I have a fairly small portfolio of fantasy teams – prior to joining the staff here at RotoGraphs I had pared down over the years because managing daily teams on different platforms is a bit of a slog. Going into next year, I might explore joining some leagues with weekly adds. But in any case, I’d rate my season as successful overall.
On June 27, I had a team sitting in second place in a 4×4 league, 6.5 points out of first. This particular league, an Ottoneu league called the Food and Travel League, pays out prizes in the form of food and/or beverages. It is one of my favorite leagues, both for the prizes and the competition, and finishing top three in that league is a goal every year – it’s much more fun to receive food than to figure out how to ship it.
I had never won this league and while the gap to first made me wonder if this was the right year to push in my chips, I also saw a clear path to finishing second or third (fourth place was 7.5 points behind me). But I was behind the pace on innings pitched and needed arms. I was third in all of the pitching rate stats (HR/9, ERA, WHIP), but was ninth in IP and, as a result, tied for eighth in strikeouts. Gaining points in Ks while maintaining my rates was an obvious path forward.
So I made a trade. I ended up winning the league, but the trade was costly and it is worth wondering if the trade is why I won the league, or if I could have won without the deal.
After a detour writing a couple articles with cheeky little bits and also a much more extended effort to develop a model for dynasty rankings, I wanted to return more explicitly to my bread and butter: the Asset Valuation series. After my first teaser article, my next three in this series showed how scoring settings can affect player value, and how you can exploit knowledge about these dynamics for your gain.
Those analyses, though, held one thing constant: the value of draft picks. To get those points across, I assumed a standard 12-team redraft setting, and flexed the value of players based on scoring scheme. Here, I’m doing the opposite: I’m messing with the timeline draft pool while keeping scoring scheme constant to show you how the value of a draft pick itself can change based on league size, keepers, and whether you use projections or actual realized dollar value.
Putting yourself out there is never easy. To be vulnerable is to be courageous. You are making a bet on your own instincts, your own research, and on your own ability to avoid getting hurt.
But during the heat of courtship, harsh words may slip out. Your true intentions may be less than pure. Or, more likely as a Rotographs reader, your trade partner is the one who is not pure of heart. They may even be, dare I say, cheating on you. Going behind your back and offering up the goods to any manager with more to give.
Such is the game we play.
Heartbreak. Joy. A ring. Regret. There’s no certain outcome at the end of this tug of war we call the love of the game.
With fall “cuffing” season quickly approaching, those of us who did come together and make trades in the summer are now starting to see if we made the right move. Or if it is all starting to come crashing down.
For overthinkers, this is a particularly hard time of year.
And in a game full of overthinkers, I find myself right at home.
This season, I parted ways with Seiya Suzuki at my home league trade deadline, consummating the deal at 11:57pm on deadline night.
My heart raced with the thrill of the deal. But then, clarity crept in. Without the excitement of the chase, I began to realize exactly what I’d done.
Monday’s MLB trade deadline was an absolute whirlwind. I’m sure you can only imagine the buzz and flurry of activity behind the scenes of sites like FanGraphs that provide immediate analysis. It’s exciting, yet stressful. Everyone must be on their A-game so that they don’t miss a thing and cover every angle. Shoutout to my colleagues here for their great work over the last few days. In case you missed it, here is our Fantasy Impact Trade Tracker.
The purpose of this piece will be to delve into six outfielders with 15- and/or 12-team relevance who were just traded. Not all these hitters have increased fantasy value, nor are they necessarily slated for more playing time. The one thing they all have in common is that they were targeted and acquired by teams currently in the hunt for a playoff spot with a little less than one-third of the season to go.
Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images
Yesterday we kept you updated on all the trades that went down and speculated to the best of our ability on what might come next. After all, every addition to the active roster requires someone getting shipped out or sent down; every player traded away needs to be replaced. Now we are starting to see what moves teams are actually making to clean up any messes created at the deadline.
The Trade Deadline Recap episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
Trade Deadline Recap
Injury Update
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With the All Star Break behind us, it is time for MLB teams to commit one way or the other – go all in for the playoff push or start building for the future? The trade deadline is just over two weeks away and you can expect to see a flurry of activity. Someone will get a new closer. Someone will upgrade at shortstop, bumping another bat to the bench. Someone will clear a spot for their top prospect to debut.
And that, of course, will have fantasy implications. While our partners on the green side of this site will go in depth into the whos and whats and whys of all that activity, this is where you can come for thoughts and analysis on the fantasy implications of each trade.
If you were excited by offseason rumors of Isaac Paredes to Boston, or about the Red Sox adding Willson Contreras and Caleb Durbin to their right-handed hitter ranks, you should feel good about Curtis Mead. And if you’re anyone else, you’re probably thinking that the Nationals’ new GM Paul Toboni made like a seasoned fantasy manager and sold high on a few months of Mead for five years of team control of Connelly Early, a promising young left-handed starting pitcher.
But it looks like Mead has made some really intriguing changes that give us reason to believe in his growth as a hitter and Fenway might be an ideal new home for him.
What do we know about value in fantasy baseball? We know a player’s value can rise swiftly based on recent production, or drop drastically due to injury or underperformance. We also know that a player’s fantasy value can be quite subjective. It is in the eye of the beholder and is often bolstered by bias. A lifelong Yankee fan who plays fantasy baseball may overvalue Trent Grisham because he leads off for the Yankees and hits tanks. An embittered Padres fan who overpaid for Grisham in 2022 and 2023 drafts when Grisham hit below the Mendoza Line those two seasons won’t see him in the same light. A player’s true value lies on a spectrum between those extremes. The other, and even more important element, is how a player can specifically help a roto team. Assuming these two managers were friends in the same league, and the Padres fan had a big lead on second place in the BA category, but had standings points to gain in HR, and was offering a fair return, the Padres fan might be able to put his bias aside for the good of his roto squad. If he had a massive lead in HR, but low in BA, the two sides would be even further apart; there wouldn’t be a trade conversation in the first place.
So, what about player values in keeper or dynasty formats or Ottoneu? Keeper leagues are an entirely different animal than redraft because there are so many more layers to the onion. Values are even more subjective and skewed because of the longer-term approach; it’s not just about what a player projects for “ROS”. Every season, some teams are rebuilding while others are contending, so specific player archetypes (ie, injured, declining, blossoming prospect) don’t have the same baseline value across all leagues. Moreover, keeper league managers are what the kids call “extra”, in a good way, of course. Though league titles are won every season, keepers are more of a journey than a destination. It requires attention and commitment throughout the entire calendar year. It’s even more important for keeper league managers to filter out personal bias, since the manager-fantasy player relationships are deeper. There’s a lot more attachment and connection to players, especially those that have been on one’s squad for a long time. Nevertheless, keeper league players are usually very serious, well-informed, and dialed in. The management of one’s portfolio of assets and the potential long-term consequences, for good or for bad, makes it generally more difficult to make deals. But when Manager A is in a clear rebuild mode, and Manager B is going for the title now, deals can align organically.