Offseason Fantasy Blockbusters
Ottoneu is a year-round fantasy baseball platform developed by Lord of Shadows Niv Shah. You probably know that. The arbitration period ended on November 14, and trading began the next day. In the writer’s league, FanGraphs Staff Two, a pair of blockbuster trades were consummated on the very first day of trading. Today, we’ll discuss those trades and the perspective of each owner involved.
Interestingly, we replaced two owners this offseason, with David Wiers and Scott Spratt inheriting teams. Both trades included one of our new owners. Wiers’ roster, Crosby Sweaters and Jello Pops, is decent. The previous owner finished seventh last season and the team was well endowed with pricey stars including Mike Trout. It lacks low cost talent. Scott’s roster, Bradley “Handsome” Woodrum (it’s unclear if Scott knows he can change the team name), came in dead last in a league where two other owners punted 2014 for prospects. He’s not in bad shape, but he still has a long way to go.
Let’s consider the trades. The first to be executed is pretty straightforward. Behold:
Bradley “Handsome” Woodrum receives
$61 Clayton Kershaw
The Razor Shines (Robert Baumann) receives
$6 Marcus Stroman
It may not look like it, but this is a rebuilding move for both owners. Baumann’s team came in third place, but he spent most of his best keeper assets gunning for first. Prior to the trade, he had over $600 of players on his roster. He can keep a maximum of $400.
When I asked Robert about the trade, he offered some regret for having executed it so quickly. Tactically, it’s usually (but not always) wise to field multiple offers. However, he knew he had to get his costs under control, and this move nets $56 of cap room. Stroman was among his top targets, so he acted aggressively. Personally, I would have targeted a position player due to the attrition rate of pitchers, but I find no fault in the general strategy.
As for Scott, his roster is a little thin on keepers, which means he’ll enter the draft with a lot of money. He’s worried there won’t be a lot of star power to purchase on draft day and didn’t want to get stuck overbidding for the mid-tier talent.
If we look past just this offseason, Kershaw should also help his rebuild. Kershaw is a player I considered acquiring, but I had trouble accepting the $61 price tag. I was hesitant to offer a $2 Julio Urias for him. However, once our league drafts in March, Spratt can include a loan with Kershaw to make him a $0 player in 2015 (he’ll still cost $63 or more to keep). That should net multiple rebuilding blocks. Overall, I love the strategy, it’s one I used last season in acquiring Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, and others.
The second trade involves my team, so I’ll do my best to remain objective. Here’s the specifics.
Encarnation Instant Breakfast (me) receives:
$55 Mike Trout
$14 Jonathan Lucroy
Crosby Sweaters and Jello Pops receives:
$5 Corey Seager
$4 Steve Souza
$3 Jace Peterson
I spoke to Wiers after the trade to get his take on the deal. With the expensive, star laden roster he inherited, David believed rebuilding was the best path. While he has a handful of great players, he didn’t have enough depth or money to fill out the roster. This deal was about adding future talent to a roster that completely lacked prospects.
As Wiers himself notes, banking on Seager, Souza, and Peterson is a big risk. He’s identified each of the three as possessing high value potential. Seager is a top prospect and the lynch pin of the trade. Souza is a well regarded prospect with the Nationals who is currently blocked on the depth chart. I like him better in 5×5 leagues. Carson Cistulli found Peterson to possess many of the same qualities as the top prospects in the world, and we’ve all been a little wonky about him since then. After all, Carson’s pretty damned good at finding diamonds in the rough (Corey Kluber anyone?)
From my perspective, this couldn’t have come together any better. I added a ton of money to my payroll, but I was in fantastic financial shape. My offseason strategy was to add one or two high priced stars. Even after the trade, my roster organizer shows $320 allocated to 32 players – and that includes an unlikely $30 payday to David Wright. It would be a challenge, but I could add another $50 player and still field a full roster.
Trout was my very top target of the offseason. Wiers and I discussed a variety of scenarios during the arbitration period, which is how this trade came together. I initially made an offer of Seager plus a bundle of lesser goodies for just Trout. Earlier in the month, we had discussed my interest in both Trout and Lucroy. Wiers exploited my interest in a catcher to upgrade the back end of my offer.
