Week 17: Trade Deadline Push

 

Michael and Amina pre-celebrated the return to normal school days and predictable child care by going to a Taking Back Sunday concert on...Sunday. 

• Keith sees your silly need to have good players on your team and raises your giant weeks from names like Luis Garcia Jr., Joc Pederson, and Michael Wacha. Boom, enjoy that L team BJ. With this big week Keith popped back up on the Chart! woo
• Going the other direction was Paul, whose sell-off had been completed before this week began and it showed up in the stats. A 3.36 EWW is the second lowest number of the year. Second only to Paul's own 2.72 back in week 13. Paul's eyes are on 2025.
• Focused on this year is Max who used those players from Paul and Keith to post his highest EWW of the year at 9.72. Three of the last four weeks Max has had an EWW above 8.8.
• Not to be lost here is Arthur, whose EWW is lower than one might have expected looking at his numbers on Friday night, but a tough weekend let Cory scratch a few more points out of the new Power Ranks leader. Cory had had a very strong 5 week stretch that ended this week, and not at a great time. Cory has a decision to make if he wants to buy, sell, or hold for the Bourbon Street Championship.
• Michael and Dave played to a near tie, and their EWWs were very close as well. Michael made a number of mid-shelf trade acquisitions last week while Max and Arthur shopped the top shelf. Dave has been on the sidelines figuring out which way he's going to lean. He sits in 5th place in the standings but T-6th in the Power Ranks. Dave has had a very consistent last few months, with no EWW values lower than 6.14 since week 10, but no values higher than 8.82 during that stretch either...or all year for that matter.
• Bargain-shelf shopper, Robert, made his first move of the trade deadline as we march towards August 8th as he is in a similar position to Dave, both being about 10 games out of 4th place and middling in the Power Ranks. Robert has had a good month of EWW values with all numbers over 6.7 and a popping 11.84 going back to week 14. He will likely need one more splash of a move to keep up with the playoff contenders.

Trade deadline will be at 11:59 PM ET on Thursday night. We'll need to have all first-trades approved in the Yahoo system by then. Bidding wars on players or with managers involved can linger past that date, I'll just have to do some button pressing in Yahoo if we get up to it. 

My only closing thought is about these draft pick restrictions. Dean is showing what can be done to get through the restrictions that we we put in place to limit acquiring draft pick capital for next year's draft. Already have 6 top-five round picks? Still have players worth trading? Cool, let's swap top-five round picks to make my picks better. It's smart, and it was always available. So then, what's the point of the restrictions? Well, I might argue now that all they do is confuse bidding wars. It's very hard to bid on trades with 6 picks being swapped in 4 different rounds. It's possible, and Max and Michael did it last week, but it's harder than it needs to be. So maybe next March we take the reigns off. Bidding wars should help prevent unfair trades, and 30 person rosters minimize the value of the top 5 picks compared to the need to build a complete team. If a manager ends up being able to sell enough talent to acquire 4 first round picks, maybe they should have just tried to win that year instead of selling. So, maybe.