Dump Trading Madness
In 2003 as a wee 21-year-old, I founded a standard 12-team mixed redraft league with a live auction. Ever since, I had toyed with the idea of starting a sister keeper format, but always decided against it. I have rarely played in keeper leagues, joining one many years ago and lasting just one year due to quirky rules I wasn’t a fan of, but am now playing a second year in my current keeper league, an AL-Only format. The last two weeks have just reinforced my opinion that a strong keeper league is extremely difficult to establish and run. The problem has always been handling “dump” trades, the term used for the trading of prospects or quality keepers for better high-priced or unkeepable players, with a bottom tier team serving in the dumper role, while a team fighting for a money spot acting as dumpee.
The challenge here is how leagues could allow all owners to act in their best interests and trade however they see fit, while also ensuring that “dump season” doesn’t become a race by the top teams to steal all the high-priced players from the bottom teams while giving up little current value.
The first dump trade occurred on May 17, around a quarter of the way into the season. Too soon to dump or perfectly acceptable? That’s not for me to debate here, but feel free to do so in the comments.
Dumper Receives:
4 mediocre Major Leaguers
Wander Franco (the prize)
Dumpee Receives:
4 better Major Leaguers, in aggregate
This trade opened up the floodgates, and all hell broke loose thereafter. I won’t list each player, but summarize the parts involved.
Trade 2: Prospect for good starting pitcher
Trade 3: Top prospect for pair of elites and two more solid pieces
Trade 4: 2 Prospects for pair of excellent Major Leaguers
Trade 5: Prospects for collection of average Major Leaguers
As I sat from my perch in first place, where I have remained nearly all season, my head was spinning. I had made several trade offers myself, but in typical fantasy league fashion, nothing was responded to. I made more offers. Silence. At this point, I knew I had to act quick or the bottom tier teams will have traded away all the top tier talent I would have any interest in acquiring, and the teams nipping at my butt will have acquired that talent and threaten my top spot.
I started texting and using Facebook Messenger, which was really the key to start discussing specifics and progress trade talks.
Trade 6: Prospect for two solid to excellent Major Leaguers
Finally, I joined the insanity and was able to complete a trade…
Trade 7: Billy McKinney (5, can be freely kept in our farm system) + Martin Perez (1) + 2020 2nd round minor league pick for expensive David Price + J.D. Martinez
A day later, just yesterday, one more trade was accepted.
Trade 8: Prospect for elite starting pitcher
This is all simply crazy. What’s happening here is probably the same thing happening in many other keeper leagues around the world. A team who believes he has absolutely no chance to finish in the money this year has absolutely no incentive to hold onto expensive players he knows he won’t keep next year.
Mookie Betts for the 76th ranked prospect? Sure, why not. Betts, at his high salary, won’t be kept, so his only value to my team comes from his ability to net me prospects or Major Leaguers at good prices.
This wasn’t actually muttered, typed, or thought, but it’s an example of what likely crosses a dumper’s mind. There’s absolutely no benefit to keeping a high priced player you know you aren’t going to keep, unless you think there’s psychological value to finishing 8th, rather than 11th. So you certainly can’t blame the dumper for executing what is best for his team in the future. You might argue the owner should have received more in return for the top talent traded away, but that’s fodder for another article.
After all this, it is important to share that in my particular AL-Only keeper league, we do institute a $325 in-season salary cap for our active lineup. That definitely helps calm things down, and after my trade, my best lineup will only be a couple of bucks below that ceiling, which means I’m essentially done as the dumpee. Of course, another argument could be made that it’s silly equating salary to value a third of the way into the season, because high-priced busts, like Jose Ramirez, are essentially unmoveable at the moment.
While the in-season salary cap is something I’m guessing the majority of keeper leagues have, and it has certainly curbed what would be an even more insane dumping period, I don’t think it’s enough. I shouldn’t have to shake with fear every time I get an email that a trade has been accepted and worry that another leaguemate just traded a prospect who likely won’t be in the Majors until 2021 for Mike Trout.
