Good Morning!
We are supposed to be preaching patience to you. We are supposed to tell you not to panic and not overvalue what are still some pretty meager statistical samples when we look at our rosters.
That is always good advice in early May.
But there's something to be said for being the Yankees too. There is something to be said for recognizing that it is time to make a move. When appropriate, and that's often a difficult call, it is sometimes smart to jump the market ... to be proactive. Sometime you go out and get Rogers Clemens. That is the way Champions act.
And sometimes the market jumps you. If people are talking trade in your league, you cannot bury your head in the sand and wait for your samples to mature for four more weeks.
The bottom line is that it is time to start our trading series. Trading is at once the most important tool in your in-season toolbox and the most complicated tool to master. For the next 4 weeks we'll explore the process and try to polish your trading skill set.
The Eye of the Beholder
Some of you are deep into the trading seasons in your league already. Leagues that trade actively or those that are single-season leagues are probably several trades in at this point. Many of us however have been patiently, evaluating our rosters while waiting for others in our leagues to do the same, and for the trade market to heat up. Here in the middle of May we have settled into one strata or another in our standings, we have medical issues, and most importantly, we have a decent sample of performance, which allows us to have an idea of what we need, and what we have to trade for it. All of these impressions will be a lot more solid a month from now, but if the market is moving in your league you have to go along, even if it's just to see what's on the shelves.
Effective trading in Fantasy Baseball is a matter of opportunity, but your league's successful traders are probably quite good at both seizing opportunity, and perhaps more importantly, creating opportunity. Usually the more accomplished dealers in any given league are more aware, more alert, and more aggressive then their counterparts. Over the next 4 weeks I'll be going through the trading basics, so that you can go out and take advantage of what is the highest-impact tool in the fantasy owner's toolbox.
The basics of completing a trade lie in the principle that you are going to get better by trading something you have in exchange for something that is of more value to you ... more valuable "to you"... That's a key point that is often overlooked.
In Moneyball we learned that Billy Beane overcame the A's payroll issues by taking advantage of what the book called "inefficiencies in the market". What they were talking about were biases, misconceptions, prejudices, and laziness in other owners that resulted in a separation between what they thought player's value was, and what that player's value actually was. That is one aspect of what Moneyball labeled as "inefficiencies."In our world, this comes into play more predominantly in the preseason, during our drafts.
What we see in the trade market however is the misconception that you evaluate a trade solely on the players involved in the deal itself. In reality, the merits of a trade have much more to do with how it affects each team's roster than it does the players involved in the deal. Or, to put it another way, you can't evaluate a trade until you are able to understand what each player's value is to each team. To trade effectively, you need to understand the difference between what any given player's value is to you, as opposed to what his value is to someone else. The idea is to identify the differences in those values and exploit them.
Still with me?
Effective traders are aware of player values and how they vary by perspective and that goes beyond just being a better judge of a player's value than other owners in your league are. Even if every owner in your league were equal in their ability to quantify the value of a player, that player still has three distinct and different values.
One is their value in the league as a whole. In our league, we call this "Market Value", and a player's value in your league is dependent on league format, scoring systems, house rules, roster setup, number of teams and free agents, etc.
This value also has some similar aspects to one of the principles we read about in Moneyball. All leagues have biases. My league for example seems to undervalue 30+ players and overvalue rookies and prospects. Part of that has to do with our service-time rules and the general structure of our league format, but some of it simply has to do with owners being enamored with young players and their potential, as opposed the relative certainty of a veteran player. A 34-year-old player in my league in my league that hits .280 with 25 HRs and 10 SBs is going to be valued at a fraction of the value of a 24-year old player who produces the same thing. In other words I can get those stats for less if the player is 34-years old than I can if he is 24-years old. The stats count the same however, and have the same value, no matter what the player's age is. That is one bias that I can exploit.
Each player also has a separate value to each individual owner. There are biases and other factors that are exclusive to each individual owner that can be exploited as well. Some are subjective, for example, every league has an owner that will overvalue a player from his favorite team. That can be exploited.
Other factors are circumstantial, and player's values are affected by injuries and roster status. For example if the guy you are trading with owns Derek Lee and Albert Pujols (and of course they aren't injured) then Carlos Delgado may not mean as much to him in trade offer as you would expect ... unless of course, he's a huge Mets fan.
