Is Trading Dead?
Trading is an important part of most fantasy leagues. With the exception of a few leagues, most notably NFBC formats, owners are free to swap players with their fellow league mates throughout the season until some imposed trading deadline. Many fantasy owners believe that skillful trading, as one component of in-season roster management, is the biggest factor of success. But after passing the deadline in my one league that I commish, I am left wondering: is trading dead?
Personally, I have never been a big trader. Not that I am against it or necessarily dislike making trades, but I am just excruciatingly patient with my players. Much of the criticism I have taken in my AL Starting Pitcher rankings posts are a result of this patience and refusal to give much weight to small sample sizes. It takes a lot for me to change my opinion about a player, especially if the underlying skills are still there, yet the results just haven’t been as favorable. As such, my trade offers typically seem to take the appearance of your standard buy low/sell high, which don’t work like they used to.
I play in a single-season league, so that eliminates the multitude of dump trades that would inflate the league trade count. Our trading deadline was at midnight on August 29th. All season, we had a total of seven trades. SEVEN! If you are curious, I made one of those trades. I don’t remember how many trades have been made in previous seasons of this league (this is the ninth season of my league), but I feel confident that this has easily been the fewest number of trades I have ever seen in any league, not just mine.
The last trade was made in the beginning of July, a little over a month after the sixth trade was made. It was a power for speed swap that made sense for both teams at the time. Looking back, every other trade seemed need-based, though my trade was somewhat of a buy low/sell high, except my buy low guy, Aaron Hill, pretty much stayed low. I have discussed this in articles on previous blogs and sites I have written for, but it is worth repeating: the buy low/sell high type trade is pretty much dead. Since that eliminates an entire style of trade and really just leaves the category based ones, that results in a lot less trading activity.
Maybe my league mates are more skilled or knowledgeable than the average league and most other leagues still see the swath of the buy low/sell high types, and therefore trades in general. But I get the sense that the continued growth and popularity of sabermetrics and sites like FanGraphs is narrowing the skill difference between owners. When that happens, trading declines. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean luck becomes more of a factor, as well as draft day and free agent acquisition.
So, is trading dead?
Mike Podhorzer 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 observed the same thing and I think it’s easy to explain. Information is simply easier to come by and is of higher quality. There simply isn’t as much variety of opinion as there used to be. Without information asymmetry and given the same goals (in non-keeper leagues), there’s very little arbitrage to be done. On some occasion, you’ll have two teams who can balance each other out. But I’ve seen much, much less of the challenge trades that used to be quite popular.
That’s a good point, but I’ve seen opposite effects in leagues where everyone knows each other, like mine where we had 64 players traded. (And we go back to faxing league transactions & standings.)
When one team knows the offering team has all the information, the first side won’t trade on general principle. But if the first team can easily assess the trade, they might be more interested.
Second, all easy information makes leagues more competitive and categories extremely tight. More competing teams plus accessible points in specific categories = more trades.
Last, you can set up your league to promote trades. Have a tight FAAB budget to promote Player for FAAB $$ trades. Keeper league promotes dump trades. Loser taxes keep teams involved. Have lunch with each other, or some beers.