So keeper league commissioners and owners, is the craziness of dump season totally okay? If not, what is the best solution that doesn’t limit how owners manage their teams, but ensures that it doesn’t simply become a race to collect as many high-priced players as possible?
Additional rules for this league that might be relevant in determining a solution:
-No reserve roster
-Keep up to 8 minor leaguers heading into the season that don’t count against salary cap
Just popped into my head: As I typed the above additional rules, I just realized that perhaps a good solution would be to reduce the number of minor leaguers we could keep. Fewer minor leaguers mean fewer potential trade pieces to acquire high priced talent. Unfortunately, it still won’t prevent the individual trades that have occurred, but there would likely be fewer dump trades overall.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
I’ve played in a number of dynasty leagues for 10 years and I never have an issue with this style of trade. It’s the closest thing to real MLB trades. My problem with it is when owners don’t advertise or respond to offers, which is a larger fantasy trade issue (as Mike mentioned).
The biggest issue here is… why are the dumpers giving it up so cheap? Sure, a $50 Mookie doesn’t have much value to a losing team, but he clearly has a lot of value to the competing teams. So if I’m moving him, I am extracting real value. Usually if I am in the unfortunate position of my team being out of it, I am proactively hunting the few real keeper values that exist.
In our league the bottom two teams take a hit on their draft budget for the next season. It would stop a race to the bottom, as you’d want to finish no worse than second-to-last.
Similarly, our league is structured so the lower you finish the more you must pay into the prize pool
Yep, for our league we sort of penalize lower-placed finishers by lowering their draft order. Our first runner up to the money gets the first pick, thus promoting the idea that people should still try to remain competitive even if they think they’ll be out of the money.
We just adopted a new rule system for trading in our league. All trades are posted and can be countered for 24 hours. Any player in the original trade that is included in a new deal nullifies the old trade. That way, all teams get a fair shot at players being dumped. On top of this, we made the salary of any player traded increase by $10. We are AL-Only with 22-man rosters (1 C) and 6 reserves. That’s it. Every player has a salary and a contract (max of 3 years, no extension). It seems to have helped so far. Guy dumping got a great deal this past week because it went back and forth between 2 buyers about 5 times.
two GM’s work, maybe work weeks on a deal. it MUST be posted. some other joe walks in and offers a slightly better return and that work goes to the garbage.
I hate it
This kind of trade is inherently a part of keeper or dynasty leagues. You can’t incentivize someone to think long term and then get pissed when they make a trade in their long-term best interest.
The issue is the disparity between short and long term values. When an elite player becomes effectively worthless to a non-contender, that’s a problem.
I just hate the idea that, after 1.5 months of baseball, all the draft prep and waiver work is worthless. Buying some team success is okay, but getting Mookie Betts for a song that may or may not work out long term just doesn’t feel right, especially if everyone else is doing it.
I’ve been in the same dynasty league for 14 years and in large part we don’t have this problem. I think it’s because it’s a keep forever league without contracts. Noncompetitive teams have incentive to hold onto their veteran talent for future seasons because cost isn’t an issue. They have some incentive to trade to “get younger,” but there’s also a lot of incentive to simply hang onto your talent if you don’t receive a good offer.
I’ve been both the dumper and the dumpee many times in my long time keeper league.
I’m generally fine with them but the problem occurs when you have a lazy dumper who isn’t willing to publicize that he is sellling a player. It’s in his own best interests to create transparency in the market and ensure that all dumpees have a chance to bid, but sometimes, once a team is eliminated from contention, people aren’t willing to do the necessary work.
Abother key is that the “dumpers” all hold the line and don’t give up players for pennies. As soon as someone gives up and gets a light return, it really hurts the market.
Our 12 team AL only keeper league is over 25 years old. We’ve had our fair share of bad dump trades but even the “average” trade is met with grumblings by some. Guess it’s more from jealousy.
