Making Winning Trades With BABS

by Dan Gottfried

For many, trading is a favorite part of playing fantasy baseball. If you are the type of owner who will trade almost any player at almost any time, BABS can be a big help. Using BABS, you can appear to give up more than you receive in a trade, and yet your team gets better as a result. This can be unnerving to fellow owners.

Now is the time when you should be shaking your head and saying “huh?’. How can you make trades where you give up more than you receive and have your team improve?

Well remember, in this tactic, the owner “appears” to have given up more than he received. Appearances can be deceiving, and here is why: We evaluate trades based on our emotions and perceptions, and those are flawed. Let’s look at an example.

Everyone “knows” Bryce Harper is a great player. If you traded him for Eddie Rosario and Jose Berrios in May your league owners would have thought you were nuts. Sure, Rosario was having a great season and Berrios was looking good, but everyone knows that in the end Harper will be better than those two players combined. Everyone, that is, except BABS. BABS would have told you to trust what they were doing. Rosario (PW, AV) is in the same BABS asset group as players like Manny Machado (pictured) and Carlos Correa. And Berrios (PW,K) is in the same group as Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole.

Players within an asset group are not necessarily absolutely equal, but their skills are similar enough that their statistical output will fall within a normal range of variability.

So here’s the thing. Once you understand that your “instincts” (emotions and perceptions) are flawed, you can teach yourself to take a step back and look at potential trades through a different lens. That lens is built on a simple proposition: teams win championships, not individual players. Yes, a star player makes a difference, but stars alone cannot win for you. And stars get hurt at much the same rate as scrubs.

Of course you can not win with a team full of scrubs. That is where BABS comes in. You need to find players who have the potential to give you star-like stats and BABS makes that easier. You won’t always hit paydirt, but since it is the team that needs to be good, you don’t need to worry about that.

Also, since it is the team that matters, you can use the perceptions and emotions of others to trade individual players (like Harper) for multiple players who can strengthen your team. You rarely make a one for one trade in this model unless it is to trade a player at a position where you are strong for a similar value player at a position where you are lacking. But that is rare. The advantage comes in trading a player perceived as “better” for several players who improve your overall team.

Conversely, you can use perceptions to trade an “emerging” player for an almost star and a guy with potential who has not emerged yet. For example, in this model you might have traded Andrew Benintendi (p,AV) and Drew Pomeranz (e,k) for Chris Archer (e,KK) and Gleybar Torres (p,AV in minors) in April. Benintendi has been great. But from the perspective of the team, Torres and Archer bring more value, even with Archer’s recent injury.

The mention of Pomeranz brings up another point. One of the aspects of perception and emotion that causes owners the most angst is hope. A player who has previously been very good starts the year with a nagging injury and is not coming around, but you don’t want to give him up because you “hope” he will come around and you will get the benefit. That is an understandable emotion, but may not help your team.

What helps your team is to find another owner who shares your hope and is therefore willing to give up something tangible for that player. Yes, he may indeed come around. Yes you may indeed curse the day you made that deal. But your team will not. Not if you got value for that player.

As an aside, the same is true as regards free agent pickups. Look through BABS. If there is a player who is in a similar group to your injured player who can help your team, think it over. Take your time, but don’t be afraid to use BABS and act. If you had picked up part-timers Joc Pedersen (PW) or Aaron Hicks (PW) when Jake Lamb (PW) got hurt, would you have been disappointed? Skill often finds its playing time.

Fantasy baseball is sometimes compared to the stock market. The adage “buy low, sell high” is often used. A better adage, as a trader (both in the market and in our game) is “buy value”. And use the tools available to you, like BABS, to find that value.

Dan Gottfried participates in one of the oldest continuously operating fantasy leagues still in existence. He has finished in the money in both LABR and Tout Wars in partnership with his friend Michael Bikales, who is a member of the Roto Hall of Fame.