Ottoneu Hail Mary

It’s crunch time. Trades and keepers for all ottoneu league are due in just a little over two days. An offseason of reshaping your roster is about to be locked in place for all of 2016. Are you ready?

If you’re like me, you have a preponderance of complementary parts hanging around your roster. I finally succeeded in trimming my roster below the $400 threshold by trading $36 Zack Greinke and parts for $19 Jason Kipnis and parts. Now I have 13 players who are hanging around the edge of my roster. Realistically, I’ll probably keep about five of them.

If I were to cut all of them, I’d have $341 dedicated to 19 roster spots. I have the talent to contend even with less than $3 per remaining roster spot. My rotation is chock full of studs, my bullpen is headlined by a couple 10 pt/IP arms, and my lineup is only missing a utility man, fifth outfielder, and depth. I just need to very carefully choose who will fill the depth roles.

In my heart of hearts, I already know which players and staying and which are going. But I’m trying to squeeze every last cent out of them. To this end, I’ve sent every owner a volume offer containing eight or nine players for one target I’d definitely keep.

These volume offers serve two purposes. They might be accepted outright with my trade partner simply cutting whichever parts he didn’t like. Because these are all players around the fringes of a roster – like a $3 Brock Holt – owner evaluations can vary wildly. The players I’m asking for – generally in the $2 Alex Bregman category of asset – are of a sort that a couple bullish projections on Holt and another guy in my offer could push the calculus in my favor.

When, inevitably, your trade is rejected, you’ll get two types of responses.

1. “You’re kidding right? Why would I do this?
2. “No, I only like X, Y, and Z. The other five are bums.

The first answer is useful in that it tells you which owners to not even bother to pursue. Maybe they don’t like your players, or maybe it’s just the framework. Whatever the issue is, you don’t have any time left to mess with uninterested owners.

The second answer is more directly helpful. Now you know which players your rival likes, and you may get a sense for how he or she values them. This is the foundation of a real, actual trade talk.

It’s here where the volume approach could backfire. Holt and another player for Bregman might line up in terms of value. But if your initial offer was Holt, the other guy, and seven more players, then your prospective trade partner is anchored to a higher valuation.

You won’t have time to talk him down to your best offer. I recommend simply explaining your initial process. Admit you knew some of those players you offered were cuts. Obviously, right? But you also felt that they were all people somebody might want to keep. You just want to be done with it in one fell swoop.

There’s a reason the post is titled Hail Mary – this approach isn’t likely to work. It might, it’s just not a high percentage play. For what it’s worth, here are the 13 players on my bubble:

$3 Holt
$3 Danny Valencia
$6 Adam Lind
$7 Alex Rodriguez
$11 Brandon Moss
$9 Jonathan Schoop
$4 Brandon Phillips
$3 Nate Jones
$4 Kevin Siegrist
$3 Jerad Eickhoff
$7 Jake McGee
$2 Ozhaino Albies
$2 Jose De Leon

As I mentioned, I’ll probably keep five of these guys. Under the right circumstances, I could justify keeping any of them. I’m sad about McGee who was downgraded from automatic keeper to bubble boy yesterday. It’s a big hit to my bullpen either way.

For the players I don’t trade or keep, I will offer them for free to some of my rebuilding leaguemates. I hate for my closest rivals to get players cheaply.