The move adds considerable depth and talent to my roster. Lucroy will join a $6 Evan Gattis to form a catchers platoon. I was worried I would have to rely upon an overpriced Carlos Ruiz type, so I’m relieved to now own Lucroy. Gattis will also serve as outfield depth once he regains that eligibility. He’ll be joined by Trout, $22 Yasiel Puig, $6 Christian Yelich, $5 George Springer, $4 Steve Pearce, and a couple other depth guys. Not only did I add points, I also built some dynamic, high value depth. As part of my push for the pennant, I have no regrets trading players who won’t contribute much in 2015.
Parting Thoughts
No other trades have been executed since those opening salvos. Three of the four teams involved were aiming to rebuild, while I’m trying to claw my way past perpetual contender Chad Young and 2014 champion Cody Wiewandt. When I was new to the league last offseason, I was aggressive in making trades. I’m glad to see our newest members taking a similar tact.
You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam
Completed TRADES:
Trade with Jason Ashley :
I give up
Melancon, Hanley, Stephenson, Crawford
For
Wisler, Stewart, Giolito, Meadows
Trade with Randy Normand :
I give up
Anderson For O’Brien
Trades I made since I took over a league I was in
That Mike Trout deal is a complete blowout for the Trout side. Geez. The Seager side is betting on somewhat obsecure prospects – the level of which can be readily had for nothing in the auction. There is some surplus value for Trout at $55 — especially in what was just mentioned as an auction environment projected to be light on star power.
And that’s not even to mention $14 Lucroy, a top 5 fantasy catcher at a very reasonable price. A $14 Lucroy should command at least one uber-prospect in return; I wouldn’t even start negotiating unless Kris Bryant or someone comparable were on the table. Any rebuilding team should jump at the chance to own $14 Lucroy. He is young and good enough to be considered a franchise piece — one you should never trade unless you are completely blown away by an offer.
Yes the Trout side is adding salary, but they’re trading off unproven crapshoots for two of the very best players in the game at fair or excellent costs. I think that return would have been fine for a $55 Trout, but adding Lucroy pushed that deal from reasonable to bizzare.
Yeah, I’d probably have been willing to trade those prospects for the $14 Lucroy alone. Not sure $55 Trout has a lot of surplus value, but there’s also not about to be a comparable player available for $55 in the draft, either.
Agree – none of those prospects is very exciting. I’d trade those three prospects for Lucroy alone. I’d consider a veto if this happened in my league.
I agree the Trout side easily won that trade- and its not even close. That said, Seager has the potential to be one of the best offensive shortstops/ 3baseman in baseball within a few years and theres significant value to having him at a cost controlled low salary. I think if the Seager side had another top 20 type prospect in the Sano, giolito, addison Russell etc. class then the trade would be alright for both sides.
Vetoing trades should never happen. If the trade is lopsided that’s the business of the parties involved. Just because your calculus would be different than the owner’s should not mean the trade should be vetoed, maybe the owner you think is on the losing end has come up with some brilliant strategy that you’re not comprehending. Maybe he wanted to unload salary and start from scratch. Vetoing trades is for small, petty people.
So is that why there is a veto process in Ottoneu and every fantasy baseball league ever, because vetoes should never happen? Perhaps the designers of every fantasy baseball are “small and petty.” Markets need to be regulated – in both real life and in baseball. Not from collusion, per say, but rather from idiots who ruin leagues with their incompetence.
Vetoes are a sign of a broken league. If you have an owner who can’t keep up with the rest of the league, then replace him. Don’t veto trades. The outcome of a trade tends to be vastly different than the expectation.
In our league (FPAmateurs) I traded Kershaw ($46), VMart ($7), Jordy Mercer ($5), Joe Panik ($3), and Robert Refsnyder ($2) – for a rival’s Gerrit Cole ($13), Samardijza ($8), Drew Hutchison ($3), Dellin Betances ($3) and Travis d’Arnaud ($9).
I gave up the most talent (Kershaw and VMart) but I needed to shed salary and I now have a surplus of affordable, relatively-high-end pitchers. I like the idea of Hutchison pitching to the larger strike zone afforded by Russell Martin, and I think Cole is going to take a step forward this year.
I won last year, and the other team finished 2nd. I think he (or she?) saw Kershaw and VMart as the reasons I won (which is probably correct) and wanted them. But I am comfortable with the return I received along with the flexibility I will now have in the draft.
Hopefully I didn’t get fleeced. I don’t like tying up too much $ in pitchers.
That Trout trade is mind-blowing – even more so when you got Lucroy as well! Would be very interested to hear what all the other owners in the league thought of that.