Couple of ways we’ve limited the dump trades. We’ve lowered the in-season cap to $310 plus we have a min cap of $220. The latter limits the dumper from going hog wild in a dumping trade. We stopped having a minor league draft years ago which prevents the prospect for an eliter player type of dump trade. We have four reserve slots. A player who is sent back down to the minors can be reserved but it means they have had to been called to the majors……and their value (salary) is thus determined via FAAB (we start out with $100 FAAB). We still have a dump trade or two each year that has owners shaking their heads.
One more thing, about 5 years ago we instituted a lower division playoff. The top 6 teams play for the top $$ but the bottom 6 have something to play for…..they get their entry fee back. This has been the major reason why most teams maintain their interest much longer into the season and thus lessens our league’s dump trading.
Are you keeping track of the cap limits via the platform you’re playing on or doing it yourself? I’ve wanted to institute salary cap and floor in season but don’t have time to track each team’s total salary myself.
It sounds like a bizarre outcome of the format, in which 1/2 the teams are almost re-drafting during the season via these trades.
This problem has simple, if potentially drastic, solutions. In general, the in-season values and keeper values for players are too far apart. The first easy step is to eliminate (or pare down to 1-2) the ability to keep 8 minor leaguers. The next step is to remove a cost to keeping a player, so that the best players get kept, not the ones who are more valuable than their price-point. Of course, you have to couple that with a limit to the number of keepers.
Once you do that, you’ll have a few keeper-improvement trades by the absolute cellar teams (and that’s OK), but not the strange situation described right now.
It’s an incentives issue. If the payout structure is too top-heavy, owners end up going with an all or nothing approach. You compete for a title, or you sell for next year. If there is no difference between finishing 5th and finishing 12th, then why bother trying?
We have a pure draft league with six keepers.
When dumping became a problem because teams were racing to the bottom of the standings to secure a better first-round draft pick, we changed the first round.
It used to go 10-9-8-etc.-2-1.
Now it goes 4-5-6-7-8-9-10-3-2-1 before resuming the 1 to 10 serpentine.
Weirdly, we have had many worst-to-first winners since instituting this.
Our league use to do something similar. Now it changed to a ping pong ball lottery, nba style.
My 20 team keeper league doesn’t have this problem (it doesn’t have *enough* trades of stars for prospects) because we just keep a flat 22 players, so no one is getting expensive, and present value doesn’t exceed future value except insofar as slowly aging matters. Outside of Ottoneu I’m not sure there are a lot of salary systems that really work all that well—maybe it’s better to keep it simpler?
This doesn’t seem horrible, although tightening the salary cap is a good idea—it does significantly curtail these issues. You also might consider instituting a salary floor for dumping teams; I have found that this curtails dumping much more than a salary cap—yes, you have the high-price busts going the other way, but usually the teams in contention—the ones that are trading the keepers—are not the teams that have the high-priced busts because if they spent that money on busts they wouldn’t be in contention.
I think a salary floor might help you the most here. When a dumping team know that they can only make one or two dump trades, they usually are a lot more picky for what they get in return. Now, for really good keepers you might end up with massive hauls (my league has a 3-1 rule; i.e. you cannot get more than 3 players for 1 keeper), but if the contender is giving up a great keeper (a cheap Mondesi for example), that is really giving value and they are only getting a two player advantage because they keeper they are giving up is a good player now.
The biggest issue I see with leagues like this is the cost to keep players and how that impacts decisions. I’ve been in the same keeper league for 17 years, every keeper costs the same. You keep 10 and thats basically the first 10 rounds of the draft for everyone. You can keep players as long as you want. Trades are not about cost, but about talent. There are still dump trades, but more for draft pick assets in our league. Love trading draft picks by the way. The last couple of years I have made many trades of players who either I didn’t plan on keeping or someone else didn’t for draft round improvements. There are always minor leagues you can throw in too.
