In Rotisserie Baseball, is it possible to like a trade for both teams, particularly in the off-season?
I've always said that the easiest way to measure the success or failure of an off-season trade is purely from a value perspective. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't other ways to approach your roster both aggressively and with an eye on your overall plan.
I already praised the trades one of my fellow owners made in my American League. However, he made those trades with another owner who entered the off-season with a plan and executed that plan well.
This team had gone through one of those difficult two-year cycles of attempting to compete and falling into 4th place and then 5th place. The undervalued players he had built around were mostly gone or entering into the last year of their long-term contracts. Coming into this off-season, he was looking at the following players:
1B Nick Swisher $23 S1, 2B Robinson Cano $17 L1, MI Aaron Hill $15 S1, 3B Chone Figgins $12 L1, P Jeremy Accardo $1 S1, Josh Beckett $31 O, Jeremy Guthrie $10 S1, Felix Hernandez $15 L1, Jon Lester $5 S1.
Figgins obviously was a dynamite freeze, but after good freezes Cano and Felix, a lot of these guys were at par or not much under it. In a keeper league with moderate dumping, this owner's problem wasn't so much a lack of freezes as it was the fact that he didn't have any particularly attractive dump chips. With three other owners unloading early and adding those dump chips last summer, he knew that he'd be behind the 8-ball even with a solid auction.
Instead of trying to rebuild in-season, when he might get one viable future for Figgins and Hernandez, he got the ball rolling in the winter.
1) 12/19 Traded Beckett for Evan Longoria (farm) and Kelly Shoppach ($2 S1).
Longoria got sent down, but that prevents his Roto contract from starting to tick just like it does his real contract.
2) 1/9 Traded Guthrie for two minor league picks.
This is a good example of trading a player early and getting something in return for a guy you're going to throw back. Guthrie was flipped again, and then thrown back by the owner who got him.
3) 1/10 Traded Cano for Travis Buck ($8 S1), Yuniesky Betancourt ($13 S1), and minor league pick.
Buck is another possibly undervalued player who might still not be at the top of his growth curve. I'm not a huge fan of Betancourt at this price, but moving Cano in the last year of his contract for a potential $15 OF is a good future play.
4) 3/13 Traded Figgins for Francisco Liriano ($14 S1), John Buck ($3 S1), and Marcus Thames ($3 O).
Liriano would be a bust at $14...except for the fact that this owner has the #1 minor league pick. Not only will he get Liriano back, he'll have him at $10 when he comes up and get another year on his Roto contract.
5) 3/23 Traded Swisher for David DeJesus ($10 S1).
I'm not a big DeJesus fan, but he's $13 cheaper than Swisher and has a better chance of turning into an undervalued player.
6) 3/23 Traded F. Hernandez for Daric Barton ($5 S2), Andy Sonnanstine ($10 S1), and minor league pick.
He threw back Sonnanstine, so the trade was basically Barton for Hernandez.
Too little in return? Possibly...but I'll get to that later.
7) 3/29 Traded minor league pick for Matt Garza ($10 S1).
We have a limit on how many minor leaguers you can hold, so getting Garza adds yet more potential to this team.
After all of his wheeling and dealing, this owner's final freeze list read as follows:
C J. Buck $3 S1, C Shoppach $2, 1B Barton $5, 2B Hill $15, SS Betancourt $13, OF T. Buck $8, DeJesus $10 S1, OF Thames $3, P Accardo $1, Garza $10, Lester $5.
I can already hear the arguments against this team's trading philosophy. He gave up too much in Figgins and Felix for too little in return. This team has some nice young talent but Barton, T. Buck, Garza and Lester aren't undervalued enough to help him win. He'd be better off keeping Felix and Figgins and dumping them in June if things go wrong.
The only problem with that philosophy, though, is that the market changes once the season starts. An owner isn't going to give up two hitters for Cano. The market flips entirely, and you have to give up Cano AND another hitter or pitcher to get back a young future.
By making these deals early, this owner left himself with a lot of money ($185) to buy a team. He might not win, but if he has a good auction, he's now got chips to move in dump deals like Barton, Garza, and T. Buck that he didn't have before. Instead of standing still when the dump trades happen, this team could be a player in the dumping trade market come summer.
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