Getting Extra Trade Benefits

In the third column on trades and trading, we will look at ways to get some extra points from your trade efforts.

First let’s look again at the recap from the first two columns on trading:

1 – Personal Communication

2 – Get the other team to make the first offer

3 – Evaluate the other team’s roster before making an offer

4 – Make sure you know your league’s trade/keeper rules

5 – Evaluate ALL the changes to your lineup

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of points 3 and 4. It won’t help get trade negotiations started if you begin with a trade the other team would have zero interest in. I mean what would your reaction be if someone tried that with you? It also fully supports the first point – have a real conversation. There have been so many times in doing this that I found out the other team was more interested in a player I hadn’t thought of trading instead of what I perceived to be a better player. Beauty – thus value in keeper leagues - is in the eye of the beholder.  You will also avoid overpaying in trades by finding out which players on both his team AND your team your trading partner really likes.

One thing I want to address here that was not mentioned in the previous columns – trades half way through the season should be strictly based on categorical need, not on any perceived dollar earnings either pre-season or mid-year projections. You have less than three months to gain the points you need to win your league (or finish in the money). Get dollar signs and draft day ADP/AAV out of your head.

Let’s say you started the season in an AL only auction redraft league with Mariano Rivera ($19), and Jose Valverde ($13) and early in the season you added the White Sox Sergio Santos as a free agent. You are now way ahead in saves but need some home runs to get you another couple of points in that category. You have called around and found a trading partner who will deal Jhonny Peralta ($9) for Rivera. It makes zero sense for you to be hung up on the fact that you think Mariano is the better pitcher or that he cost more than either Peralta or your other closers. You will shore up a weak MI slot and add enough home runs to gain two points, maybe more if Peralta stays hot, and you will lose no points in saves regardless of which two closers you have on your team.

Let’s look at another example – this from my NL only, 11 team keeper league where these are my current pitchers: (SP) Beachy, Collmenter, Kendrick, Morton, D. Lowe, Vogelsong, McClellan, and (RP) H. Bell and Salas.  I also have Tommy Hanson and Jon Garland on the DL, Hanson who is back now and Garland should be next month. I need to trade a starter to get Jose Reyes (in his last year) who should give me enough stolen bases to gain three or four points and perhaps help in some other categories.  With the exception of Lowe, all the starters can be kept at prices from $9 to $13. If the only pitcher the Reyes owner will take in this deal is Hanson ($13C13) and making the trade would guarantee I cash this year and give me a shot to win, I make the deal.  Sure I might try and trade two of Morton, Vogelsong, Beachy, or Collmenter. But I will make the deal and I will still have Beachy as a nice keeper for next year. The object is to WIN. You get paid for where you finish THIS year, not how many baubles you have in your pocket for next year. Yes, I care about my keepers, and yes sometimes you try and do both. But you have to take advantage of the opportunity at hand. Continually playing for next year which I see people do regularly is shorting your ROI over the long term. Again, Job #1 is winning this year.

Now let’s take a look at how to gain more points through some of your trades. Long time readers may remember “Rotisserie Baseball Math”, an article I wrote several years ago and have updated a few times. The objective is to make a trade where the excess you have is traded to a specific team in the league – a team who with the player(s) you send to them will gain points in a specific category and the team(s) that lose points in that category are your competitors in the league. Thus with no changes to their lineup, they will lose points to you because you found a specific trading partner who would overtake them in a category.

If you look at the table below you will see the stolen base category and distribution of points. As you can see, it is pretty likely I can only get one or two points in stolen bases…..BUT if I could trade my Michael Bourn to Tequila Mockingbirds he would cause at least two, and as many as five teams to lose points in that category. Two of those teams are ahead of me in the overall standings, so giving up the one extra point I have now will cause my opponents to lose points. Meanwhile the closer I get from the Mockingbirds will allow me to gain points in an unrelated category, thus doubling my gain on the trade.

This type of trade will also present itself when you have an extra player after making a bigger trade. If you are going to have to cut a useful player anyway, why not trade him for whatever you can get – a lower level prospect or a swap of lower draft picks, Especially if you can trade him to a team that might take a point away from one of the teams you are competing against.