use again and hope to have it unlocked the rest of the year. Please let me know if you have feedback on using Draft Bots, using the mock draft, or how the draft bots bid.

Thanks!

A post was split to a new topic: Add mock draft roster organizer

I’m bumping this thread from last year to remind everyone about these features, as it is both mock draft and draft season.

Additionally, I am going to automatically end drafts that have been idle for over 7 days going forward. This will allow more people a chance to use these tools.

Thanks everyone for supporting Ottoneu!