Are you new to the game of Ottoneu? This is the perfect forum for you. Ask your questions here, get a feel for the game, and get prepared for your first season of the best fantasy game around.
For those new to Ottoneu preparing for their first Ottoneu auction draft, here’s a video of the draft room:
More details on the Ottoneu auction: http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/the-auction-draft/
Hi, this is my first year playing ottoneu and I love it. The disclaimer above the pitchers on the lineup page says “SP must be used as SP and RP must be used as RP.” How is this tracked? Raisel Iglesias has RP/SP eligibility. Does this mean I would not get credit for his stats if I put him in an RP slot? Alternatively Kenley Jansen also RP/SP eligibility. Would his stats not count if I put him in an SP slot? Thanks.
Good question. The answer is that the SP/RP eligibility really doesn’t matter in Ottoneu the same way it does for position players. You only receive credit for points/stats that accumulate from the P in slot they are actually playing in MLB that day. For instance you could place a reliever like Dylan Bundy in the SP slot but he will only accrue points that day if he started the game for BAL. Likewise, if you place Iglesias in your RP slot, he’d only accrue stats if he did not start the game for CIN (he’d have to come into the game later as a true reliever to get stats counted. In essence Ottoneu tracks all this automatically for P, so you can neither mess it up or game the system.
Hey guys, I’m a fresh ottoneu player this year, and I was just wondering how people organise their trades. Do they send trade proposals straight away, or do they message the other person and try and hash out a deal through chatting? Im just wondering what the best way is, people take a long time to reply to messages sometimes, but you can find out more that way. Cheers
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Good question. I would say the more you get to know your other 11 owners on a personal basis, the more you will enjoy Ottoneu and your league (and the easier trades will become). Every owner has tendencies, biases, quirks, etc., so it’s good to play the long game and get to know these guys as you’ll be making trades with them for years (hopefully). Slack has been helpful for quick messages and discussions, but the inbox of your league page is also good, and I use both when talking trade. If you have interest in another owner’s players, send them a message letting them know, asking what they might need for their own team. I’d also recommend updating your Trade Block frequently (and encouraging others to update their own). In my oldest running Ottoneu league we sort of have a gentlemen’s agreement that every owner will update their Block weekly.
Both @vibbot and @jjdouglas have been playing a lot time too, so they may have other suggestions on tradesmanship.
The only thing I have to add to what @LuckyStrikes already said is that sometimes my approach is different depending on the makeup of the league. If I’m in a league with 11 other guys I don’t know very well, and there seems to be very little activity, I will tend to make offers without messaging the owner first, and then if they reject/counter with a comment I can go from there. I’ve been in many leagues where an owner won’t respond to messages or update his trade block, but will accept trades out of the blue. On the other hand, in a league with a lot of activity and knowledgeable owners that are familiar with each other, I will almost always reach out via a message on Ottoneu or Slack to get a dialogue going. No matter the league I try to always keep an updated Trade Block.
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An issue has arisen in our ottoneu league that I seem to be the only one who fundamentally finds this wrong. I’m not sure it’s just a baseball issue, but I don’t play football so it may exist there as well. So let me start by showing an example:
5th Place Team started the year by keeping Billy Hamilton for $14, but then had a moment of clarity in realizing that Billy Hamilton is not a good baseball player, and is not as good a fantasy player in Ottoneu as he is in rotisserie. In fact he’s downright useless and has not lived up to his immense promise. So 5PT cuts him for a $7 cap penalty. Now here’s the thing: Since that initial cut (Jan), 5PT has renominated him for auction and won, because nobody wants Billy Hamilton, and now he only has a $4 salary, which he then cuts again (May) for only $2 cap penalty.
The bigger problem is that instead of having cap penalties for the initial cut ($7) and the second cut ($2) totaling $9, 5PT now only has the $2 penalty. Perhaps realizing this, 5PT has extended this tactic to other toxic assets on their roster (Jered Weaver, CJ Wilson, Andrelton Simmons, JJ Hoover, and more), rinsing and repeating drop-adds to whittle his cap penalty down from $24 to $12 for 9 players who initially had salaries totaling $47.
Do you think this is legit? It’s clearly enabled by the system, and you can only start an auction on a player 30 days after cutting that player. But I don’t think the cap penalty should be forgiven if the player never changes teams. To me this is clearly manipulating the cap penalty mechanic. Other teams have noticed 5PT’s tactic and started doing it with their own toxic asset cap penalties. We’ve had a discussion of it on our league message board, and I seem to be in the minority of thinking it’s BS.
For me personally, I’m choosing not to engage in the same cap penalty manipulation and hope I win the league without doing so, but adding significant extra payroll space in this way doesn’t just affect the team doing it – they now have more cash for later season roster additions via auction, or the ability to take on more salary through trades than they otherwise would have.
