The Trade Counsel: Putting Our Trade Theories Into Action (Part 2)

by Simon Jones

In the last column, I broke down the deals that I’ve made in three of my leagues. I’ll continue my analysis of my early season trades by looking at the last of my leagues.

League 4: 12 team H2H redraft, 6×6 (OBP, SLG, IP, QS and K/9)

April 11th: Trade away Kyle Schwarber for Chris Archer
One thing that I never massively concern myself with early in the season is roster balance, either in terms of player positions or categories. In the draft the way the players fell meant that I’d drafted an awful lot of starting pitching – Noah Syndergaard, Yu Darvish, Cole Hamels and Kenta Maeda in the first 10 rounds. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be looking to get another SP, but I’ll never turn down value at this point of the season. Looking through the rosters and trade blocks I noticed that this owner had drafted quite a lot of pitching too, and was looking for OF as JD Martinez was on the DL. 

I knew the hype machine would kick in for Schwarber after the post season, he had just hit his second HR and he was sitting with a .900 OPS. As is often the theme, I threw out an offer to see if I’d get a bite, especially as I like Archer a lot, and fortunately the deal was done. The value was more than worth the overloading of SPs, plus when I have too much pitching then someone else has too little!

April 18th: Trade away Yu Darvish and Blake Treinen for Trevor Story for Masahiro Tanaka
As you’ll have seen from part 1 of this column, I like Tanaka as a buy-low. I’d sent this owner a couple of fishing offers earlier in the season for Tanaka to no avail. I think I asked about Story, initially offering Cole Hamels and Keon Broxton. The owner then brought Darvish into the conversation, offering Story and Carlos Gomez for Darvish. I’m a big fan of Darvish, but most guys have their price and I wanted to see if I could get two buy-lows back. He then countered by adding Treinen, who was already struggling and has since lost the closer’s job. This is one of those trades that I love as an observer, as there’s real potential for either side to come out way on top. Darvish looks to be the most dependable piece in the deal, but if Story or Tanaka return to close to their ADP values then this could be a huge value gain for me. If not, and Darvish has a healthy 2017, then I could have made a big mistake.

April 19th: Trade away Rougned Odor, Aledmys Diaz and Cody Allen for Brian Dozier and Kyle Schwarber
This trade confuses me a lot, especially given the history. Undoubtedly this was set up by the Story trade, which give me an extra MI, and was part of the drive for acquiring him. I’d noticed a couple of owners had gaps at MI, especially the guy I’d traded Schwarber to. He had just lost Marcus Semien to a broken wrist and was running Freddy Galvis out at SS. I also noticed he had Dozier on the block, so I dropped him a note and he said he was interested in Odor and Diaz, and asked who I might be interested in as a second player. I suggested Roark, which he rejected, and then asked if I would add Allen, and suddenly Schwarber is sitting in the offer. I took a couple of minutes to check injuries and then accepted without hesitation.

This is an interesting one to break down on a number of fronts. Firstly, the inclusion of Dozier and Odor was a little perplexing to me. I rank Dozier a tier above Odor, but in OBP/SLG leagues Dozier takes another step forward and Odor slips back a lot due to his inability to take a walk. The inclusion of Schwarber was strange though. I’m not against acquiring a player and then flipping him again for value, but it would seem he lost value on the previous Archer trade and then has given up more value here too, without any clear plan. In fact the Roark offer I made seemed to be better than the trade he made. I now get the choice of keeping Schwarber for a while, or again trying to use him as a bargaining chip.

April 19th: Trade away Aaron Nola for Alex Colome
This was a deal with Nick Hutcherson, who also writes for Rotoprofessor. Nick and I go back a few years and talk a lot about baseball. He actually runs this league. He’s been hitting me with interest for Nola pretty much since the draft ended, but there’s never been a good fit until this point. We both value players in a similar fashion, and often have cancelled each other out in drafts and auctions. He’s got a surplus of closers, but up until the day before I’d had Allen, Treinen, Cam Bedrosian and Santiago Casilla. However, the fact I’d managed to supplement my hitting whilst keeping a core of quality starters meant I felt comfortable in giving up Nola. Colome is in that tier that I quite often target, where I feel the closer is reliable and unlikely to lose their job in the near future, but the price isn’t prohibitive.

There are a number of key takeaways that give a pretty decent idea into how I approach early season trading.

1) Take the value if it’s offered, even if it unbalances your roster. The extra benefit of having an excess of one position or category means that there’s probably an owner or two out there who is desperately trying to acquire the same thing.

2) If you don’t ask the question then you will never make the deal. I’m constantly asking about owners’ players or needs. Most inquiries that I make will come to nothing, but you never know when an offer will just get accepted or a really tempting counter will come back.

3) Always keep an eye on other rosters, especially injuries and cold spells. You never know how patient (or impatient) another owner might be getting.

Hopefully this insight has been helpful, into the different ways that trades come to get offered and accepted.

The Trade Counsel is a weekly trade column – please leave feedback or any trade questions below.

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