I only talked to Chad about it, but he didn’t seem to think it was that lopsided. He did mention the secondary prospects were fungible, but they’re guys Wiers values. I’ve learned the hard way not to rag on knowledgeable people when their values seem a little odd.
I was also probably the only contender who could afford to add Trout over the offseason. Wiers’ other expensive players would probably return almost nothing in an offseason trade and he couldn’t afford to keep them all. In other words, demand was strongly in my favor.
If anyone wants to see every Ottoneu trade from Nov. 15-19, here you go: http://ottoneutraderumors.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/ottoneu-trades-week-in-review-1115-1119/
I will update again in a week, but I encourage everyone to look through this to see what $55 players like Trout were going for in other leagues. Certainly comparing leagues is apples and oranges and the same deals are likely not available in this specific instance. I do think there is something to be said that you can likely find better offers than what he received (I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t). That does not mean the deal won’t work out, or that anyone should be bashing Wiers return, but my opinion is that the same trade could have been pulled without Lucroy. Certainly after the fact it is easy to make the case that Lucroy was necessary to complete the deal, but my guess is that most teams would do the deal without him. The reality is that players like Trout at $55 get traded all the time for packages similar to what Wiers received.
I agree with the crowd here that this is way too little talent to receive for Trout and Lucroy. If Wiers is truly rebuilding he would have been better off holding Trout/Lucroy into the season and trading them individually for much more than what he received here in the off season.
The point made on the Stroman for Kershaw trade is also well taken. Sometimes it’s worth paying something of value in the off season for a great player even if you can’t bet on any surplus value from your acquisition just so you don’t end up overpaying for Tier 2 or 3 (riskier) talent in the draft. The higher the number of teams that look competitive entering a a given season the more this off season strategy may pay off (even more so when you can acquire offense).
my concern is that the guy is new to the league. is he new to the format? Lopsided trades by themselves do not warrant vetoes. But combined with other factors (new to the league, about to quit the league, past questionable dealings etc), it’s good evidence to back up a veto.
Process over results. You said not many teams could take on a $55 player. But did he actually try to trade him to other teams?
My take on this is the following: You can only spend ech dollar once. A dollar spent on Trout cannot be spent on someone else. At the same time, every dollar saved by not owning Trout can only be spent on available talent. In the age of Steamer projections, it should be possible to establish a theoretical value for each player based on projected performance. This theoretical value can be compared to each players real value to come up with a surplus value.
It seems to me that the goal is to maximize surplus value for every dollar spent, while at the same time maximizing results in fantasy points. So there are two questions to evaluate:
1. what is the surplus value that Trout at $55 and Lucroy at $14 create?
2. what other players are available that would in any combination generate the fantasy points that Trout and Lucroy would generate for this team? (subject to restrictions like positional eligibility, etc.)
The answer to the first question is subject to discussion, but my current preliminary estimate for 2015 (and for 2015 only) based on Steamer is that Trout is worth about US$50 and Lucroy about US$9. The exact amounts might be a bit off, but I guess it means that there is not a great amount of upside for owning either player at this value and possibly negative surplus value (of up to US$10). Of course, there is the additional cost of letting go of whichever surplus value the prospects might have for 2015 (limited unless they will get a lot more PA than projected).
For the other side, the potential surplus is much higher, depending on how the prospects pan out. Even if 2015 is not necessarily the year, this could bring benefits for 2016 and beyond. And in any case, it brings budget flexibility to use the same US$ 69 on other assets which they will need to replace the loss of fantasy points for 2015 (unless they will punt the 2015 season entirely). It is a typical short-term vs long-term perspective.
HOWEVER, we do need to consider question 2. With limited supply, and ample budget flexibility, it is entirely possible that there were not many other options to buy this kind of fantasy output. In that case, the cost (in negative surplus value) might be higher for other combinations of players. So depending on the exact characteristics of the league, the buyer of Trout and Lucroy may still have managed to maximize output (projected 1620 points) while at the same time maximizing surplus value (at only -/- 10 USD).
For example, in my league, a combination of Puig at US$18 and Ozuna at US$5 are projected to produce 1617 points, for only US$23 instead of US$69. But the owners of Puig and Ozuna at those prices are not necessarily very likely to trade their crown jewels.
Your numbers aren’t too far off my own. I’ve applied some arbitrary adjustments that push Trout and Lucroy to about $60 and $20, but that’s just splitting hairs. I do that not to be more correct, but to more aggressively price the players I value most.
maybe weirs should consider changing his team name
Actually, he has, his team name is now David Wiers. Creative.