Keeper Trading: the Inside Look

Keeper Trading: the Inside Look

Happy Pitchers and Catchers Day! The Atlanta Braves have opened camp, so what better time than this to talk fantasy baseball. It is now week 2 of the blog. Any comments so far?

Team	Potential Keeper as of 9/14	Round Available	Round Rank (ESPN)	DELTA		Team	Potential Keeper as of 9/14	Round Available	Round Rank (ESPN)	DELTA
Arthur	Yasiel Puig	7	6	1		Keith	Todd Frazier	9	2	7
BJ	Mookie Betts	9	2	7		Keith	Srarling Marte	7	2	5
BJ	Jeurys Familia	11	8	3		Marcley	A.J. Pollock	11	1	10
BJ	Chris Davis	6	4	2		Marcley	Xander Bogaerts	11	5	6
BJ	Carlos Martinez	11	9	2		Marcley	Jacob deGrom	7	3	4
BJ	Jason Kipnis	8	7	1		Marcley	Jake Arrieta	6	2	4
BJ	Addison Russel	11	10	1		Max	Miguel Sano	11	3	8
BJ	Carlos Carrasco	7	6	1		Max	Chris Archer	11	4	7
Cory	Jose Fernandez	7	3	4		Max	George Springer	9	3	6
Cory	Anthony Rendon	9	5	4		Max	Cole Hamels	9	6	3
Cory	Noah Syndergaard	11	9	2		Max	J.D. Martinez	6	5	1
Cory	Gerrit Cole	4	2	2		Max	Dee Gordon	3	2	1
Cory	Maikel Franco	11	10	1		Max	Gregory Polanco	11	11	0
Dave	Carlos Correa	11	1	10		Michael	Anthony Rizzo	9	1	8
Dave	Nolan Arenado	9	1	8		Michael	Corey Kluber	9	3	6
Dave	Kris Byrant	9	1	8		Michael	Matt Carpenter	11	9	2
Dave	Lorenzo Cain	11	4	7		Michael	Rougned Odor	11	9	2
Dave	Jose Abreu	6	1	5		Paul	Manny Machado	11	1	10
Dave	Hunter Pence	11	9	2		Paul	Nelson Cruz	9	3	6
Dave	Sonny Gray	6	5	1		Paul	Michael Wacha	11	7	4
Dave	Roberto Osuna	11	11	0		Paul	Kyle Seager	9	7	2
Dean	Josh Donaldson	7	1	6
Dean	Kyle Schwarber	11	6	5
Dean	Ken Giles	11	7	4
Dean	Francisco Lindor	11	10	1
Dean	Joey Votto	2	2	0

 

I know, you all are soooo surprised to see that I’ve examined everyone’s potential keepers and rated them based on how elite they are.

What we can see from the table is that Dave (a team that was in 6^th place in the regular season last year) has more elite keepers than he knows what to do with, Arthur (our runner up team last year) has only one guy with any keeper value at all, and the rest of us are all somewhere in between. My other observations are that Arthur, Dave and Marcley are going to be the ones setting the market. Dave and Marcley have keepers with decent value to sell, and Arthur is the one with the holes to fill. Then again, BJ, Cory, Keith, and Michael also have at least 1 spot for a high end keeper that they could choose to fill via trade.

Now we get to the fun part, opinion trading. Let’s say Paul was in love with my guy Anthony Rizzo. Rizzo is my best keeper, but if Paul wanted to send me a 1^st round pick for him, that may be worth letting him go. Now is the time to put your money where your mouth is. In theory, whoever is truly highest on a player should be able to go get that person in a trade. This is the fantasy equivalent of an open market; ah, capitalism.  Since we aren’t an auction style league, this is the only time you can really go get any keepable player. Have fun.  Note I didn’t even mention any players that were on rosters with no keeper value. In years past plenty of players have been kept at or above draft value, so if there is anyone out there in the baseball universe that you are interested in, send last year’s owner an offer. I’m looking at you, last year’s Joc Peterson or 2014’s Christian Yellich.

On to the logistics: trades can occur anytime from now until the keeper deadline 3 days before the draft. Given the bidding wars that will need to occur for any trade and our 48 hour window for said bidding wars, all trades will need to be agreed upon and published to the league 5 days before the draft. Currently the draft is scheduled for Sunday, March 27^th, but we haven’t locked that in yet.

For the purpose of getting everyone on the same page, we will hold off on any bidding wars for another 2 weeks, just in case there are any questions.