The best part of any fantasy sports game is drafting. This is something you spend an incredible amount of time preparing for. Whether it’s listening to podcasts, reading newspapers or compiling your own set of stats. But like most good things, you do it once and you’re done. The next best thing about fantasy sports is the ability to make trades. Now depending on your league set-up, trades can have certain restrictions such as team budgets (i.e. if you trade for player A, your team budget must be able to accomodate the incoming players value), but generally leagues don’t use budgets, so I’ll leave this discussion within the realm where most fantasy teams reside.
When I’m looking to make a deal, I often am looking for a result that generally favours my team. However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t take into consideration the needs of the other team. When I look over my roster, I identify where I want to improve and look for a potential trading partner based on my teams needs. This generally allows me to reduce the number of trading partners to a small number of teams (usually 2 to 4). After determining what I am willing to give up to acquire a player (at a spot the other owner needs help in), I propose a trade.
To me trades are often made when there is a benefit to both teams in some way. A trade offer that really only benefits one team (usually the team making the proposal) is not going to work, and often it’s because the proposing owner wants to move a player and is trying to extract as much value as they can. Usually this type of player is either injured or is on a downward trend. A recent example of this is when I received an offer today from a good friend of mine, Stephen, who plays under the team name Fear Franchise. He offered me Mark Teixeira in exchange for Kyuji Fujikawa. I had to decline the offer (and laugh at the same time) as I already have Allen Craig, Yonder Alonso, and Nick Swisher on my roster (not to mention Matt Carpenter). Each is eligible at first base. Teixeira is also rumoured to be out for the entire 2013 season and at this point has no real fantasy value. Fujikawa on the other hand is my third closer, has pretty much taken over the Chicago Cubs closer role from Carlos Marmol. Fear Franchise probably offered me the deal as an attempt to get rid of Teixeira and get some value, but I find this kind of offer rather insulting since it generally means that the other owner didn’t even look at your roster to see what your team’s needs are.
So what is the lesson from this segment of The Art of Fantasy Trades? Well, there two: a) don’t offer injured/downward trending players for upward trending players and b) when offering a player, make sure that the player you are offering brings some value to the team that would receive the player.
Feel free to comment below. You can follow me on twitter @Tiltman1975 and don’t forget to follow the site – @LastWordOnSport while you are at it.
Interested in writing for LastWordOnSports? Find more info at our “Join Our Team” page.