Trading Picks

In response to my post on Rotisserie ethics, Dr. Hibbert said:

in my league, players can only be traded for players. anything else falls under "collusion"

This isn't an uncommon rule. Many leagues don't allow farm picks or reserve picks to be traded.

I used to be in leagues where you could trade picks like you were an NBA or NFL owner. It wasn't uncommon to see the second round pick in 2011 get traded in a minor deal or - far more commonly - as a throw-in to a larger deal.

At some point, the evolution of my leagues only allowed picks to be traded in the next farm draft. This rule prevented Commissioners from having to keep track of what was going to happen 5-6 years from now with their leagues' farm drafts, but still allowed picks to be used as leverage in trades.

The next evolutionary step was not allowing picks to be traded in-season. You could only trade picks during the off-season. This was only done in one of the two non-expert leagues I was in at the time. This made some sense, as during the winter one man's trash is far more commonly another man's treasure. A $10 free agent who looks worthless now might wind up winning a job. He's worth me flipping a 3rd or 4th round pick to speculate.

None of the leagues I've ever played in has gone so far as to prohibit trading picks entirely.

I can see the advantages of prohibiting the practice. I've seen galling trades where someone moves a 2nd round pick for a solid $15-20 middle infielder. The pick ultimately winds up getting used on a Grade C+ farm player who - more often than not - amounts to nothing.

On the other hand, I've seen bad dump deals take place where minor league picks weren't involved at all. A $1 Jeff Niemann was swapped in my "regular" A.L. this year for Tim Beckham and a $10 Francisco Liriano. While Liriano may or may not be worth $10 next year, Niemann at $1 looks like a far better proposition in 2010...and the 19-year-old Beckham probably isn't going to be a factor for three or four years.

There are also trades where picks aren't involved at all that still look bad. I've probably shared this story before, but an owner in an N.L. I used to be in traded two solid freezes for a $19 Shawn Green in the twilight of his career. The owner then tossed Green back into the pool.

I'm not adamantly a proponent of swapping picks. As I've always said, your league, your rules; you should be happy with your league's rules and know what does and doesn't keep your league running well. But disallowing picks to be traded seems to limit trading, which I'm against. One of the picks I traded last year in my doomed quest for 1st place turned into Justin Smoak...and I'll be interested to see in that framework how my deal ultimately works out.