Evaluating Every Ottoneu Trade I Made – Part I

Over the course of the just-ended Ottoneu season, I made a total of 35 trades across seven leagues. I have no idea if that is a lot of trades or a small number or what. I know that I am pretty active on the trade market, so I assume it is a relatively high number. But the raw count isn’t what matters here. The only way we get better at making trades is by taking a moment to reflect on what went right and what went wrong, so we can learn and make better decisions in the future. So I did that. I ranked all 35 of my trades from best (I would do this again 10 times out of 10) to worst (I really wish I hadn’t done that). These articles will hopefully not just review that list but share some lessons learned along the way.

Let’s start with the worst and work our way up.

35. In League 32 on 6/8/23: $9 Michael Harris II, $2 Brandon Marsh, and MiLB* Colt Keith for $7 Jack Suwinski, $4 Logan Allen, $4 Louie Varland, and $2 Yennier Cano.

So, so many lessons in this one. First is a reminder to be patient with young talent. I believed in Harris last year, I still believed this year, and yet I made this trade on June 8. His wRC+ when we made the deal was 50. It was 138 the rest of the way. And it happened immediately. His wRC+ the first week after the trade was 174. Just waiting a few more days would have completely validated my patience.

In addition, I made a second mistake here – I gave into other people’s evaluations rather than my own. Louie Varland got so many exciting comps, many based on Stuff+ and I just…didn’t see it. At all. Varland simply hasn’t done anything to justify some of the excitement around him, and I was all the way out. But this deal felt like a decent way to place a bet on him. I like Allen a lot; Cano is great; I think Suwinski is solid. But this was a quantity-based return and there isn’t a star and one of the four pieces I got back was an easy cut months ago.

To make matters worse, I made this deal to improve a team that I thought could finish top-three, and it finished fourth. That in and of itself isn’t a disaster, though. I have no problem making aggressive moves and I would rather buy to go after the top-three and come up short than just bail on the season. But still, it makes the actual mistakes hurt more.

34. In League 32 on 6/29/23: $1 Evan Carter, MiLB Edwin Arroyo for $41 George Springer.

This is the same league as the deal above and suffers from the same final pain point – I fell short of my goal despite buying. Springer also falls into a bit of a Varland category for me, in that he is another guy I have traditionally been low on, but felt the price was right here. Springer was having an okay year when I acquired him, but his value was down. And given I always worried the bottom might fall out, I should have trusted myself. Trading Carter for a stud OF in late June made sense. I just didn’t get a stud OF.

33. In League 32 on 6/29/23: $53 Aaron Judge, $2 Josh Lowe, $1 Tarik Skubal for $48 Corey Seager, $16 Lourdes Gurriel Jr., $11 Reid Detmers.

Honestly, this one is not terrible except that I hate losing Skubal. Seager filled a need and while this is the same 4th-place team that fell short of my target, the headliners in this deal are not the reason I fell short. But I was probably a little too impatient with this one. Skubal was back about a week later and while I really like Detmers, part of what made me want to get this done was moving an injured pitcher for a healthy one. That turned out to hurt. I suppose it was a smart risk – Skubal easily could have had a setback – but I am not happy with this one.

32. In League 1 on 6/16/23: $11 Jesús Luzardo for $23 Eloy Jiménez.

I was in 5th-place in league 1 when I made this deal, and the only two categories I was outside the top half of the league were HR and SLG. Eloy had hit 5 HR in 84 PA with a .583 SLG leading up to this deal. Then he hit 11 more HR in 330 more PA the rest of the way with a .435 SLG. Maybe I am too hard on myself here, as I think Eloy was a decent bet for a buy low, but my team cratered in part because I failed to fix my biggest issues.

31. In League 1 on 8/30/23: $15 Randy Arozarena for $6 Brayan Bello, $4 Bryson Stott.

This is the same league, two months later, when I had decided it was time to look to the future. Arozarena was not an easy sell for me, but I really like these two. The reason this sits so far down is that the market in league 1 had slowed quite a bit and I was too focused on wanting to trade Arozarena and not enough on getting a return I loved. Bello ended up with a pretty middling season dragged down by a brutal second half and while I still like him, he isn’t as obvious a core rotation piece as I hoped he would be.

30. In League 32 on 8/30/23: $5 TJ Friedl, $1 Kutter Crawford for $45 Manny Machado.

This was at the deadline in league 32 (the one where I finished 4th) and really, it is fine. I have no strong feelings either way on this. Friedl and Crawford are fine pieces but I doubt I will miss either. Machado was sorta like Springer – the idea was the right idea but the production wasn’t the right production.

