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Thursday, March 28, 2024

For many baseball fans and fantasy players, the four-day All-Star break is very painful – no box scores, no lineups to decide upon, no stats to try and judge improvement in players or teams.

Face it, you are addicted and the withdrawal is maddening.

What you should be doing is paying even more attention to your teams! Have you made improvement in your weak categories? Are you gaining points in certain categories? Do you have players who aren’t getting enough at-bats to contribute to your counting stats?

Well, if you haven’t I would guess you have decided your team is not in contention. Maybe you looked at all the categories and decided you could not gain enough points to overtake the team in front of you. But did you look at taking points away from them?

How do you take points away from them?

Well, there are lots of different trades to make. Sure, you can trade some of your extra stolen bases – you are twenty bags ahead of the team in second place in your league – for a minor closer to get a few more saves and gain a point or two. But sometimes that trade partner is impossible to find. Okay, how about trading a good source of steals that is not helping you in any other categories? (Everth Cabrera, I am looking at you) But the key is where you trade him, and I would suggest if you can’t get the deal you want, trade him to a team that is just below the team(s) ahead of you in the total standings.

If that team can gain a few points in the SB category and those are points that belong to your opponents, you have “gained” points on those teams. Teams ahead of you losing points is just as good as you gaining points. Hopefully, you can do both.

And another reminder that you don’t have to get the best of every trade, especially at this point in the season. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that we had reached the real halfway point in the season – 81 games played. While traditionally people call the All-Star Game the “halfway” point, it is much closer to 60% of the season for many teams. In fact, the lowest number of games played by MLB teams right now is 92 – that is 57% of the season, while there are a couple of teams who have played 97 games, which is 60% of the games they are likely to play. Well, okay, 59.9% - but remember not all teams will play 162 games because of all the early rainouts, some of which will not be made up. This will more than balance out any play-in games that might be necessary).

Trading now should totally focus on categorical standings – well, at least for those of us trying to “cash” in our leagues. Yes, if you are so far out of it that you should be managing your team for next year, you are looking to obtain value (even potential value) for your player assets.

So trading a $25 Alex Rios for a $19 Ernesto Frieri makes perfect sense if you have the offense covered or get back an outfielder who will contribute something so that Frieri’s saves will help you gain points.

Double bonus if you put Rios onto a team that will pass your competitor(s) in stolen bases. Likewise, overtaking that same competitor in another category where you are 1st and 2nd would result in a two-point swing in the standings.

Another thing to watch right now are players who will be coming back from the disabled list. Last month, or even last week, you could have obtained Curtis Granderson much cheaper than you can today with reports that his rehab is going well. I like Granderson to contribute in August and September (don’t delude yourself that he will help this month), but if you can’t trade for Granderson, the flip side is you should look to trade Gardner or Ichiro or certainly Almonte because the Grandyman will take at-bats away from some if not all of them once he returns.

So even though Gardner may be contributing at a $20 rate, I would trade him for half of that right now if it would help in some category (and you know he is not stealing bases at the rate you expected anyway).

Now get back to your league’s standings and find ways to help your team …and keep you busy for a few more days. {jcomments on}