SubscribeVictor at THT Fantasy Focus brings up the following point with regard to trades in fantasy baseball:
Let’s say that you trade three $10 players for one $30 player. A few things stick out about a trade like this. Just because 10+10+10=30, it doesn’t necessarily mean a trade like this is perfectly equal. For one thing, it is much easier to find a $10 player than a $30 player. However, this also means a $30 player is harder to replace. In other words, if a $30 player gets hurt, it will be much harder to replace that production than if one of the $10 players gets hurt.
I think there is some valuable insight here. Actually, there are concepts in this paragraph that I would like to explore in much greater detail.
Before we do, let’s do this: It helps me to envision a scenario when there are real players involved and not just dollar values. So, first off, why don’t we pretend that these players have names?
Let’s call Victor’s Thirty Dollar Player, “Prince.”
We’ll name the Ten Dollar Players “Casey,” “Brian,” and “Felipe.”
In fact, why don’t we fully develop this scenario?
You have just finished your NL-only fantasy draft. As people are packing up their laptops and draft essentials, other owners are just standing around, stretching their legs after hours of sitting hunched over their draft sheets. People compare teams, talking about whose lineup looks the best and how they really like so-and-so’s pitching staff.
As you and another owner, Mike, are looking over each other’s rosters, he casually throws out a trade offer: “How about Prince Fielder, Geoff Jenkins, and Aaron Miles for Casey Kotchman, Brian Giles, and Felipe Lopez?”
The draft has numbed your mind a bit, but you can still work out the basic pros and cons in your mind. You would be giving up a very good player in Fielder, someone whom you paid $30 for barely two hours ago. But trading him would allow you to replace two black holes in your starting lineup (Jenkins and Miles).
You would end up with some solid, albeit unspectactular, players with Kotchman, Giles, and Lopez. Mike had managed to buy each of them for about $9. If you had still had some money at that point in the fantasy draft, you would have pushed them into double-digits without thinking twice.
Would you make this trade?
Do you see how this is no longer just trading three $10 players for a $30 player? These are players with names, and there is some actual context for you to consider.
Looking at the Price Guide’s projected values for those players in an NL-only fantasy league, this is essentially the same trade that Victor mentioned:
Prince Fielder $31
Geoff Jenkins $1
Aaron Miles $1
Casey Kotchman $13
Brian Giles $11
Felipe Lopez $9
Assuming that all six players have an equal probability of meeting their projections, that looks like a perfectly even trade. There is $33 in value moving to one team, and $33 coming in return.
However, we haven’t yet explored Victor’s additional considerations for a trade like this. I’ve gone on long enough just to set up this scenario, so I’ll expand on these points in a second post.
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