Deal or No Deal?
What’s a good trade? How do I determine value?
No weekly recap this week, instead I want to visit an important topic that can make or break dynasty teams: trading.
First, I absolutely love to see you guys trading with each other. Shout out to Mikey for hounding everyone all the time. My hope is that this post helps the less active traders feel more compelled to discuss trades.
Second, my statement from the beginning of the year still stands. Even with some trades this year being questionable from my perspective, I don’t think I will ever veto a trade (unless it’s Odell Beckham for a 5th Rounder). One man’s trash can be another man’s treasure, and I’m not here to tell you how to run your teams. That’s why I keep the Trade Alert Posts as objective as I can.
Lastly, I’m no expert. I’ve played Dynasty Football for exactly the same amount of time as all of you. This is not a definitive guide, it’s just some of my input and how I approach trading in our league. If it’s useful to you, awesome! If not, no worries!
With that out of the way, let’s begin.
How do I determine value? What’s a fair trade?
Dynasty value is so much trickier than a normal redraft fantasy league. There is only one question to ask yourself when making a trade in a one-year league:
Will this player help me win this year?
In a Dynasty league, these are just some of the questions that factor into a player’s value:
Am I contending or building towards the future?
How does this player fit into that goal?
How much longer will the player be productive?
What is this player’s potential? What is his floor?
Does this player have injury risk? Suspension risk?
That’s right, even suspension risk can be a factor. Alshon Jeffery’s 4 game suspension is not just a big deal for this year. After receiving a 4 game suspension, the next violation is 10 games for marijuana, a year for other drugs. Le’Veon Bell is in the same boat as well. There’s some gray area here (there always is in the NFL), but this outlines it pretty simply.
Draft picks are even harder to value! What is a 1st rounder even worth? Ezekiel Elliot and Kenneth Dixon were both drafted in the 1st round of Dynasty Rookie Mock Drafts last year. They have drastically different values.
How do you make sense of a player’s value with all of these different factors and questions? The easiest way is… you don’t! You let others do it for you. This trade calculator is my go-to for the start of any trade conversation. It assigns a numerical value for players and picks depending where they are being drafted in Dynasty Start Up drafts. It’s far from perfect, and you still have to answer questions about a player in relation to your own team vision, but it gives a basis to start from, which is huge.
Let’s look at how the trade calculator views one of Mikey’s recent trades:
The trade calculator grades this one pretty much how you’d expect. Mikey is giving up a slightly more valuable asset in Ameer, who is a promising young RB. However, Mikey is also making a push for the playoffs and a championship, and Forte is infinitely more valuable to him than someone on IR. The trade calculator also shows you their ADP history, and both RB’s have dropped considerably, one due to age, the other due to injury.
Now let’s look at a theoretical trade involving a win-now veteran for draft pick swap to see how the calculator fairs with draft picks.
At first glance, this makes sense too. Why would anyone give up a coveted 1st round pick for a 33 year old receiver? However, if you had a chance to win a championship and anticipated picking in the back end of the 1st round, it becomes a much more interesting question. All the assets in the world don’t matter if you never win a championship. This is also where the calculator struggles to assign value. Again, “2017 1st” can be anywhere between Ezekiel Elliot to Kenneth Dixon to Tyler Boyd. Let’s see what the trade calculator thinks if we get more specific with the 1st round pick.
This is another flaw of the calculator, as it only picks the most recent ADP value. But if you look at the ADP history, Fitzgerald for the 10th Pick calculates as a much fairer trade than just “2017 1st”. This matches the logic I reasoned above as well.
Conclusion
Again, the trade calculator has flaws. Everyone values players and picks differently. I thought Jerick McKinnon had the athleticism and skill set to be a top 12 RB once Peterson was out of the way. He hasn’t shown it at all this year, but the Minnesota O-line arguably carries at least half the blame there too… I also think Norv wasn’t utilizing him correctly…
I digress though, the point is nobody, not me, not a calculator, not an “expert website” can tell you how you should determine a player’s value. But the trade calculator is an extremely useful tool I use as a basis for all of my trade talks. As Commissioner, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share that tool with the league as well.
With that, I will excuse myself from objectivity for a second and share what the trade calculator and “Non-Commissioner Anton” thinks of Marlo’s Stefon Diggs trade. I hope Diggs haunts you for the rest of your life Marlo. Should’ve traded him to me for McCoy. *sob*
