This message over at Alex's web site is a pretty typical sample:
As a commissioner of a 12 Team Ultra League, N.L. only, that plays in the standard 5X5 scoring system, the following trade was made, which I approved. Many owners thought the trade was unfair. Any advise out there would be greatly appreciated:
TEAM A Is trying to win this year, thus traded four players as follows: D. Weathers $4, J. Germano $7, M. Morris $7, & Dodger AAA player D. Young $2. All players are in their first year of a three year contract.
Team B: Playing for next season, states they will keep all of the above. He traded these players for them: A. Dunn $39, B. Webb $25, D. Wells $6, & C. Carpenter $7 (end of his contract, can not be kept)
We've all howled at trades like this before, not so much because Dunn and Webb are an excessive amount to surrender in a dump trade, but because the players the rebuilding team got really don't fit the rebuilding profile. Weathers (37) and Morris (32) don't fit the profile of players ripe for improvement, and their current performance levels don't even put them in the second tier for pitchers.
Generally speaking, though, I have a hard time voting to veto a trade, or suggesting that a trade should be subject to a veto vote. Beyond the fact that such a maneuver can cause animosity for years to come, I know that different owners have different philosophies than I do regarding dump deals.
My feeling on the trade above is that Weathers and Morris are hardly undervalued, Germano is undervalued if he maintains his current performance, but probably isn't likely to do so, and Young is a wild card who isn't helped by the fact that the Dodgers currently have a logjam of young infielders. However, I do agree with the fact that all four of these players, knowing what we know today, are probable freezes next year.
If you're reading my blog, and you don't play in a carryover league (or if you're new to Roto and wondering what it's all about), the trade above might give you pause. I would say that I've seen more one-sided trades than this make it through my leagues without any kind of protest at all, where one young player who isn't all that great gets shipped to a non-contender with three complete bums for two stud hitters, one solid pitcher and a throw-in who isn't great but is a player who will contribute. It happens, and if you don't like it, I suggest a better solution than putting your angry hat on is finding a league that buys full rosters every year. If you can find me a league like that, please let me know. I've been searching ever since I started playing Roto for leagues that don't carry over.
So when should you worry about imbalanced trading?
There are two instances where I say you should consider protesting and overturning a trade.
1) Switchback trades: Owner A is dead meat and out of the running. Owner B has a cheap Mark Teahen, so he ships Teahen to Owner A for Vlad Guerrero, Miguel Tejada and Joe Nathan. You feel like you could have done better for those players, but Teahen is a $7 player next year, so you can understand why Owner A wanted Teahen.
Flash forward to March 2008. Owner A looks at the auction, decides he doesn't like the fact that there isn't much hitting to buy, so he ships Teahen back to Owner B for Guerrero, who I should mention is priced at $44.
Is Mark Teahen going to win Owner B the league next year? Most likely not. But A basically gave B Tejada and Nathan for his 2007 run and got nothing for 2008 in terms of undervalued players. When this happens, I smell a big rat.
2) An owner doesn't keep any of his "next year" talent. This shouldn't be confused with changing circumstances. An owner who traded for Ervin Santana early this year in a dump deal who doesn't keep him next year at $10 shouldn't be punished. It's the owners who trade for borderline talent in the first place and then throw that talent back who should be taken behind the barn and given the Ol' Yeller treatment.
These trades aren't just limited to dump deals. More commonly, these trades happen in mid-March. This winter, I saw an owner trade a $10 Prince Fielder heading into a contract year for an $18 Shawn Green. If the trade itself made me sick to my stomach, what made me head for the toilet was the fact that the guy who got Green threw him back! Giving away Fielder like this was bad enough. Unless Green had broken his leg the last week of spring training, there's no excuse for throwing a player back you gave up so much to get.
In both instances, it's still hard to kick an owner out if something like this happens once. We all have our bad days. I've made stupid trades, and I'm sure if you're reading this you have as well. The goal when you trade is to get the better of the other guy, and sometimes your opponent will outfox you.
What you really need to watch for is when it is always the same owner or two who benefits. In both examples I mentioned above (example #1 is from 10 years ago, but I changed the players in the example), the same two owners always seemed to making these trades with each other. Typically, in these situations, one of two things happens:
- The owner in question is consistently incognito, except in the case of his customary trading partner. Like your friendly neighborhood drug dealer, he might even have a super-secret cell phone number that only his trading partner has.
- The owner in question goes through the motions with all of the other owners, but you know that he's not going to trade with anyone else. You might make him the soundest, most logical offer in the world, but he's going to trade with his pal.
In these cases, you need some sort of mechanism to overturn trades. Like I said, I don't like overruling trades, but you need to recognize the symptoms of when two owners are cheating. Even if they're not cheating, if trade after trade goes down like this, they might as well be cheating, and your league is going to go down the tubes as long as you let the shuttle from the two teams continue unfettered.
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