Hello everyone! If you recall last year we launched the PL Ottonewbs Fantasy League which brought together 12 Pitcher List Staffers into one fantastic league to help better understand and bring attention to Fangraphs fantastic Ottoneu format. If you followed along with us we ended up live-casting all ten hours of the inaugural draft and our stalwart commissioner, the excellent Mark McElroy has been publishing updates and lessons learned throughout our first season.
The thing about the Ottoneu format is that the real excitement begins in the offseason. First, there’s the arbitration process which allows each team to increase the retention price on other teams’ players. Then there’s the cut deadline where teams have to choose which players they will keep, and cut enough players to get under the cap and have enough cap/roster space left for the draft. It’s essential to get an idea at this point in the season where your team stands, what options sit out there for you to improve in the draft, and start wheeling and dealing again as we ramp up to the season starting.
With that in mind, the Ottonewbs league is returning to the internet stage this Saturday, February 13th at 6:00 PM EST on Twitch and Periscope to fill you in on all of the wild offseason trades, arbitration decisions, and roster cuts that we made to get ready for next month’s draft (which of course, we will be livestreaming!). We’ll go over all the rules of the offseason and walk you through the entire process while giving an overview of some strategy basics before we leap into a team by team breakdown. We’ll be joined by several of the managers to talk about the decisions that they made and give some insight into the type of decisions Ottoneu managers have to make in the offseason. In fact, if all goes well, we might even be joined by a few special guests to really let us know how badly we messed things up! Here’s the tentative schedule we currently have outlined for the live-cast:
6:00 PM EST – Introductions and Season Summary
6:05 PM EST – Arbitration and Roster Cuts
6:30 PM EST – Overview of Teams
6:35 PM EST – Team by Team Breakdowns
8:00 PM EST – Second Year Draft Strategy
8:15 PM EST – Notable Players to Target
8:30 PM EST – Wrap-up
If there are any changes to the schedule we’ll update this article and announce it on Twitter. Come join us Saturday the 13th at 6 PM EST on Twitch and Periscope. Even if you’re new to Ottoneu or are still thinking about trying it out, this is the perfect opportunity to really experience what makes this incredible fantasy format so unique, fun, and approachable. Hopefully both new players and old will gain some insight from the things we got right and from what we’ve learned over the last year. At the very least you’ll get to laugh along with us at our rookie mistakes and get better at Ottoneu right along with us.
See you on Saturday night!
Photos by Icon Sportswire / Adapted by Justin Paradis (@freshmeatcomm on Twitter)