Normally you are not going to get far by offering him another first baseman. But, of course things change. Each team's roster is fluid. Its needs and surpluses change with every game, every comment in every morning paper, and obviously, every injury.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, each player has a value to you. For example and it may be hard to believe, but after three weeks of a 6.00+ team ERA, and a team WHIP of 1.75, Estaban Loaiza starts to look very good.
We have all been there.
Understanding the differences in a player's value in any given trade scenario is the key to making good trades. If you have an owner in your league who owns a healthy Lee, Pujols, and Delgado and can only play two of them in your format, then talk to him. The chances are that one of those players can be had at a bit lower than market value, especially if you have something to offer him that he needs.
Those first basemen are going to be available in trade for less than if a team had only one of them. The fact that their team has a surplus at first base, and almost assuredly has needs elsewhere, lowers the value of that trio of first basemen below their overall market value. How much lower is dependant on the owner's biases and the urgency of his other needs. But what we know for sure is that those factors certainly lower their value well below what any of those players are worth to you, if you start Kevin Millar at first base every week. In this instance, those guys are much less valuable to the team that owns them than they are to you. If you have a player that is worth more to that owner, than he is to you, then you are half way to making a trade.
There are many facets of a player's value ... his true value ... his value to your roster, and what his owner THINKS is his value to his roster. The differences in those values are where you eat. You need to understand all of them.
Its all about cost vs. return, risk vs. reward. You want to find players who value has been distorted enough to their owners that you can acquire them at a cost that assures they will return more than you paid for them.
That often has less to do with the overall value of the players involved than you might imagine. To use the above example, if that team we've been talking about trades, Carlos Delgado for Todd Jones, then you might think he's over paid. But considering that Delgado would be the first baseman he doesn't play when Lee and Pujols are healthy, and that he either gets no saves now, or he owns Eric Gagne and Tom Gordon, you can see where Jones would be a more valuable asset to his team than a reserve first baseman ... any reserve first baseman.
In the end that is all that really matters. It doesn't matter if Carlos Delgado is an overpay for Jones. What matters is that after the trade, that owner's team is better. A trade isn't about the value of each player. It is about the value of each player to each team involved.
The only way you can criticize that owner for trading Carlos Delgado for Todd Jones is if Jones was not the best closer, or best return overall, that he could get. That has to do with shopping your assets and we will get to that later in the series. If Jones is the best closer, and best offer he could get in his league, then that trade makes sense ... for that owner ... and that's the only owner that it needs to make sense for.
Obviously, the key to being able to find such differences in a player's value is paying attention to what's going on around you. Alert traders get outside the cocoon of their own team and the current week. They are aware of the teams whose pitchers have been bombed in the last two weeks. They see Rich Harden go down and they check the roster of the team that owned him. Does the team have a replacement for him? Do you have something you can offer him while he is panicking?
Alert owners have a handle on the current emotional state of every owner in the league. They find teams with needs that fit their surpluses and they stalk those teams, waiting for an opening. If you have one or two more effective starters than you can use, find a team who is struggling on the mound. They will be willing to offer more for your player than most teams and they may possibly offer even more than your excess starters are worth. But the important question is whether they can offer you something that is of more value to you than your excess starters.
Keep an eye on the league's Big Picture. Know who is falling in the standings and who is beginning to look towards next year. Know what each transaction means to each team in your league. How does it shuffle the value of the players on their rosters? Does that create opportunity for you to make a deal? You need to know.
One owner you talked to last week loves his starting staff, but Harden has gone down again and he just got a look at last week's stats and now he hates all of them. Another owner thought he was going to be ok with Freddie Sanchez at second base, but now he's not so sure. The guy who owns the rights to Roger Clemens sees him sign with the Yankees and before he's seen him pitch this year, he's feeling pretty good right now. Maybe he is open to dealing a starter ... The league's picture changes every day. To trade effectively you have keep up.
Every MLB transaction, and every set of stats that your league puts out, puts balls in the air and blood in the water. They create trading opportunities. Know how to read them, and then cash in on the knee jerk reactions and the separation in the value between what a player is worth to his team and what he is worth to yours.
Next week we will talk about First Contact and getting trade talks started.
