Hey! Shop Your Trades

Over the weekend, we had a real doozy of a trade in the ottoneu Screw Cancer league. This is not an industry league so I’d like to start by apologizing to the teams involved in the trade. I’d usually avoid calling y’all out in an article, but this is too perfect an example.

To thoroughly bury the lede, let’s quickly talk about today’s lesson before jumping into unpacking this example. It’s one I’ve espoused before on this and half a dozen other sites. Shop your friggin’ trade offers. Especially when you’re trying to sell major assets.

We’re not talking about the time you were offered Brian Anderson for Trevor Cahill and accepted without a second thought because you had nine starting pitchers. Penny pinching with role players probably isn’t a worthwhile use of your time. If you receive an offer you like for an unimportant piece, you don’t need to ask your league’s permission before proceeding.

However, if you’re about to trade Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and Kris Bryant to one team, you should probably tell your leaguemates it’s happening. They… might want to take steps to stop you. Steps that can work in your favor.

Let’s cut to the tape screenshot. To embiggen, right-click the image and select ‘open in new tab.’

If you don’t want to do the clicking thing which will also reveal some interesting justifications, here is the deal.

Jerry Dipoto trades: $83 Mike Trout, $62 Bryce Harper, $54 Kris Bryant, $3 Lance McCullers, and $100

Saratoga Grays trades: $9 Robbie Ray, $6 Zack Wheeler, $30 Anthony Rendon, $4 Brandon Nimmo, $33 Corey Seager, $9 Jesse Winker, $8 Fernando Tatis Jr.

That’s… a lot to unpack. In many ways, it’s funny that I wrote about these large trades just last Friday. Once you take the time to digest the deal, it doesn’t even look that ridiculous. Let’s try to break it into chunks.

The $100 is a LOT of loan. Most ottoneu owners misunderstand how the economy operates and so do not properly price their loan money. It’s just something they throw in to facilitate a trade. It’s a complicated part of the equation. It’s tempting to say Dipoto should be paid for the players AND the money.

Truthfully, unless they’re priced well under cost, the players lose nearly all of their value without the loan. Offseason trading reveals this. What would you offer for an $82 Trout in early January? Let’s assume you have the budget to keep him. The $4 Nimmo and $6 Wheeler? What about Harper? The $33 Seager maybe? Perhaps $54 Bryant and $3 McCullers for $30 Rendon?

That leaves $9 Winker, $8 Tatis, and $9 Ray as surplus. That’s roughly what Team Dipoto’s $100 has bought. I might trade $100 for Winker, Tatis, and Ray at good prices.

So this wasn’t a bad trade in and of itself. A rebuilding owner purchased a bunch of rebuild-ish pieces. He used a trio of expensive players he acquired over the offseason explicitly for this purpose. We all knew he intended to do this eventually. What we didn’t know was that he was ready to move right now.

I have built a contender in this league, and I loaded up on pieces to send to rebuilding owners for reinforcements. Real tasty-looking $1 prospects. I also have some major building blocks on affordable contracts – $35 Francisco Lindor, $19 Ronald Acuna, and $15 Vladimir Guerrero are among the most notable. I don’t have any plans to trade those players, but there are certain scenarios under which they could become available.

When this owner acquired Trout earlier in the winter, I began laying some groundwork. I congratulated him for choosing a strategy of rostering expensive players for a post-draft sale. It’s the best way to rebuild in ottoneu. I informed him I would field the top offer for Trout at the appropriate time.

The draft came and went. On February 21, my co-owner and I sent an inquiry involving a $6 Mike Soroka and additional unnamed assets for Trout and a loan. Gotta start somewhere. We were told by the owner that he thought he resuscitated the roster enough to compete. He needed a haul. Talks fizzled from there as he never defined what “haul” meant. I mentally categorized it as “follow up in June.”

UPDATE: I think this anecdote about discussing Soroka is distracting a lot of readers. The point was that we were having a general chat about some players and the other owner said he wasn’t especially interested in trading Trout. I indicated I would attempt to field the top offer at the appropriate time. Soroka, it turns out, wouldn’t have been included due to his re-injury.

Two weeks later, the mega-trade appeared in my inbox as completed. I was excluded from the talks entirely. Nobody likes to be excluded. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. The owner claims he used the trade block to inform us. I don’t get those emails. Hardly anybody ever checks them. Honestly, what percentage of ottoneu trade block update emails do you check?

Quick #ottoneu question:

You know all those "trade block updated" emails and messages. How often do you actually check the update?

— Brad Johnson (@BaseballATeam) March 4, 2019

Honestly, I can’t say for sure if I would have put any of my three best players into an offer – even for all three of Trout, Harper, and Bryant. I tend to get overly cocky about my great-not-amazeballs rosters. Hubris is a bitch sometimes. It cost me a four-peat in FanGraphs Staff Two last year because I wouldn’t trade Juan Soto.

I do know I could and would have paid more for Trout alone than the implied valuation in this deal. The prevailing sentiment is that Mr. Dipoto could have done better by disaggregating the swap. It’s likely but not definitely a correct sentiment. My opinion is that simply involving me in the negotiation would have improved his overall return by at least 10 percent. Again, that’s likely but not definitely a correct opinion.

One thing is certain. The trade brought forth the wrath of a thousand suns on our message boards. The V-word was dropped on multiple occasions before cooler heads prevailed. The furor could have been averted by simply keeping us all in the loop. Imagine, the following posted on the message board:

“I have received an acceptable offer for Trout, Harper, and Bryant. You have X hours to change my mind.”

Then, follow up individually with owners who inquired earlier in the offseason. As a homework assignment, read this Matt Gelb post on the Athletic about the Phillies’ courtship of Bryce Harper. Pay especial attention to how Scott Boras handled the negotiations.