Buying Low and Selling High

We've heard the adage "buying low and selling high" so many times by now that it makes our ears bleed. Worse yet, it's gotten to the point where fantasy baseball writers don't seem to understand the concept, and will give us some ludicrous scenario where we trade a fast starting Brandon Inge for a struggling Mark Teixeira because, yes, all the other owners in our league our that gullible.

Perhaps I've been a little too hasty to dismiss the buy low/sell high adage, though. You're obviously not going to be able to grab a stud like Teixeira for a solid player like Inge if you're in a serious league, but you might be able to play fast starts to your advantage on the margins.

April 27: Team A trades Andy Pettitte, Josh Anderson, and Trevor Crowe to Team B for Andruw Jones and Kendry Morales.

pre-trade	AB	H	HR	RBI	SB	BA
Anderson	33	12	0	6	6	.364
Crowe	31	6	0	4	1	.265
Jones	23	10	2	5	1	.435
Morales	65	17	2	10	0	.262

pre-trade	IP	H/BB	ER	WHIP	ERA	W	SV
Pettitte	27.3	30	9	1.098	2.96	2	0

At the time, I really liked the trade for the owner who got Anderson and Pettitte (Crowe was just window dressing). I didn't expect Anderson to do much more than steal bases - and I knew he wasn't going to hit .300, let alone .364 - but it seemed that Leyland liked him and 30-40 steals didn't seem out of the question. Similarly, I didn't expect Pettitte to put up a sub-1.1 WHIP all year, but it seemed like he could feasibly be a solid #4 option for the Yanks.

Meanwhile, I was never a big fan of Morales, and thought that his best case scenario was 13-15 HR with a .240 BA, and his worst case was 8-10 dingers. Jones, meanwhile, was impressing in a very limited number of AB, but I thought he'd get exposed in a larger role.

post-trade	AB	H	HR	RBI	SB	BA
Anderson	82	17	0	4	4	.207
Crowe	20	4	0	0	0	.200
Jones	78	15	3	10	0	.192
Morales	142	37	6	22	0	.261

pre-trade	IP	H/BB	ER	WHIP	ERA	W	SV
Pettitte	47.3	84	26	1.775	4.94	4	0

I was right about Jones, but wrong about everyone else in the deal.

For the hitters, the biggest key was playing time. If Morales maintained the .260 BA he was sporting before the trade, he would prove to be a solid source of power. His AAA numbers were put up in a fairly friendly hitting environment, but Morales definitely wasn't a power fluke.

The rest of these guys' playing time was predicated on maintaining a level of performance that simply didn't seem likely. The law of averages doesn't necessarily mean that Josh Anderson or Andruw Jones must hit .200 or so in order to come back to earth rapidly...but this is sometimes what happens. (Jones' start was so good that he's actually a good sell high candidate now due to his cumulative 856 OPS if other owners don't notice that most of that was produced in his first 23 AB.)

Pettitte, meanwhile, went from looking like the top flight ace he mysteriously became in 2005 to a subpar pitcher. As Pettitte always seems to do, he won a few games despite putting up a horrific WHIP.

Trades like this are more realistic if you're looking to "buy low/sell high" than the silly Inge/Teixeira scenario I outlined above. Anderson and Pettitte were putting up numbers suggesting a level of performance that neither player was capable of. Morales and Jones weren't necessarily great shakes, but pulling the trigger on that deal allowed Owner A to get a solid everyday regular for a struggling pitcher and a 4th OF, which is a far more realistic rate-of-return if you're looking to "sell high".