Friday, April 10, 2009

Trading Early

Anonymous asked this question when it looked like Matt Lindstrom might not be ready for Opening Day.
Is it worth my time to attempt to ship Lindstrom, or do we owners get too far ahead of ourselves early in the season? What I mean to say, is should I take a wait-and-see approach, rather than go all-in with a trade before the season begins?
As I always say, it depends on your team, your league, and your circumstances.

Generally, I don't like making soliciting trades early because most owners in my leagues can typically smell the desperation and wind up offering 50 cents on the dollar. If someone is trolling for speed, it's typically because he didn't get enough of it in the auction. If someone is looking for a closer, chances are he's got Jason Motte and Kevin Gregg on his roster and he's already nervous.

On the other hand, steals and saves are two categories that are worth trading early if you are going to trade them at all. Specifically, if you have only one big steals or saves guy and trading one will only lose you 1-3 points, trade that guy before the rest of your league notices how negligible the damage would be to your team if you moved that guy. Once everyone notices that trading Lindstrom will only lose you a point or two, they will lowball you on Lindstrom.

The other problem is that more than one owner will look at saves, decide that he doesn't have much to gain or lose, and dump the category so he can make larger gains across the board. Once this happens, you'll be competing with multiple owners to toss your saves aside. You'll be in the position I mentioned above, where you'll be lucky to get 50 cents on the dollar for your closer.

But as I said above, every league is different. Brett is one of my regular readers and commenters, and his National League features a trade market where owners pay full market value for closers in almost every trade. This strikes me as counterintuitive, but if your league behaves this way anonymous, trading Lindstrom now could reap big rewards right out of the gate.

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