Fantasy Baseball: More Buying and Selling
Recently, I answered an Ask Nash about buying and selling and there was so much more I wanted to say that I needed to dedicate another post to it!
Buying and selling is perhaps where fantasy baseball and real baseball look most similar. Every year there are buyers and there are sellers, much like the changing of the leaves, or the first snow!
Also, like real baseball, fantasy baseball thrives on the energy from the trade deadline! (Click to tweet this.)
For our purposes it is imperative that you make your decision to buy or sell sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the worse off you are going to be. Now Clave posted a while back about how our Tunacorn league was all but over as far as who was in it to win it and who was dead in the water.
While I believed then that it was a bit premature, he really wasn’t far off base. If you are in the bottom one-fourth of your league, chances are that you are not going to be much closer to making a run in a month or so. So with that said, it is time to sell.
Of course how and what you should sell really depends on your league. If you’re in a one-year only league I will leave you with this: don’t just check out if you are not in the running for the top spot. Try to trade for guys that will help you to win one or two categories outright, like loading up on relief pitchers and steals guys and trying to take over those categories and mess with your league mates! Now is the time to do that.
For those of you in keeper and dynasty leagues, let’s really dig in on selling.
Snake Draft Keeper Leagues.
Snake drafts are typically ask that you sacrifice your top picks for your keepers, so the key to selling is to get the absolute best possible keepers. Now you aren’t always guaranteed to be able to get elite studs from teams in contention BUT offer the right package and you can really be set for the following year!
The very top teams will probably not have much in line of weak positions, but look at the worst 2-3 teams set to make the playoffs and see if you have a couple of guys that can make them better and try to snag an elite talent from them. Now, you are going to have to give up some legit talent and maybe even be short one or two keepers in the process but think about this.
Say you have Cole Hamels, Adrian Beltre, and Jay Bruce as your best three keepers and you find a team that is a little light on pitching and power and you offer them all 3 guys for Josh Hamilton. He accepts! Now you are thinking but who do I keep with Josh Hamilton? I’m screwed. Not necessarily, because if teams can only keep three guys they are going to have to drop good players, especially the better teams. I would suggest only keeping Hamilton and using the extra picks to possible snag back some of the guys you just gave up, or possibly even better players in the first three rounds when others are using those picks to keep their guys. Now you are MUCH better off with Hamilton as your best keeper!
Just something to think about.