Even The Worst Trades Sometimes Work

We’ve all seen our share of terrible trades. Deals that make you say “What in Ruth’s bloody balls were you thinking.” However, I’ve noticed something over the years. These so-called terrible trades often look less ridiculous in retrospect. Not “good.” Just less bad. The lesson, I suppose, is that time can salvage a disaster. Sometimes.

Earlier this week, a patron brought an ottoneu trade to my attention, saying the league was grumbling about vetoing it. He wasn’t involved. My reaction was to wonder who even won the trade. Here are the details:

Team A receives: $47 Max Scherzer and $30

Team B receives: $16 Eloy Jimenez and $1 Andres Gimenez

Presumably, Team B is rebuilding and Team A is contending. It’s a classic prospect for stud trade. My only gripe is that while Scherzer may seem expensive, he’s actually dirt cheap. Easily a $65 pitcher until he breaks. And the nice thing about broken pitchers in ottoneu is you eventually get all that cash back to spend on the waiver wire. That said, Scherzer is of an age when he could cease to exist at any moment. It’s an ever-present risk.

There’s also risk on the Jimenez side. The hope is that he’s immediately a $40 outfielder. If so, he’ll absorb serious arbitration bidding, costing something like $29 next year and $38 the following year. Since Team B is probably rebuilding, the profit is basically lost by the time they’re back in contention.

There’s also a reality in which Jimenez is more like a $10 guy. In which case, he’s kept for $18 (a loss of $8) because he’s uber-hyped Eloy Jimenez. And if it happens again, he’s kept for $20 (a loss of $10), and so on and so forth. As for Gimenez, I like that his name is almost Jimenez. He’s one of about 60 prospects worth owning for $1 in the otto-verse.

I was confused as to who was getting vetoed so I ran a Twitter poll.

People apparently are mad online about this #ottoneu trade. I'm not involved in the league.

$47 Max Scherzer and $30
for
$16 Eloy Jimenez and $1 Andres Gimenez

There's talk of vetoing. Meanwhile, I have no idea which side they think got screwed.

Which side won?

— Brad Johnson (@BaseballATeam) February 27, 2019

There is a slight preference for the Scherzer side. I feel the same way. I rarely rebuild – maybe five percent of my keeper/dynasty rosters – so I’ll always be biased towards present value. After this poll, one of the owners involved reached out to note that Team A has a top heavy, win-now roster while Team B is rebuilding for 2020. That’s exactly the context we assumed earlier. It’s why people play formats like ottoneu, to add the dimension of time to trades.

Whoops, I Digressed

That trade wasn’t even meant to be today’s topic. Instead, I’d like to dig up a true disaster deal from the 2017-2018 offseason. This trade was made in a 20-team industry league with 45-player rosters. We keep 28 at no cost.

That image might be a little hard to read. Let’s try it again:

Team A gets: Starling Heredia, Blake Rutherford, Keibert Ruiz, Austin Riley, Justus Sheffield, Royce Lewis, Domingo Acevedo, Luis Almanzar, Alex Verdugo, Lazaro Armenteros, Yordan Alvarez, Dylan Cease, and Willy Adames

Team B gets: Maikel Franco, Fernando Tatis Jr., Walker Buehler, Jack Flaherty, Paul DeJong, Willie Calhoun, Brad Peacock, Stephen Piscotty, and Alex Bregman

The league, understandably, was in an uproar over this trade. We don’t veto deals, but we came close to stepping in with this one. Team A’s justification for the swap was “I like Alex Verdugo.” He’s still a fine prospect, but he’s also, what? The 14th best player in this trade (both then and now).

Rewind your mind to December of 2017. Forget that Ruiz and Lewis are big deals now. The issue was that Team A traded away the best prospects – Tatis, Buehler, Calhoun (we thought), and Flaherty. He also traded away the best present talent – DeJong, Piscotty, and Bregman. An aside, do you like how Bregman’s listed as the last player in the deal?

In perfect retrospect, both owners identified and acquired a collection of players who massively outperformed expectations in 2018. The Team A haul probably hit their 75th percentile as a group. The Team B haul struck gold with Buehler, Flaherty, and Bregman turning into monster assets. Even so, the deal looks a little less bad in retrospect. Team A landed a slew of top 50 prospects, enough to still have a bright future.

The deal was still ridiculous. If you find yourself on the cusp of a trade like this, FULL STOP. Break it into pieces. Execute the pieces separately. You might find you can get Verdugo, Ruiz, and Lewis while only using Franco, DeJong, and Piscotty. You should be very sure you’re crushing a trade of this size before executing it. This is also a rare instance where I advocate using a veto. Force these two noobs to break the deal into three or four digestible bites.