Choosing a Team - an Ottoneu How-to
Whether you’re new to fantasy baseball or you’re a salty vet, joining your first Ottoneu league likely seems overwhelming. So I’ve put together this quick and easy guide to help you get a leg up without too much of your own legwork.
It’s really simple, just two steps:
1. Claim an existing team rather than joining a new league
Your first inclination when you enter the Ottoneu homepage will be to click on that bright, shiny green button labeled “Join a League,” but in my opinion if you do that, you’re missing out on the potential of quite a bit of value. Instead, what I suggest is moving your cursor about an inch to the right and clicking on the “Claim a Team” button. Here you’ll find a list of teams that have been abandoned by their owners which you can take over.
Why do I favor this strategy over joining a brand new league? Because it’s much easier to secure value. In a draft, you don’t know how other owners value players, you’re forced to make decisions in seconds and the draft includes nearly 500 players. You rarely have any sense of whether a player is a value until it’s all said and done.
2. Use the Ottoneu Surplus Calculator to help you choose your team
Now, one of the great things about Ottoneu is the community of passionate participants. One of those passionate participants (and a contributor to Fangraphs, which hosts Ottoneu), is Justin Vibber. He created a tool he calls the Ottoneu Surplus Calculator (SC) which he makes available – for free – to all Ottoneu owners. You can find it here, there is information and instructions both on that page and inside the SC. Something that isn’t made clear, to find a team’s league number, go to the team’s page on Ottoneu, you’ll find it in the address bar, it will read something like this: https://ottoneu.fangraphs.com/league number/team?team=team number.
Enter each team into the SC, keeping an eye on Keeper Value and Proj. Team Value for each team. The specific numbers you are looking for depend on the league. Thankfully, the SC helps with that too. You want numbers that are highlighted in green, the darker the shade the better. This process should whittle down your options to just a handful of teams. From there, use your best judgement to choose the team that’s right for you.
It’s that simple.
Next week, I’ll show you how to prepare for the draft.
(Photo by David Rosenblum/Icon Sportswire)