We’re finally starting to see the market pick back up and as we reach mid-January, we should expect a steady stream of moves from here until camps starting opening up. Even with this bevy of moves, the big ones are still trades as opposed to big free agents finding new teams. The Pirates have firmly declared their future by dealing two stars and the Giants get another aging superstar.

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One of the most basic concepts in any economic system is supply and demand. Even if the nitty gritty details are a bit fuzzy, the general idea is simple – a given widget’s value depends upon how many similar widgets exist and how many people want that widget. If there are more people than widgets – it’s expensive. If there are more widgets than people, it’s cheap. You get it.

Now that I’ve insulted your intelligence by crudely explaining supply and demand, let’s get to today’s real topic. Occasionally, a fantasy owner will decide they want to sell a specific player in a specific time period. In my observance, this usually leads to a suboptimal return. It’s always best to sell when there is peak demand for your asset. If you have to push the deal uphill, chances are you’re coming out on the wrong side of it. Reality has supplied us with a fantastic example.

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2018 is here, and the dawn of a new year is the best time to reevaluate your overall fantasy strategy.  But before digging into the finer points of roster construction, auction value calculations, and post-post-hype sleepers, January is also the perfect time to step back and ask whether it might be time to trade in your entire fantasy experience for one of the more advanced, up-and-coming fantasy platforms around.

This is a shameless plug for Ottoneu, a fantasy sports platform so addicting that it has also launched a community of more than 1,000 hardcore baseball fans that sleep and eat baseball year round.  But don’t take my word for it.  There are many reasons why you should try Ottoneu (including some exciting new features launching in 2018), but today I want you to hear from some of the “rookies” who just finished up their first full year of Ottoneu in 2017. This growing community of raving fans is a big part of the Ottoneu experience, and their Season One feedback may help you make the final decision to drive your own league to Ottoneu in 2018.

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Trades often begin fairly simply. One owner wants to swap his asset for a rival’s better asset. Typically, some version of the following response is sent: “Big Player is available, but I want more than Medium Player. I prefer a 1-for-1 swap involving Needed Position.”

The thing is, everybody wants the best player in the deal – in part because analysts like me frequently tell you to go get the best player in the deal. And so the dance begins with both owners circling the other; almost but not quite touching upon an agreeable trade. It looks something like this…

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There are only two types of trades – those of necessity and arbitrage. Let’s talk about them today.

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Yes, we did get 700 more middle reliever signings, buuttt we also got three trades of note. Meanwhile, these Manny Machado rumors are blazing hot and reports suggest he could be moved as soon as this weekend!

• Marcell Ozuna to STL; Sandy Alcantara, Magneuris Sierra, Zac Gallen, & Daniel Castano to MIA

Ozuna’s breakout in 2017 might look isolated, but if you check his 2016 splits, you will see that he was having the breakout year through June before a wrist injury sapped his power and curbed production over the second half. Before the injury he had 16 HR and a .948 OPS in 299 PA, but then just 7 HR and a .605 OPS the rest of the way. He was brilliant in 2017 with no worse than an .873 OPS in all six months of the season en route to a 37 HR/.924 OPS campaign. It’d be prudent to bake in some natural regression, but a .290/30/100 season is very believable. Andrew Perpetua digs even deeper on the new Cardinal.

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In leagues with Runs and RBIs as categories, predicting how a player’s mix will change with a new team can be guessing. Some clown at Fantrax yesterday wrote the following:

“As for Headley, his value drops by going to a worse offensive team in a pitcher-friendly park. Part of the decline could be offset by a move up in the lineup since he mainly batted seventh for the Yankees last season.”

It could go up, it could go down, who really knows? While writing the statement, I needed a better answer so I created a couple quick and simple tool. If an owner can estimate a few stats, they can predict changes in plate appearances, Runs, RBI when a hitter moves from one team to another.

The key was to be simple and quick. For simplicity, only the following stats are needed.

• New likely lineup location
• Estimate of projected home runs
• Estimated games played such 150 out of 162 games as a percentage.
• Estimated Runs scored by a team. Used over on-base percentage because team level runs scored is easier to find and remember.

The estimated runs scored is the toughest value to come up with. I’d just go to FanGraphs team projection page to get a decent idea. Just take that year’s RS/G and multiply it by 162. Another method is to take the previous season value and plug it into the following regression equation:

`RS in Y2` = .575 * `RS in Y1` + 311

The goal is just to get a basic idea of possible changes.

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I once took an excellent training course on effective communication.  At the beginning of the course, our teacher started with a game:

In my hand is an envelop with a $10 bill inside.  I want one of you in this room to take the deal I’m offering you.  I’m going to ask you a simple trivia question and, if you get it right, you get the ten dollars.  But if you get it wrong, you owe me two dollars.  However, if you don’t know the answer, you can ask one person in the room for help.  Who wants to volunteer?

After a few moments of people looking at each other wondering what the catch might be, I volunteered.  “How many states make up the United States?”, he asked.

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Everybody makes a bad trade every now and then. I made dozens of trades during the 2017 season – most of which were very favorable to me. But two trades and one non-swap came back to haunt me when the season concluded. Let’s explore.

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The deadline delivered some big time moves on Monday, but the fantasy impact hasn’t necessarily matched the names. In fact, the aftermath on the teams the big players are leaving is where the real fantasy impact will be felt in most of these deals. Jeff covered a host of deals earlier today as well, so check that piece out, too.

JUST AFTER I WROTE THAT PARAGRAPH DARVISH WAS DEALT! A professional would just re-write it, but I’m too geeked and eager to see what the Rangers got in return, so we’ll just proceed!

Here are my thoughts on the big moves of the day and the repercussions for all teams involved:

Jonathan Lucroy to COL for a PTBNL

ROCKIES: This is the best thing that could’ve happened to Lucroy in the midst of his nightmare season (66 wRC+) with Texas. He hasn’t been able to get anything going at all this year, but maybe Coors Field can jumpstart him for a strong finish. His strikeout rate is a career-best 10.5%, but does it matter if it’s not strong contact? His 22% Hard contact rate is 12 points of his mark from the last three years and 10 points below his career mark.

A performance this poor makes me wonder if there is a nagging injury (or injuries) that he has tried to play through. Or maybe it’s a poor season that snowballed on itself, especially once he started losing more and more playing to Robinson Chirinos. The move does reinstate Lucroy as a must-own catcher in all formats just because the park could reignite this once-excellent bat.

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