Last time, I went through the trades that I made during the regular season in my non-expert American League. I had auctioned to dump one category and half-dump two others with the hope that I could get lucky in at least one of the two categories I was half-dumping and maximize my points in the other two. Based on the trades I had made, though, this didn't work out too well. I was doing fine in most of the categories where I was trying to compete, but was short in RBI. But I hadn't been able to either get lucky with a big time base stealer or a cheap closer off of the waiver wire.
The real problem I had came in the form of the dump trades I knew were going to happen but hadn't taken place yet. As late as July 15, only three teams had dumped. The non-contiguous trade deadline was on August 1. Despite everyone's typical denials, I knew that at least two more teams were going to wind up dumping. Despite the fact that I was a mere 3 1/2 points out on July 6, I didn't have nearly the same upward mobility as the teams ahead of me. I needed to either make a dump trade or consider packing it in even though I was so close.
The first shoe dropped in late July. The first non-contender, non-dumper joined the ranks of the dumpers and I didn't get any of the swag. It seems that Carlos Pena ($15), Brandon Inge ($5), Miguel Olivo ($3) and Dallas Braden ($1) somehow didn't get his attention.
There's a saying in football that a turnover is like losing two scores: the one you didn't get and the one your opponent got off of the turnover. When you fail to capitalize on a dumping opportunity, the same sort of logic applies. It hurt that I didn't get a piece of Brian Roberts, Andy Pettitte, Mark Teixeira, John Lackey, Jon Papelbon, Ichiro Suzuki, and Jason Bartlett (for the record, the dumper divided these players across two teams). But what hurt even more is that two of the teams I was competing against picked these guys up.
Now I was caught in the position where it didn't seem like there'd be enough to dump for me to win. I decided to contact one of the other losers in the most recent round of dumping and see if he would give me what I wanted. He had Shin-Soo Choo ($10 going into a contract year), Evan Longoria ($10, contract) and Jon Lester ($10). I wanted two of the three, and told him that it would take two to get me to "flip" from a contender to a non-contender. We have a $350 cap, so there were limits on how much I could give him in terms of salaries.
I'll spare everyone the nitty-gritty of the negotiations. I started out with what was probably a light offer. My competitor came back with a 7-for-7 that would have given me Longoria and Choo but traded enough OK 2010 talent that I wouldn't have done enough to help myself out.
I gave him a final compromise offer of CC Sabathia ($42), Derek Jeter ($28), Nick Swisher ($13), Carlos Pena ($15), and CJ Wilson ($1) for Choo, Longoria, Anthony Swarzak ($10), Alexi Casilla ($10) and Kerry Wood ($30). My proposal hoped that Swisher and Pena would be a power wash for Choo/Longoria, that Wood's saves would only lose my opponent a point (assuming that Wilson was about to return into the set-up role), and that he'd be getting CC and Jeter for essentially nothing.
He told me that this wasn't the slam dunk he was looking for and turned me down.
I did wind up making a quasi-dump with him and flipped him A-Rod ($30) and Placido Polanco for Longoria and Casilla. My calculus was that Longoria would entice one of the other non-dumper/non-contenders to dump.
And it turned out I was right. I shipped Longoria, Cesar Izturis and Ken Griffey Jr. out for Jermaine Dye, Paul Konerko and Marco Scutaro. I then convinced another non-dumper to take Pena, Inge and Willie Bloomquist for Michael Cuddyer, Jason Varitek, Russ Branyan, and Mark Teahen.
My projections at the end of my trading frenzy presaged what happened. I improved my team...but I needed to make these kinds of moves in early June, not early August. I picked up a couple of points, but finished fourth primarily because one of the teams ahead of me went into free fall, not because anything I did that was all that wonderful.
Were there moves I could have or should have made? Perhaps. But as I said in an earlier post in this series, probably the only thing that could have changed things is if I had known how good my team was heading into the season. If I had, I might have played more aggressively across all eight categories, hoping to catch lightning in a bottle, and maybe even a dump chip or two I might not have otherwise acquired.
But I didn't.
So while I had a good season, ultimately I fell flat.
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