Our NL Only league does not use a reserve list – active player only with IL’d players replaced but attached to replacement players or waived. We also have a $335 in-season salary cap. We have 5 player farm system where draft picks can be traded. First 3 are 10 pt salary and the last two (phenom) players are 5 pt salary. That’s our roster. We don’t have any issues with true dump trades. I think the having reserve roster slots increases the chances of dump trading exponentially in my opinion.
I should add that the minor leaguers are slotted so you have to have three 10 pt minors and two 5 pt so trading minor leaguers would have to allow for the traded pieces to align with that. In other words, one team can’t have more than three 10 pt and two 5 pt at any point in the season.
In our keep 5 + 2 MiLB players, we take a pick from the bottom 4 finishers (6th round from 12, 8 from 11 etc.) and whoever finishes last can only keep 4 MLB players going into the next year. This decentivizes complete sell-offs while not being so punitive to prevent competing the following year.
These deals mimic MLB a lot. You need a strong group that can swallow this type of play for it to continue.
Example from last year.
Three year keeper league.
I trade Vlad Jr. at $4 with two years left on his contract for Betts for 3 months.
What do you think Vlad will be worth for those two years, $20 each year, $30, more? My trading partner just got $40 or $60 or more of a player for Betts for 3 months. What’s Betts value for those three months? I understand flags fly forever. But I still just gave away a lot of future value without guaranteeing the win. You have to stomach it. But getting someone even less than Vlad for Betts is still worth the price.
You need to define the identity of your league. In this case, it is a keeper league, not a dynasty league. There is no reason to carry a deep squad of prospects in this format. If you are an astute owner, you understand that only a handful of prospects come up every year that are difference-makers over the 3-yr course of their contracts. There are additional prospects that come up and contribute, but they aren’t any more valuable than the players in the bottom half of the draft pool and the other ‘non-prospects’ that routinely get promoted over the course of the season. So why give these players a trade value which vastly exceeds their likely earnings value? It creates a situation where the players that will determine the league title are traded for hope.
Our keeper league has a bench for 3 prospects maximum, which can be free kept freely until they are activated, at which point their clock starts. They are drafted separately, after the regular draft (which is limited to MLB players on active rosters). Thus, the prospect pool is 36 players deep, which is plenty deep enough for a keeper, not-dynasty. league. Prospects not in this pool can be acquired through the FAAB, upon promotion, and they are given regular contracts.
All 8 of the trades you described involved prospects. In a keeper league, it is fine to trade high-quality prospects for high-quality MLBers. But you can eliminate many of the nonsense trades with a smaller prospect pool. Player A can’t trade his 6th best prospect if he only has 3 prospects. Player B won’t accept Player A’s 3rd best prospect if he can only hold 3 prospects and already has 3 good ones. Player A will probably have to trade his #1 or #2 prospect, which he should do (it might hurt) if he wants to fly the flag. Further, you can begin the prospect draft with the first team that finishes out of the money. So finishing 5th gives you a higher prospect pick than finishing 8th. It is a minor incentive, but it may motivate some owners. If you play in a keeper league, the focus of the league should be 3-yr value, not career value, and roster format (as it pertains to prospects) should be oriented toward 3-yr value since there will undoubtedly be some owners who are not able to process this on their own.
Best comment so far and your first paragraph perfectly matches my thoughts.
Agreed. The league settings are probably too similar to a dynasty league with respect to prospects, but it’s like an auction keeper league (with rapidly inflating salaries to keep) with respect to established major leaguers. It’s this imbalance that is causing the major leaguers to be valued so lowly by non-contending teams.
To add on to my agreement, the league settings should be adjusted such that it doesn’t require an astute owner to understand how to value major leaguers.
This discussion. Either limit the number of prospects that can be kept, or do away with the salary cap and let players be kept forever. I have an AL keeper league that is 12 players, keep forever. Owners think long and hard about trading Vlad, Mookie or others for talent in that case.
