Trading: Keeper League Tips
This is article six in a seven-part series on fantasy trading. To read the introduction, click here.
1. Long-term Relationships
This is the main difference between keeper and redraft leagues. If you get deep into talks with an owner and do something to piss them off, your chances of dealing with them in the future are diminished. In keeper leagues, you should be much more diligent and explain why you are rejecting every deal.
2. Buy Low More
I touched on this in my “On BABIP and Buying Low” article a couple of weeks back, but I’ll elaborate more. When you sense some regression is on the horizon, you have a much better chance of getting a good deal in keeper leagues. In redraft leagues, the player may never regress, and your stuck with a guy you have no use for. However, if you are certain the player is better than he’s shown, you have a much better chance to cash in if you’re in a keeper league. Even if they don’t return to normal during the current season, you could always hold onto them and wait for next year.
3. Weighing Next Year vs. This Year
I lied, this is a bigger difference than #1. While redraft leagues only have to worry about what the player will do the rest of the season, keeper league owners need to weigh a players current performance, their future performance, and draft pick value. For example, if you can make a deal to get a player you find to be almost as valuable this year, but will be cheaper to keep in the future, you need to pull the trigger. Don’t get carried away and deal everyone away for cheap keepers, but keep that factor in mind when accepting a deal.
Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
In redraft leagues, the player may never regress, and your stuck with a guy you have no use for.
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What? Regression doesn’t “take time” to happen. If a player is a true-talent .380 wOBA hitter and has a .330 wOBA due to unlucky BABIP, then there’s no reason that the rest of “this” season he will continue being unlucky, whereas next season he loses all his “unluckiness.” That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
It makes perfect sense, actually. Regression DOES take time: it’s possible for a player to sustain freakishly bad or good luck for an entire season. That’s how Alex Rios managed a .247/.296/.395 season (2009) sandwiched between years in which he hit .291/.337/.461 (2008) and .302/.354/.510 (this year). The same thing seems to be happening with Teixeira this year, but I’d still trade for him as a keeper.
I’d argue the answer is somewhere in between what you guys are saying. The expectation for regression is that it should happen right away, since past performance doesn’t impact anything from the point in time that you receive the player in question. However, knowing that you’ll have that player for a longer period of time (as in a keeper league) means that the value you get from the player is less likely to be influenced by hot or cold streaks, since the longer the period of time that’s measured the more likely the player is to regress (upward or downward) to his “true” talent level.
Agreed, and better put than what I said. Regression, as a concept, is instantaneous. If a player is playing above or below his true talent level, you expect him to start playing at his true talent level right away. What I think Zach meant to say (or what I meant to say) is regression’s effect on a player’s overall numbers is not instantaneous. It’s going to take 2 months of straight-up ass-whoopin’ for Tex’s stats to come close to his career averages. Like bikozu said, though, he doesn’t need to match his career numbers by the end of the season to be a valuable second-half acquisition; he just needs to start playing like Mark Teixeira. And as you said, over a period of 2-3 years, his overall stats should reflect his talent and won’t be affected by hot-and-cold streaks.
Let’s not forget that what we are calling “luck” is really an error term that is probably primarily but not completely due to actual luck. Somewhere in there might be an actual skill related thing that comes out looking like luck.