So what do you think, ottoneu community? Should I say screw it and join with them? Is anyone in your league doing this, and should it be allowed? Could this be addressed in this season or in 2017 with an adjustment to the cap penalty system? Or am I just making a big deal over nothing?
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Gonna ping @vibbot and @chy924 for more details, but I will say that this is not only legit, but absolutely part of the game. It allows for some forgiveness for bad contracts, and everyone should do this if possible. There is a 30-day period so that there is some pain in lowering cap penalties, but this also allows for forgiveness on bad salaries, especially salaries that are so bad that no other team is willing to take them on.
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I will echo @nivshah and say that at this point the 30 day re-auction strategy is an established part of the game of ottoneu, but you aren’t alone in thinking the tactic isn’t quite kosher, as many of my leagues went through the same experience and discussions a few years ago. My advice? Take advantage of the way the system works, and don’t feel guilty about it, since the creator of the service himself has declared it a valid (and intended) tactic.
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I’ll second what @nivshah said - I think this is legit. a couple thoughts, though:
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In terms of maintaining league parity and keeping all 12 teams interested, it is in no one’s best interest to punish bad mistakes any more than they are already punished. Keep in mind that the owner of a $14 hamilton was wasting 3.5% of his salary cap space on a worthless asset during the auction, when there were actually useful pieces he could have spent on. And he thne had a $7, $4, and $2 penalty for April, May and June, respectively before settling into a $1 penalty the rest of the year. This is a sizable penalty, but the relief gives him a better chance to bounce back.
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While Hamilton is a case of bad ownership, perhaps, it also could be a case of an owner adjusting to a different format. And what about a guy like Michael Brantley, whose value is plummeting right now? Or AJ Pollock? Should an owner of a $30 player who gets hurt be stuck with a penalty all year due to that bad luck? I think the ability to lower the penalty makes sense.
Another scenario - I added Doolittle for $12 in a 5x5 this year. He lost the closer job and I eventually cut him cause I needed the cash. He is playing better now and is up for auction again. Assume I win him (let’s say for $8) and he then gets hurt or something else. Or just never closes again, and I need to cut him again later - should I still have a $6 cap penalty when the market price for him right now today was just $8 and another team would only get a $4 cap penalty? Probably not. But what if I cut him the second time like a day later cause he gets hurt right away? So you have to draw that line somewhere and it’s not easy to draw. I at one point years ago pushed for a rule that you could not cut a guy you just signed (so if I win the auction on Doolittle, I have to cut someone else to clear space for him) but in practice that just creates logistical difficulties while not changing the fact that I can cut Doolittle a day later anyway.
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Thanks for the answers, everyone. I guess I see that I am indeed in the minority, but it’s nice to at least receive a little validation that it’s viewed as more of an allowed quirk that results in forgiveness of bad contracts. However…I do think that there could be a different mechanic of doing that (bad contract cap penalty forgiveness), because as is it is ambiguous, or at least “hidden” as a tactic until you see someone else do it.
Like, if you think that bad contracts shouldn’t hinder the annual salary cap, maybe make cut players cap penalties automatically ratchet down over the months of the season without requiring nomination/bidding/cutting cycles. Just seems very artificial to me whereas the rest of ottoneu is a bit more “realistic” relative to the 6x6 H2H I’d played for years before trying ottoneu in 2015.
Anyways, thanks for the responses and I’ll stay tuned. I’ve made such a stink about it in my league that I think I’ll abstain from it for this year…as long as I remain in first place 
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Is the innings minimum for pitchers the same in weekly and daily leagues?
I’ve confirmed, yes, the 1250IP minimum is across all leagues.
Is the innings minimum only for 4x4 classic? I’m in a 5x5 league and have teams asking if there is a minimum for us as well.
It is across all league formats - points, 4x4, 5x5, daily lineups, weekly lineups. No matter what flavor of Ottoneu Fantasy Baseball you are playing, there is a 1250IP minimum. That is what I meant by “all leagues” in the post you replied to.
Got it. May want to clear up the section in the rules then that reads “iii. There is a 1250 inning minimum threshold for pitchers in ottoneu classic (4x4) leagues. If a team does not meet this threshold, it will receive 0 points for all pitching categories.”
To me that would imply it’s not the same in others.
And now I must backtrack, because I have no idea what I was looking at before and was wrong in my last couple of posts. Those that are new here - I do this a lot
Points leagues and 5x5 do not have innings minimums. The reason is that there is already enough incentive to use innings. They both have innings caps, of course.
Only 4x4 leagues have inning minimums. This minimum is not affected by daily lineups vs weekly lineups.
cc @FlyTheW
Sorry about the mistake, the last month has been a blur.