If you want to evaluate trades later you have to keep a record of why you made the trade or it’s pretty much worthless. The entire reason to even do it I the first place is to change your process, not pat yourself on the back when you did a good job or hate on yourself when it went sour.
It’s actually an old businessman model to track your process to know if it needs to change or not because that’s the only positive outcome of self reflection on these kinds of things. The process matters more long term than the outcome.
But I thought we could also use this community thread to do just that - track a history of trades in various leagues (especially those involving prospects that may not even have debuted at the time of the trade) and get community feedback over time to determine “win/loss” ideas.
Every trade has important context, so you can post a picture of your trade here along with the context to solicit feedback from the community, or just to make a permanent record over time to check back in and see how you’re doing. You can find a record of trades made in your league under the “Trade History” link on your league team page: Ottoneu Fantasy Baseball - tradehistory - Ottoneu Champions 🏆 (530)
I’m pretty interested in tracking this trade in Bull Durham (League 52) with @warhorse (Jed) over time since it involved some pretty big prospects at the time (pre-season 2016). Jed lovesJoe Ross (who has started the year off well) and even predicted he’d outscore Tyson Ross this year (which is looking prescient now that T. Ross has a shoulder injury). Reyes could be elite.
The big move here was landing Giolito and Glasnow who I thought I could either move during the season for several big pieces (as a contender) or keep and let develop into useful pieces for this year or next. It will be interesting to revisit this trade frequently over the next few seasons to see how these players turn out.
Somewhat related to one above in Bull Durham, @warhorse (Jed) ended up flipping Alex Reyes with AJ Reed for Miguel Cabrera and Doolittle just two weeks into the season in what is a top-heavy race in the 6th season of the league. The big takeaway here however is from @vibbot who knowingly entered the season taking over a bad team and had a plan to rebuild. He specifically targeted some of the best players in the auction and waited to flip them for high upside, close-to-MLB youth that may (or may not) pay off for him in future seasons, which is really all that matters to him here. It looks like a good gamble now as Reed is highly regarded and could debut soon, and Reyes gives him a big time pitching prospect as well, both “growth stocks” in exchange for an expensive player (Miggy) he has no need or intention to keep beyond the current season.
Another trade I wanted to track since the Ottoneu Champions League (530) utilizes the 5MiLB system and because I was a [big fan of Willy Adames coming into the season](http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/trey-baughns-10-bold-predictions/). I’m rebuilding and slowly burning off pieces around the league, and Adames was a target of mine. He may turn out to be nothing, but 2-3 years from now I’m pretty sure the low cost (Cecil) of acquiring him will justify it.
Making trades is probably my favorite part of fantasy baseball. By default I (and probably all fantasy players) assume that I win most trades I make. But I have pretty selective memory and it’s easy to forget the mistakes. So with the spreadsheet I was trying to figure out if I should be more hesitant to pull the trigger.
I searched back through my email history to get all the trades I made in the last couple years (“team name” and “trade processed” or “trade agreed”). Gmail listed them out nicely for me so it didn’t take very long.
Because its hard to define a trade because of context, etc, I decided to just record “would I make the trade again?”.
And generally the trades I’m making are working so I’ll carry on.
Another prospect trade (Brinksmanship, 649) that @jjdouglas and I just made with @vibbot where we are definitely going for it and @vibbot is selling off pieces slowly. We play in this league for coupons and 5MiLB draft spots, so it will be interesting to track how much of an impact Trout makes and whether we’ve given too much or too little here in prospect bats (will take awhile to know…).
I actually have been going through the trade history of league 504 since I’ve been there since the beginning and I am going to put together a funny retrospective of some of the deals and most importantly the comments included between the owners.
Just made this trade with @oltarzewskt1 in the Champs league, and since it involves several 5MiLB players it might be interesting to track long term. What do you think @oltarzewskt1?
In the Ottoneu Slack community, we were commenting on the volume of trade offers and “over-hassling” owners. @LuckyStrikes reminded me this is a more permanent forum, so here are my thoughts for further discussion:
Personally, I would rather get 100 offers than 0, and I prefer to be over-hassled. At least I know what you want and what is available. It all adds up to more opportunities for me to improve my club
AJ Reed sent down today. Curious @vibbot - 60 days later, knowing what you know about Gallo, Reed, Santana, would you make this trade again with @jjdouglas again for a $70 Trout? Only asking because of the fact that it continues to look like the best time to trade a prospect is just before they debut - that seems to be peak value in most (not all) cases. Baseball is hard.
Still very possible that in 30 days or next April this looks like a steal for Trout. Just curious to evaluate it as time goes by.
That trade is hard to track because I flipped Reyes for Miggy then flipped Miggy for something else that I can’t even remember. Votto?
And I got Glasnow back!
Ross and Giolito have been the big duds. I completely missed the opportunity to sell Ross in that league. Which is strange because I jumped on it in every other league.
Glasnow having so little MLB impact by August 1 is a big surprise to me, but I was definitely down on Giolito going into the season. Was not buying the “he had bad stats at AA because he was working on his changeup” argument. So him being a total non-factor for FGpts scoring was part of why I preferred Ross even though he’s the inferior talent. Sounds like Reyes will only close this year if he plays in MLB at all, but I still think he has the highest ceiling out of Reyes/Giolito/Glasnow/Urias.