Hello Charlie,
I’m not certain you’re replying to me. I try to keep it somewhat short. So I didn’t explain the whole league format. I wrote for example only. And I did state a keeper league. As Mike states over and over in his column, I really didn’t mean to have the trade debated. Just show an example of what costs are for top ranked players (Betts). How you and I and especially the owners in my league value players is secondary to the issue. I’m getting Betts for 3 months. I hope to win because of it. So I trade lessor talent for him this year expecting my partner to get some value in the future. In many cases this value is even lower than Vlad Jr.
Mark,
I was not replying to you, but I think you made an excellent trade. The best trades in keeper leagues provide surplus value to both trading partners over their respective windows of contention. You made a bold and decisive move, and I hope it pays off for you.
How about requiring that teams pay for trades? Not fake payroll for future drafts or anything, real actual money. Add it to the kitty/payout at the end of the year and slant the payout on that toward the middle rather than the top. You want to go for it or tank it? Fine, you’re paying the teams in the middle to do it.
My 10 team dynasty league has 5 prospect spots per team with a separate prospect draft after auction. This means that when dump trades occur the prospects given up are usually quite good. Last year I traded Royce Lewis and Victor Robles for an overpriced Jansen and an unkeepable Degrom. Those are valuable assets in any league.
Dynasty league dump trades are far preferable to yearly leagues where losing owners have already started tuning out unless they stand to face punishment.
We had the same problem in our 20-team keeper league. Every year got worse and the rebuilding cycles got longer (instead of rebuilding for next year, you were rebuilding for 3 years from now). So we made drastic rule changes this offseason to curb the behavior — the most significant was adding a playoff reset element to provide more teams with a chance to win, and treating minor leaguers/DL players just as we would MLB players (in terms of availability). A copy of our league constitution can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cTSW3vGwhGA6yo9tIkUyvi4lVlg8BqhpmOTKihU-tPY/edit?usp=sharing
they started in my AL only 4×4 this weekend. Devers, Cole, Morton, Schoop for Lindor and 3 guys. Last place team gets Lindor.
In addition to an active roster salary cap, my league created the following rules to help keep dump trades under control.
1. Players with salaries of $25 or more, or if they are in the final year of a contract worth $17 or more, will be classed as “asterisk” players. Asterisk players can be unbalanced by no more than one in any trade during the season and teams can make only one such trade per year. Should a team change its mind later in the season about going for it, it can make an uneven asterisk trade in the other direction, with a team it had previously dealt with.
2. Trading within the asterisk rules is permitted from the start of Week 5 until the league’s trade meeting held on the second Tuesday in August. Unlimited trading also can take place between the end of the regular season and the roster freeze deadline the following year.
3. A team ready to dump must notify the rest of the league via the On The Block feature and cannot announce its first trade for the next 48 hours.
This just happened last week in my league. Started with 4 good to elite SP going to 1 team for mainly prospects. Weird thing was it was between 2 teams tied for last. At any rate it spurred multiple similar trades. After the dust settled I determined if you can’t beat them join them and moved couple picks and prospects for elite talent. I have mixed feelings overall. You hate when other guys make those deals, but feel good about it when you benefit.
a.l. only, 12 teams
– 320 max active salary cap
– 200 min active salary floor
– if you trade a final year or $25 salary or greater, one must come back
In my league you have to announce your intentions to dump to everybody. No dump deal can be consummated before one cycle (5-7 days) passes so everybody has the opportunity to bid for those players.
Unfortunately for the past 5 seasons the first teams to announce dumping intentions have all been in 4th place or better (we pay the top 3). The latest folks declared over the weekend. A rules change proposal seeking to insure that those who dump can’t collect prize money was soundly defeated.
I have a league with a luxury tax. We have 16 teams with a $300 auction cap. The league fee is the exact dollar amount you spend. Every dollar a team goes over the hard cap from the auction via trade is a $5 penalty that is added to the pot. Also the commissioner has the dumpee make electronic payment before the trades are approved. So even if you don’t like the trades you see at least they paid. Literally.
