Man, I forgot about this place. No time for apologies, let’s get into it.
It is February 19, 2014. There is a high likelihood of a lot of new users coming to ottoneu in the next month before the season starts, but let’s look at where things are now, shall we?
- 1917 active teams.
- 25 active prize leagues and 123 active non-prize leagues.
- 401,293 player transactions, spending $538,395 in ottoneu cap.
I’m going to throw a parade when we get over $1mil in cap spent. There are a few other important things to note, especially in regards to the now woefully outdated first 30 days post. My users remain incredibly patient and smart and understanding. The number of “shit is broken” emails have decreased to a trickle – ottoneu has become a relatively stable (KNOCK ON WOOD) platform! Even the auction drafts are performing smoothly, to the point where most of the emails about them are for really interesting feature enhancements, not “man this was slow, give me some money back.”
So, that is the basic state of things today. Now, what are the big things on the horizon? Well, there are 3 big initiatives this year, each worthy of its own series of posts:
- Rewriting the stats backend – after determining that a soft innings cap (and thus allowing pitcher streaming on the last day of the season) was a double-edged sword for owners and self-balancing, there is a massive opportunity for performance improvements and general efficiency with ottoneu’s stats backend. This project is ongoing and should be wrapping up in the next couple of weeks. It should be completely transparent to users, and it has to get done before the season starts. So, that’s priority #1.
- A better lineup page experience – the lineups page is fine, it gets the job done. But during the long baseball season, this is where a lot of time is spent. It also is the basis for the off-season roster organizer. More stats, splits, and a smoother experience swapping players in and out will go a long way towards making ottoneu feel world-class.
- A full redesign – while I may have sentimental attachment to the Waste Management colors and my crazy-good (read: not) logo, I think ottoneu can look significantly better. This project is actually really close to being done, but probably won’t be released until the All-Star break, just to tighten everything up and not get in the way of the top two priorities. The new logo looks boss.
That is where things stand going into this season. I plan on keeping a loose development blog here, so feel free to comment here, tweet at me, hit me up on Facebook, or just plain email me (help at ottoneu dot com). I cannot wait for baseball. Good luck this season!
Ottoneu is great, I’m a big fan of the format as well as the consistently high quality of managers in the leagues. There are really only two things that I feel are necessary changes to an otherwise awesome experience:
1) Draft days really need to be more readily available. It’s hard enough trying to coordinate with a group of 10-14 people to get a day set (especially when an auction can take a full day) but the lack of weekends available for a draft is a severely limiting factor. I understand that we can do drafts over multiple days, but that really only makes things worse with regard to getting people together to schedule time.
2) Head-to-Head. Many of us who were brought up on fantasy baseball in H2H leagues just can’t wrap our minds around how a roto league can even approach the level of fun that a H2H league provides. It’s been a struggle to recruit some friends over from Yahoo because of this factor.
Yahoo and ESPN have several things going for them (like links to news, some extra options for stats, free to play, etc.), but they’re inconsequential to me if the preceding two things were changed/fixed.
I truly do love Ottoneu and really hope my suggestions are taken on board.
Glad to hear you’re working on the lineup page. I find myself spending a lot of time switching between tabs to check out players’ platoon splits, and having access to that info on the lineups page will really improve my experience.
That said, ottoneu is already, by far, the best fantasy baseball experience I’ve ever had, so any improvements will be gravy!
I like 95% of what ottoneu is but…
Would love to see NL and AL only leagues.
I don’t like the arbitration system or voting a player off the island. Would rather see a set # of years an owner can keep a player (that can be set by the commish) before they become a free agent. It would be a lot more realistic. I won’t be in a league with an arbitration system.
Keep up the good work. Thanks
I want to be completely positive. I play in a FanGraphs points league and I would change absolutely nothing about it. Ottoneu is truly a year-round addiction. I am suffering from real withdraw right now as it’s a five-week gap between the trade/keeper deadline.
Great job Niv! Let’s get that once teased football format going for 2014 so I can import my football keeper league.
Change the format of this site though so I can edit my “withdraw” to “withdrawal”. My spelling OCD is eating me alive right now.