There are several pieces of Ottoneu that I enjoyed. I couldn't fully embrace because it was mix league and I don't do AL.

I do like the keeper mechanism though:

  1) No limit on # of keepers.

  2) Every major leaguer's salary increases +2 per season; every minor leaguer salary increases +1 every season.

  3) At the end of year each team votes to see which player from each team (one per team) will get tossed back into the pool. Tatis at 15? Sorry 8 of the 11 owners just voted him back into the pool.

Thx for the link, PK ... intrigues me also.  I know Kent has played Otto Neu ... but I'm too invested in traditional Roto ...

OT - Maybe "Stage Four" is when, after your Stage Three auction, you DON'T have a period of post-auction depression :-)

Eno Sarris wrote an appreciation of Ottoneu baseball for the Fantasy Baseball Guide some years back, and I was intrigued, but I didn't follow up. This story about the game's inventor and CEO has me intrigued again.

Lynchmob, I think zagging is the most effective way to play in a league of owners educated by all the current wisdom. Problem is, of course, that a zag strategy is best countered with other zags. I had a great freeze list and decided to keep all 7 hitters, planning to spend $90 or more on starters and join the 6-month scrum for saves. 

But within a couple of rounds it was clear that my closest competitors had the same zag idea, and they were bent on keeping any of the other top keeper list holders from garnering more than one expensive top starter. With all of us planning to spend big on starters, my zag plan turned zig. Lucky for me, I grabbed Berrios at $30 in round 1, but after that I was outbid, forcing me into buying secondary -- and lower -- starters. I bought hitters instead, overpaying of course, with nearly 30% inflation. From a well-researched list I had planned to buy maybe one or two starters cheaply, I bought much of my staff: Minor, Dunning, Boyd, Arihara, and Luis Garcia. The top closers, according to current wisdom, went way too expensively, so I bought Green, Mayers, and Romo. 

My auction was a double zag. Can't judge where I may finish. Talk to me in June. I"ve got Kelenic and Deivi Garcia in the minors. I like my club, but there's way too much hope in it.

$45 is exactly what I valued Yelich at with inflation. I think if you have a tendency to leave money on the table, I do, one approach is to buy the better players ie higher priced you want at or over par value, but not by more than a few dollars. So, that is an excellent buy, Mike.

We paid $45 for Yelich, so clearly we agree with Howard.  Our only
goal for PCL 2021:  not leave 10 or 12 bucks on the table like last
year, or what we call the Gregory Polanco Fiasco. 

Mission accomplished. So that's something.

Howard -- we've been throwing out the "buy your mistakes" theme since that time we shared a team in 1989 and bid 24 on Chris James to be our 3B.

I think the difference is between a redraft league and a protection league.  In a redraft league, you need to get players less than what you have on your list because you don't have any value built in. If everyone drafts a $260 team for $260, you know what happens.

In a keeper league, you want to draft people between their raw value and their inflation value - or under their raw value if you can get that lucky.

I guess you can say inflation value is what you want to buy under, but everyone allocates inflation differently, so it's not quite the same as a redraft, when player prices are pretty well known before the draft even begins.  For example, I had Trout valued at $32 raw and $60 inflation. I paid $50. I considered it a good buy. Meanwhile, I had Jose Ramirez $31 and $58. Ramirez went for $52. I had Trout already, so I couldn't bid $53 but even still, I thought I did better because I had Ramirez cheaper than Trout and he went for more than Trout.  When Merrifield came up a bit later; I had him for $26 and $49. He went for $51. More than Trout, but also more than my inflation value.  Under my system of pricing, he not only used up someone's protection value, but also ate into their $260 base.  

Maybe someone was allocating inflation by category instead of by hitters/pitchers like I do. If so, Merrifield was more valuable (inflation value) than Trout b/c SB were more scarce in my league after keepers were submitted. But, that's mere speculation. As advanced as my league is, I doubt anyone was calculating inflation by category.

re: Roto in a nutshell ... (see PCL thread) ... if you go into an auction with a mindset of "seeking value" (ie. i'll only buy guys for less than I have them on my list) ... what that translates to (in a "good league") is "getting your mistakes" :-)

And we all make mistakes ... right?

So what's the alternative?  "get your guys" ... which means "overpay ... till it hurts ... and hope you get lucky on the scrubs" ...

So ... we're back to ... how to "zag"?

Jason Martinez ran Roster Resource as a one man show for several years and now works for Fangraphs.