29. In League 32 on 8/6/23: $5 Oswald Peraza, $10 Jeremy Peña for $24 J.T. Realmuto.

Another from that same league; another where I don’t have super strong concerns about what I gave up; and another where the return simply didn’t do what I hoped. Realmuto was the 12th-highest-scoring C in this format the rest of the way. The two other catchers on my roster (Keibert Ruiz and Yainier Diaz) were 6th and 9th, and both were also better on a per-game basis.

28. In League 1 on 6/18/23: $1 Josh Donaldson for $2 Travis d’Arnaud.

Even Donaldson and d’Arnaud don’t care to read any evaluation of this trade.

27. In League 1199 on 6/27/23: $56 Aaron Judge for $51 Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

All kinds of context here. First, Judge had just gotten hurt. Second, I needed an upgrade at 1B or Util. Third, I thought I was contending in this league. As it turns out, Vlad didn’t provide the boost I needed and my team completely tanked. I don’t think that was Vlad’s fault, but he certainly didn’t help. I liked this deal at the time – it was still June and I thought Guerrero would have a big second half, possibly turning into a keeper at this price. Trading an elite OF bat for what I thought would be an elite 1B bat was a fine deal, it just didn’t work out.

26. In Leauge 1199 on 6/30/23: $6 Brett Baty, $3 Evan Carter, $2 Colton Cowser for $21 Nick Castellanos, $2 TJ Friedl, $1 Bailey Ober.

I thought about putting this as low as 30 and as high as 20, and it ended up here. What I like: Friedl and Ober are solid players and solid keepers. I recently participated in a mock draft with the team at Pitcher List and Ober was the 46th player off the board, around names like Dylan Cease, Hunter Greene, and Carlos Rodon. Castellanos filled a need at the time and was excellent for me even though my team tanked anyway.

What I don’t like: bailing on Baty and losing Carter and Cowser before seeing what they can do. I wouldn’t be keeping $8 Baty, but I suspect I could get more for Carter today than I did at the end of June. That said, I am not beating myself up over this too much. I needed OF help and pitching depth, I added both, and I did so with no meaningful impact on my 2023 team. That’s the kind of trade you need to be willing to make.

25. In Leauge 1 on 8/31/23: $23 Eloy Jimenez for $2 Matt Mervis.

This was a deadline deal, spinning off the Jimenez from #32 to get back a young bat. I am fine with this deal in general, but I wish I could have done better than Mervis. I am not totally convinced he is a keeper and, even if he is, the bar for him to be valuable at 1B is just so high. I just feel very uninspired by this.

24. In League 13 on 7/10/23: $9 C.J. Cron for $1 Henry Davis.

On July 10, when this trade was finalized, this team needed help in the OF and at C and Davis looked like he might be able to help at both. He ended up not doing much for us, but Cron wasn’t helping at all and this was a perfectly solid gamble to make. We ended up cutting Davis late in our successful playoff run, but we probably would have cut Cron anyway, and in the meantime, we got a little help.

23. In Leauge 1 on 7/22/23: $25 Kevin Gausman for $9 Bryce Miller, $3 Tink Hence, $3 Ricky Tiedemann.

I prefer to build cheap pitching staffs and I was pretty happy with this deal. In the midst of selling in league 1, getting three young SP, including Tiedemann who I am very high on, for Gausman was exactly the kind of deal I wanted to be able to make. This isn’t higher on the list because Gausman is still a pretty easy keeper. But this is how I want to build my rotations – get the guys cheap, ride them until they cost too much, and trade them to start the cycle over. Miller is already a little more than I would like and I am not sure what my plan is for Hence, based on his timeline, but Tiedemann will be a piece of my rotation until he costs $20 and then I’ll trade him, too.

22. In League 13 on 8/29/23: $13 Rhys Hoskins, $4 Shane Baz, $2 Brandon Marsh, $2 Heston Kjerstad for $36 Julio Urías, $28 Seiya Suzuki, $15 Teoscar Hernández.

This is a lot to give up, but we were playing for a title in league 13 and needed OF help (remember my comment on how Henry Davis might help in our OF?) for the playoffs, plus one more SP. Urías was a disaster given he basically never pitched for us, but I’ll give myself a pass on that – it would have been awfully hard to predict him basically being out of baseball. But the two OF were exactly the right buys. We liked what we saw in Suzuki’s swing change and felt Hernandez – already a streaky hitter – was heating up. They were both great for us and I don’t think we win the title without them.

*I play in one league that uses a minor league system, filled via a separate draft, where you can stash players at no cost. A few of these trades include players from that system.