Ottonewbs: Colin Charles’ Draft Results and Reflection

2015 league winners in Ottoneu Old School (5×5) averaged a score of 104 (a score of 110 is boast-worthy).  One thing to note is that almost without exception, 5×5 winners placed either 1st or 2nd in their league in Runs.

Pitchers

If a player passes through waivers, 50% of his salary, rounding up, counts against his previous team’s salary cap as a cap penalty, until he is claimed by another team or until the end of the current season. Any bids for him as a free agent must be at least 50% of his previous salary.

Functionally, this means cutting a $1 player provides no cap relief until the player is claimed or otherwise added to another team.

If you want to drop a player you still retain 50% of their salary until another owner claims that player. If that player goes unclaimed, the owner who dropped that player cannot make a claim for that player until 30 days after the initial drop. After the 30 days, the original owner can claim that player, paying at least 50% of the original amount and drop the player again to clear more cap space. If you are having trouble following along, you are not alone. Here’s an example on how the 30 day rule would work:

Say an owner drafts Cody Bellinger for $92 (which is currently the maximum bid for Cody Bellinger in first year 5×5 scoring leagues). If that owner decides they want to free up cap space they can drop Bellinger, but they only get salary cap relief at 50% of his salary. They’ve effectively saved $46. If, after 30 days, nobody has tried to claim Bellinger for at least $46, the original owner an put in a claim and wins him for $46. Again the owner decides that $46 is still too much, and drops him once more. They are now on the hook for $23, but they have been able to clear $69 in salary cap space ($46 from the first drop, and $23 from the second drop). If another owner in the league decides that $23 is palatable, they can put in a claim for Bellinger, the original owner is no longer on the hook for any of that cap hit, and they’re now clear of the entire $92.

Reflection

It’s so difficult to be entirely prepared for a new league with new rules, but I wish I would have read up and understood more about surplus and value before starting this draft. “Value” is the number of dollars a player is expected to produce throughout the season, and surplus is just the player’s salary minus the value. Ideally you want to have many players returning a positive surplus. Here’s a snapshot of mine (with the surplus/value projections):

My first thought is “not great,” as there are a lot of negatives there, and a few fairly large negative surplus values. I seemed to have spent money poorly on Bregman, Yelich and Marte. But you have to remember that these numbers are based on projections right now, so if by some chance all of these players provide enough value to match their surplus then I could gain $45.

I also really struggled with setting up the auction values during the draft. I wasn’t entirely sure if I should draft according to the required roster spots, or if I should have deflated the auction values a bit by including a few bench spots. In the end I didn’t account for bench spots and attempted to spend less on players than their predicted values. I had big plans to create my own auction values, and I had almost everything set up in an R programming script to run and get my predictions, but I just ran out of time to get everything running smoothly. At least it gives me something to work towards throughout the year, and now I have the foundation in place to save myself a lot of work next year.

League Roster Updates (as of April 29, 2020) 

Since the end of our auction draft I’ve had plenty of time for roster management, and I’ve made a few roster moves:

1. Dropped Trey Mancini ($17), who was then added by Daniel Port for the full $17.
2. Dropped Brent Honeywell ($1), has gone unclaimed so I am on the hook for $1 until the end of the season
3. Added Alex Verdugo for $5

With these 3 roster moves I was able to drop my salary to $388, giving myself $12 in cap space. Certainly not a ton of room, but now at least I have some space for some in-season maneuverability.

Final Thoughts

1. Above all else, be patient – the bidding in the first hour can be fast and furious and you might feel as though you are getting left behind, but value can be found later in the draft with the precious savings from your patience.
2. Be active. Get your games played and you get your points.
3. Target offense. Get those runs!
4. Keep track of your allocation between hitters and pitchers. Decide before the draft if you want to do 70/30 or 65/35 allocation and keep track of your money.
5. Know when to pull the trigger. Too much patience might lead you to miss out on some good deals.
6. Have hourly breaks during your draft. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.