How to Make Enemies and Influence Pennant Races, part 2

In part 1… Back in 2009, I was trolling the trade wires with the owners in the Fantasy Xperts League (XFL) 15-team mixed keeper league. I received six sub-par offers, so I decided to up the ante. I sent out an email with a list of all the offers, so everyone could review, compare and counter.

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The response was fast and furious.

TEAM 5: “Taking lessons from Scott Boras, are you? Interesting ploy. No thanks.”

TEAM 3: “Or Drew Rosenhaus…no thanks.”

TEAM 13: “I get the sense that this is going to be somewhat controversial (Boras?, Rosenhaus?), but for what it’s worth, I’m enjoying it immensely.”

In addition to these responses, I also received two messages about the players offered. After all, the impetus for this controversial tactic was my perception that the players offered were insufficient to justify trading a Crawford or Berkman-caliber commodity. The interesting aspect of these messages was where they came from — one from a team near the bottom of the standings, and one from a team near the top.

From the non-contender: “Your reaction of being underwhelmed is certainly understandable. Not a single top notch prospect and the major leaguers are decidedly unimpressive as well. I can certainly confirm that my efforts over the past few years have discerned similarly tepid interest in making similar type deals.”

And the team near the top concurred: “I only see one decent offer in that huge email you sent out. Most of them either give you multiple pieces of half-assed crap and/or guys for this year, which you don’t need at all.”

I only received one direct response to an offer on the table:

TEAM 8: “I can’t up the other offer, that’s all we have, but we would alternately or additionally offer Josh Anderson or one of our farm guys for Berkman. Your choice.”

This was pretty much the same as the original offer, but I appreciated the response.

What happened shortly after was nothing short of fascinating. I don’t know if my email had stirred things up, but apparently some owners decided — right then — that this was no time to sit by idly. The following chain of events occurred over the next three days…

The first email arrived, announcing that TEAM 12 had traded Ichiro Suzuki to TEAM 7 for Nate McLouth.

Then I received a personal email from TEAM 3: “To make your decision-making process easier, the TEAM 3 offer is off the table.” So much for Carlos Quentin.

This was followed a few hours later with another trade announcement: “TEAM 3 trades Carlos Quentin and Julio Lugo to TEAM 12 for Carlos Beltran and Jon Niese.” TEAM 12 had gotten busy.

The dump-fest then shifted into high gear. The next email…

“TEAM 15 offers Matt Holliday, Carlos Zambrano, and Alex Rios, for something resembling future value. Also, pick a closer from Mariano Rivera, Bobby Jenks and Kevin Gregg.”

And within minutes, he had dealt Zambrano to TEAM 4 for Cameron Maybin. Then…

TEAM 14: “I honestly and humbly thought things would be different for my squad this season and I would be dealing a bunch of farm guys to help fortify a championship run. The plan obviously did not come together.”

He then laid out the availability of his entire roster.

All during this time, nobody was banging on my door and I suspected that my missive had generated some ill will. More likely, with my fellow bottom-feeders jumping in, there were now many more players for the contenders to consider. I had become a lone voice in a crowd, a crowd that I may have unknowingly created.

XFL owners include many other industry writers, so it was no surprise when TEAM 7 wrote an article about my adventures on his website. A key excerpt:

“To be expected, some owners did not like their trading machinations made public and they backed out. As for me, I have very little pride, and when I discovered the bulk of offers were for Ryan Howard and Crawford, I set my sights on Berkman.

“Now, I still don’t know who, if anyone, landed Howard or Crawford, but I likely will know by this Monday. And, while I can understand that Ron’s public approach rankled some of my league mates, well, I also applaud Ron for trying a different angle. That is progress. That is how we come up with different perspectives and views that ideally show a new path to success.

“Personally, I wish Ron all that success. As long as he finishes behind me, that is.”

So, in a strategic twist, TEAM 7 targeted the path of least activity and landed his player with an offer that ignored my directives. That’s certainly one way to cut through the cacophony and get what you want. Clever.

All during this time, I was having an elongated discussion with TEAM 1. It would seem that someone — anyone — might want to prevent the current league leader from padding his position. And while nobody knew that I was talking to him specifically, I thought that someone might have at least attempted to block the possibility. Nobody did, and I ended up making a trade with him too.

When it was all over, 47 players had changed teams. I made two deals that shifted a bunch of pieces around but moved me only marginally closer to the optimal keeper list.

All five bottom teams — 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 — entered the dump-fest. At the top of the standings, teams 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 all fortified for contention. And we’re still a month away from the All Star Break.

So, what have I learned?

1. Some owners did not like to have their trade offers made public. Some couldn’t care less. You can’t draw any conclusions about breaches of etiquette.
2. The tactic did not generate better offers. The original bidders were not persuaded to resubmit just by virtue of seeing what they were up against.
3. The e-mail blast may have served to wake up all the other bottom teams, generating more competition for the best players. This was a bad thing for me.
4. Good players will find a buyer. Crawford and Berkman were going to get dealt, one way or another. The only question is whether I might have gotten more for them had I taken a more individual approach to the negotiation process. But the bottom line is, no matter what the approach, you can’t avoid the negotiation process.
5. You also can’t assume that great players will have the same value to every team.
6. Perhaps the biggest lesson from all this came with a comparison of the standings from the beginning to the end of the process. In a mere two weeks’ time, the list of contenders and pretenders was already changing. Team 1 had dropped to 5th, Team 6 had moved to 3rd and Team 9 – which had needed 18 points to pick up two spots in the standings – was now only 5 points out of 7th.

Standings are still fluid at this time of year, which means that new contenders could still emerge. There will still be roster building opportunities over the next few months and I still have a few prime trading chips.

If anyone will trade with me.

PERSONAL MESSAGE TO MY LEAGUE-MATES READING THESE ARTICLES: I am sorry if any of you have been put off by this exercise. I accept full responsibility. However, my thought process was that, since this is not a money league, the stakes were low. You may hate me for putting you out there, disagree with my reasons for accepting or rejecting offers, and perhaps feel used. I understand all that. You also read this far, which I hope means that the exercise provided at least a little food-for-thought.

I’ll buy first round for everyone at the next draft.

[CODA: To this day, one of the outed teams will not trade with me in this league.]