Kicking Rocks: The Dump Deal
Watch out, keeper league owners. It’s that time of year again. The hot starts have cooled down, the cold starts have heated up, your waiver wire has been picked clean, and you’re seeing a separation in your standings between the haves and the have nots. The haves are trying to make deals to solidify their roster for a championship run while the have nots are already looking towards next year. It doesn’t matter that there’s still almost four months left in the season and plenty of time to mount a comeback, there are those that accept defeat a little too easily and all they care about is which stud protect they can pick up just by unloading their roster to someone in the hunt for a title. It’s time for the dump deal.
For the most part, it’s the natural course of events in a keeper league. The higher quality players get passed down to the bottom-feeders in your league in exchange for a package of players that you probably wouldn’t protect from year to year, but are of quality enough to help your team win this year and fill in any roster holes you may have. The following season, supposedly, those bottom-feeders become the contenders and the top ranked players get passed around again. Ideally, that’s the case. Ideally.
But the problem with these, though, is that these trades are usually three or four players for one and come off as egregiously lopsided. Not collusive, but egregiously lopsided. The team giving up the most right now doesn’t care what the price is, just as long as they are getting the best player in the deal for next season while the team trading the superstar is expecting some huge bounty because they are giving up a cornerstone of their squad. Both parties eventually agree on some crazy, imbalanced deal and the league uproar begins.
The griping starts, the email wars commence and before you know it, you’ve spent at least half of your work day replying back and forth, standing up for whichever side you believe in. Feelings get hurt, names get called, rule changes get debated and in the end, the crux of the discussion revolves around where you draw the line on such deals. Can you draw a line on such deals?
The contending teams want a premium for their player and the non-contenders just don’t care what they have to pay at this moment. Is there any point in the negotiations where either team says, “Wait a minute. This is just too much.”? Probably not. The team getting the protect will tell you that they didn’t give up anyone in the deal that is worth keeping for next year, so it doesn’t matter to them while the team unloading their star for multiple role players will debate the inherent value of walking into next season with such a stud on the roster.
The debates are endless and usually remain unresolved. Some leagues try to implement rules to try and block such deals from occurring but, more often than not, the attempts are futile because it really all comes down to subjective value. Everyone values players differently. Some look at a guy like Jacoby Ellsbury and see a potential 30-30 stud while others will look at him as an injury prone guy who had a fluke season with respect to power. As it stands right now, neither is 100% wrong, are they? So how do you determine the value of protecting a guy like him for next year? Is the chance to keep him and hope for a repeat of his 2011 numbers worth a bounty of role players right now? And if he is worth it, then what would be the price to pay for an underachieving Albert Pujols or a twice-DL’d Matt Kemp?
On the other side of that coin, is the value of the role players. Are they just role players or do some of them have the potential to become keepers? If Jason Kipnis continues to play at this level, is he worth keeping? Some will say that he is just off to a good start but will level off while others see him as a potential 20-20 player at a relatively thin position. Can anyone say, with 100% certainty, who is right and who is wrong here?
It all comes down to personal belief. Sure, there are projections made and player evaluations that help guide us along each year, but they are guidelines, not the gospel. Rarely will you get an entire league of fantasy owners to agree on the value of one particular player and because of that, these dump trades and the debates that go hand-in-hand with them will never disappear. Like it or not, they are a staple in keeper leagues.
Besides, if one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and both parties are happy, how can it be a bad deal?
Howard Bender has been covering fantasy sports for over 10 years on a variety of websites. In addition to his work here, you can also find him at his site, RotobuzzGuy.com, Fantasy Alarm, RotoWire and Mock Draft Central. Follow him on Twitter at @rotobuzzguy or for more direct questions or comments, email him at rotobuzzguy@gmail.com
Can’t wait for this year’s email wars. Usually includes pictures and GIFs and makes the work day fly by..
Ottoneu’s arbitration voting can really throw a wrinkle into these kinds of deals. What’s the point in trading four decent players for a great keeper if he’s getting voted off your team this winter?
Last year I traded Jed Lowrie-10, Jesus Montero-10, Beachy-1, and Jacob Turner-1 for Justin Upton-21. At the time, Beachy’d been good for about three weeks. Of course, I lost Upton in arbitration, so I essentially traded those players to protect Michael Pineda-8, my next leading arb vote getter.
Later, I gave up Felix-55, Lincecum-50, Rizzo-5, Skaggs-1, and Martin Perez-2 for Bryce Harper-8 and Brennan Boesch-1. I have Harper at $10 this year; is there any remote chance he’s not my arb guy this year? It’s loads of fun rooting for your top prospect to please stop hitting the ball.
No one cares about your team.
these “Kicking Rocks” columns really do have a way of bringing out the jerks in the comment section. Jeez.
Care enough to comment on it, apparently.
Point. Example. Example. Conclusion.
Hey ‘ward,
Somewhat off topic, but in a league with a roster move fee, I’m thinking that for folks who are ‘out of it’ it might be worth considering a waiver of roster move fees for folks in the bottom third (or quarter, or whatever) of the standings as of the trading deadline get free roster moves post-deadline. They won’t be making roster moves otherwise, since no point, so no money is lost in the kitty, and it might retain some slight measure of interest in the league and a bit better competition from folks who would otherwise leave their four injured guys in the lineup for the remainder of the season. Just throwin’ it out there.
“[Fantasy] Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It’s no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It’s a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.”
Ty Cobb
Speaking of “on the other side of the coin”. I’d actually go so far as to skip the coins and just start printing Kipnis on paper bills with the inscription “In Kipnis We Trust”
We have an in-season salary cap and floor. From $260 on draft day, you cannot go below $180 or above $340. This prevents one contender from hoovering up all of the available talent from dumpers.
I think you also need to look at it in terms of value. If you get a pair of $40 players for a half season to fill some holes on your roster, you are getting 80 * 0.5 = $40 in expected value. If they guys you are trading away are not expected to give the new owner a similar profit over the life of their contract, then something is fishy.
For example, imagine you have Mike Trout at $15/year for 2013 – 2015 (3 year contract). What is a $15 Trout “worth” in that scenario? Conservatively, around $20 extra per year, but maybe as much as $30-$35 per season depending on how much power he hits for. You would need to get a an awful lot of expiring contracts to make up for that lost value. I would be insisting on _four_ $40 players to trade Trout. Not many owners are willing to give that up, and many others would be outraged if such a trade occurred.
Your argument doesn’t seem to understand why dump deals happen. The point of fantasy baseball isn’t to consistently do well, it’s to win championships. If you can concentrate your value into a single year, that’s a good strategy, even if it lowers your expected success in other years. Most people aren’t trying to finish fourth every year.
My league implemented a salary cap to combat this about 5 years ago, and it works very well. Yeah, dump deals still happen, which is fine, but one team that’s “going for it” can only make one big deal and he’ll be at the cap, and even in that one deal he won’t be able to afford everything and the kitchen sink. We’ve had to fine tune the amount of the cap over the years, but since we really dialed it in, it has worked perfectly. I highly recommend giving a salary cap a hot if at all possible given your league structure.