Jeff Zimmerman and I will be covering the fantasy relevant deals this week, highlighting the winners and losers and pointing out the actionable items for you in your leagues.

OAK gets: OF Starling Marte, cash (the rest of Marte’s contract)

MIA gets: P Jesús Luzardo

Now this is a deadline blockbuster!

This is essentially a rightfield upgrade for the A’s as their -0.3 WAR there is 27th in the league. Marte will likely assume center but then Ramón Laureano and his brilliant arm head to right, displacing the Stephen Piscotty/Seth Brown platoon. Piscotty wasn’t viable in any format while Brown has 12 HR and 2 SB but just a .199 AVG, so I can’t imagine he was being used in anything but AL-Only leagues. Speaking of AL-Only leagues, Marte is a total game-changer in those formats.

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Jeff Zimmerman and I will be covering the fantasy relevant deals this week, highlighting the winners and losers and pointing out the actionable items for you in your leagues.

HOU gets: RP Kendall Graveman, RP Rafael Montero

SEA gets: IF Abraham Toro, RP Joe Smith

On the heels of an amazing comeback win, the optics of trading your closer to team you just beat aren’t great, but optics don’t win games and this move makes a lot of sense. The Mariners have a 6% chance to make the playoffs, sitting behind Houston and Oakland, both of whom are unquestionably better than them at this moment. Keeping a 30-year-old free-agent-to-be with 33 good innings make absolutely no sense. Just because it angered fans and even some players doesn’t mean it was wrong.

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The Trading Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Fred Zinkie

Strategy Section

Trading

• General Trading Philosophy
• When to look for a trade vs. playing the waiver wire
• Identifying what to trade for, and who to trade on your roster
  • High gradient categories
• How to negotiate trades
  • Should you make offers close to final, or low-ball with room to negotiate?
  • Sending out bad trade offers
  • Taking the time to explain trade offers to others
  • Negotiating with one team alone vs. pitting one team against the other
    • Never divulge trade negotiations directly
• Does standings position matter for trade needs?
  • Decreasing risk / diversifying when you have a lead
  • Increasing risk when far behind
• Fairness of Trades
  • Top teams trading with bottom teams
  • Instituting pay scales throughout the entire standings
  • Reinsurance’s take on fairness in fantasy sports
  • Moving up the league’s trade deadline

Fernando Tatis Jr.

• Were we wrong earlier in the season advocating to trade him?
  • Recap of Tatis trade advice from earlier this season
  • Trust the process, not the results
• Risk comparison to Luis Castillo (underperformance)
• Risk comparison to Adalberto Mondesi (health risk)
• League depth matters

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Every year I start looking for ways to take advantage of trade rumors as a fantasy manager. But, is there actually any reason to? Maybe if a slugger goes from a pitcher-friendly home park to a hitter-friendly home park. Perhaps if a base stealer, who has had his restrictor plates put on while playing for a team that doesn’t steal bases, gets traded to a run happy team. These are the situations that seem easy to identify and are most likely smaller transactions that savvy managers can take advantage of. But what about the big dogs?

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Last week I outlined how I plan for the trade deadline and earlier this week I walked through a points league example. Today, I walk through a roto league example.

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Last week, I wrote about Ottoneu trade deadline preparation and promised I would come back with case studies this week: One about a points league and one about a roto league. Today, I’ll take a look at my team in 90% Mental, league 670, which is a SABR Points league.

My team, Fisher Bunnies, is currently in third place and has some serious ground to make up if I am going to win. Determining how likely I am to make that up and what path I can take to do it will help me set my strategy for the trade deadline.

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Eno Sarris said not to look at HR rate. He said it and I’m going to listen. However, FIP and xFIP are not HR rates, and I’m going to look at that. Too often we assume that others know, or we actually know, what a statistic represents. We hear it, we think it, we know it. But, take a moment with me to reinvigorate our understanding of these two very important statistics.

FIP gives us an idea of how a pitcher performs regardless of who is playing defense behind him. It accounts for strikeouts, walks, hit by pitches, and home runs allowed. FIP gives us a better understanding of how a pitcher is performing than ERA. xFIP tells us all the same but accounts for the volatility of the HR rate. Quoting from our very own FanGraphs glossary, xFIP is:

calculated in the same way as FIP, except it replaces a pitcher’s home run total with an estimate of how many home runs they should have allowed given the number of fly balls they surrendered while assuming a league average home run to fly ball percentage (between 9 and 10% depending on the year).

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2/7/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!

Follow us on Twitter

• @justinmasonfwfb – Host/Producer
• @jasoncollette – Co-host
• @deadpullhitter – Guest

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• Trevor Bauer to LAD
• Marcell Ozuna resigns in ATL
• Jonathan Villar signs in Cincy
• Jonathan Schoop resigns in DET
• Mike Foltynewicz signs in Texas
• Elvis Andrus traded to Oakland for Khris Davis

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12/29/20

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer
• @jasoncollette – Jason Collette

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• José Ureña to DET (1:55)
• Kohei Arihara to TEX (6:18)
• Josh Bell to WAS (11:14)
  • Joe Musgrove next out of PIT?
  • Gregory Polanco broken wrist

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Let’s take a look at the fantasy implications for all the major trades this deadline.

To OAK: Tommy La Stella

To LAA: Franklin Barreto

Up: La Stella joins a much better lineup and should slot into the #2 hole in between Marcus Semien and Stephen Piscotty. He could lose some starts against lefties, but that might be a net positive given his .185/.303/.259 line against them this year. That said, he was at .265/.315/.398 a year ago and has a career .262/.340/.373 line v. southpaws. Either way, this is still a win.

Down: none

Neutral: Barreto goes from not playing in one part of California to not playing in a further south part of California as David Fletcher just slots into the 2B role with Andrelton Simmons and Anthony Rendon back in the lineup.

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