Our 30 year league has been dynasty for at least 20 of those years. We have a “3 year pool” that costs about 1/3 of the current year fee. Each year we award 1/3 of the pool to the team with the best three year results. Overall 1st place gets you 11 points, last place 1 point, for each of the last three seasons.
If you tank, you are giving up not only on the current season but any payout for the 3 year pool for the next 3 years.
Mike:
I would like to request a follow-up article (if you don’t mind) where you (based on the ideas presented below) identify a few (3, 4, 5?) of the best approaches to deal with this problem and comment on the pros/cons of the approach. In this way, I can then bring these ideas to my league mates and we can discuss them. I think such a distilled article would have great value to the readership.
Thank you.
Just to add some additional context (I commish the league Mike is discussing in the article). We used a modified version of the Tout Wars constitution with keeper rules added.
12-team al only, $260 budget 5×5, 14 hitters, 9 pitchers.
Max 8 MLB keepers (deadline one week prior to auction).
Minor league draft occurs right after keepers are announced but done prior to auction – 4 rounds but you can keep up to 8. So if you keep more than 5, you only get 3 picks and so on.
We use Vickery as our faab system with a $100 faab budget. No zero dollar bids allowed. FAAb and draft picks are tradeable. faabed price = contract price.
Contracts run this way:
Year one = A.
Year two = B can be kept at A-year purchase price.
Year 3 and beyond. Must announce long-term contract at +5/yr from draft day price.
MInor leaguers – hitters have a value of $5, pitchers $3.
$325 in-season cap. No floor. (minor leaguers and disabled players do not count towards cap)
1st four places get monetary prizes with 5th place getting first overall pick. Descends down to 12th place. Then reverse 4th through 1st place (and then snakes.
I think those are all the basics in order to have a greater understanding of the context we operate within.
Expensive Correa just got traded for a $7 Tim Beckham in a league that seemingly doesn’t believe in vetoes. I’m very upset.
Hmmmm, I have a $3 Beckham no one seems to want!
Yeah because he kind of stinks! Also, Correa is now out for 6-8 weeks and Beckham is back to playing full-time due to Crawford’s ankle injury. The baseball gods are very fickle.
(1) Best strategy is to so dominate your league that uneven dumps don’t stop you from grabbing your share of the loot. In the last eight years in my A.L.-only auction/keeper league , I have three times finished first and four times finishes second. Mind you, with the time I invest, that still only works out to $1.50 an hour.
(2) How you dominate depends on your league rules. In our league, we have 12 owners with 17-man reserves as part of 40-man rosters – 480 players rostered overall. We also have a salary rule that allows an owner to keep a player acquired in auction for two more years at the same price; an owner can extend that control by one year or by two years by adding $5 or $10, respectively, to the annual salary, but that decision to extend must be made before year 3, and if a player is extended, his salary counts towards your $260/max for your active roster even if he is still rookie eligible (rookie eligibles can otherwise be stashed on reserves at no cost) Those rules and deep rosters reward owners who get underrated prospects before they burst into prominence even though they are relatively close to the majors (Betts before he was a top-100 prospect) or college guys likely to be quick risers (Bregman, Benintendi). This year in May, I picked up in Andrew Vaughn of the Golden Bears before the draft because I think he will be the quickest moving bat; if he is drafted by an NL team, I must drop him, but he would have only cost me a roster spot for one month. For context, my league is deep enough that another owner in March picked up the most likely first pick, catcher Adley Rutschman.
(3) We created a rule that penalizes the teams that finished 11th and 12th by pushing their picks in the first round reserve to the back of the line — they used to pick first and second. While it probably doesn’t deter trade dumps, one can still enjoy the pleasure of snagging a reserve pick that they would otherwise get — sometimes retribution satisfies when justice isn’t possible.
(4) Try to get better owners. Smarter owners are generally less likely to make a lopsided dump because they are more astute about talent and value. Dumps still occur — and they should — but they are more reasonable. Thankfully, in my league, when owners have left (through attrition), which isn’t often, those who have come in have been more competitive. And with that added skill level, even long-standing owners who in the past invested less effort are doing more now. Two months into this season, nine teams are still in the running and no one has made a true dump trade yet.
(5) Don’t sweat what others do. Make the best of what you have, seek an edge, enter trade discussions most with owners whose knowledge and approach are similar to your own. It took me awhile to get to that point, but recent first place finishes took the edge off for me and I actually like the guys who generally compete with me for the top and sometimes win it – no shame in losing to a friend.
I have been playing in many keeper leagues since the early 1990s. My goal is having profitable teams and finishing in the money every season. Championships are secondary. I usually finish in the money. I don’t understand owners throwing away invested time and money for faint hopes of “winning” next year. I believe Fantasy Baseball begins on June 1st. Everything before that is evaluating and balancing your roster. Recovering from a bad auction/draft. I’ve come back from last place on June 1st to win – three times. Here’s what I have observed with dump trades.
When I’m in first place, I hate the dump trade and I will bitch trying to get support for a veto. We are playing a game. Vetoing a trade is playing the game just as a dump trade is. When I’m chasing a money spot, I don’t mind a dump trade if the dumper is tanking in category/categories I need to make up ground. The truth is the realized added value to the dumpee’s final standing is usually very minimal, if anything. The real impact to the standings are all the other teams that benefited by a dumper punting the rest of the season. The dumper has happily check out with his prize. The dumpers are usually the same owners that finish in the bottom half of the standings year after year. I’ve only seen one dumper win a championship the next year — and he won by having a great auction.
Many of the players that dumpers acquire are not kept the following year. Auctions/drafts and trading for players with real profitable contracts are the best opportunities for “rebuilding”. Accepting that dump trades will happen is an essential part of a keeper auction/draft strategy. After all the big impact players are gone in a auction/draft, it is time to load up on prospects, because those are cheap trade chips for quality players. Prospects’ value are their lowest at auction/draft time. Their value increases as the season goes on until the much hyped “call-up”. This is when dumpers mindset turns into this guy could be the next Mike Trout and I will dominate this league for years. Any realized value lost in trading away prospect(s) with next year’s team can easily be recovered in next year’s auction. The dumpee never really takes a hit.
Long ago dump trades started happening around Allstar break as trade rumors became the rage. About 5-6 years ago dump trades started to become a “rebuild” strategy as teams where making decisions around Memorial Day to keep playing this year or play next year. Some saw it as getting their Summer back when evaluating their dump trade. Dump trading has become ridiculous these days. The bottom third of a league is dumping with in the first two months of the season and with more than 4-5 months of the game left to be played.
So, if your upset about a dump trade, take a deep breath. Work a veto if needed. If the dump trade goes through, so what. Many teams will benefit from that trade — not the dumpee only. My advice is make note of the suckers who enjoying being dumpers and target them for next season to help your team. It’s a good list to have and save for future seasons.
veto’s suck. I would never EVER play in a league which has a veto process or NEEDS a veto process. and here you are, stammering on about trying to rile up your league mates because another team is getting better. sigh…
I’m also not a fan of vetoes, as one never really knows why someone is vetoing a trade. Plus, trades are subjective so a draft pick for a superstar might seem fair to one person but not to another. Pitting league mates against each other just doesn’t help the morale, so ultimately I would just agree with the statements of “If the dump trade goes through, so what. Many teams will benefit from that trade”. and just hope for the best without a veto involved.
We are a keeper league, and we limit teams to keeping up 3 minor leaguers. Also we give a $1 auction bonus for winning a category and a $1 penalty for being last in a category. Also 1st place and last place can only keep up to 6 player (prospects excluded) 2nd, 3rd and 2nd to last 7 keepers. all other teams 8 keepers. We also use a $325 in season cap.