Jacob DeGrom trade and trade review in general

I'm a little bit of a math geek (but not to the level of some here). How are you building your model?

Posted some of the guts of the work in the other thread (nsbl2012.boards.net/post/23418 and nsbl2012.boards.net/post/23419). Feel free to move them to another thread though haha

Thats a long drive now. I'm two time zones and 1500 miles away from Sean. I could find hairier ballsacks in Florida or Pennsylvania that would be closer.

PS And my protest (Yup- I rarely make them, but did here) wasn’t with the original trade, but when SD then gave away arguably the two best parts of a questionable return (the draft picks) for pennies on the dollar.

If you’re going to trade an ace like DeGrom with one year left on his contract to rebuild, cool. But don’t then deal the only two long-term pieces you got for next to nothing- and before the original trade was even approved, no less. (That needs to be a rule in and of itself.)

Moves like this wreck franchises, and make them go vacant for years at a time, because nobody new wants to take it over when the current GM leaves.


JIm

In the rule's defense though, there were several things that led to an unbalanced league.

- Comp Round picks. Teams would sign big name players to 1 year deals and then get a comp pick the next offseason.

- Compensation for dropping out of a bidding war. You used to be able to tell an owner "look, I'll let you have Player X in this war for just over my last public bid if you give me a 3rd round pick" and shit like that. That led to a lot of savvy owners getting into bidding wars for players they didn't even want, just so they could get paid off to drop out.

- Drafting underclassmen in college. Several owners were able to get top talent earlier because they would draft college freshmen and sophomores before they were MLB Draft eligible.

- A broken revenue system that wasn't adequately rewarding small market teams for winning.

In a perfect world, we would only need to veto trades for collusion. But we all know we live in a far from a perfect world...

Since the vetting system to get into this league is basically "we have an opening, you like baseball. Want to join?" (correct me if it's stricter than that, but I'm assuming it's not since we have never had much of a waiting list and typically have at least one empty team each year) some new GMs have a ton of experience with this type of league, others do not, and it shows in trades. Finding GMs who are active, stick around and make savvy enough moves is very hard to do. It sucks that there has been an absolute precedent of GMs taking advantage of new GMs and or 'less savy' GMs in the past. That does disrupt the balance and parity of the league. It is not common that a trade pops up that should trigger the alarm, but to not have any sort of valid and consistent veto/oversight regulations in place is a mistake.

Since we can't govern the ill-will of GMs who will willingly find the 'less savy' and newer GMs and feast on them, we can only educate those GMs who get taken advantage of when they make 'unequivocally bad' trades. I wish this was not the case, but I think a trade review committee which expanded outside of the committee would be a fine idea, and it won't implement some NEW WORLD order conspiracy theory BS into this league. No one will tell you what and how to do run your team. The committee or trade review committee won't just start implementing their wants on the rest of the league...Put down the tin foil hats. But some GMs do need some more help and advice than others.

With that being said, do I think SD could've gotten more for DeGrom? Absolutely. Do I think this trade should be vetoed? Nope. Do I think this trade should at least be critically and unbiasedly discussed? Yes.

The same goes for SD selling two picks for 6M a piece when there is a set market value of about 8-10M per pick in that range. Should that be discussed? Should Deron get called out for likely taking the very first offer he got for those picks and not waiting to see if anyone would top 12M (I can guarantee he could've gotten more money for those picks)? Yes. It's not like there was a huge rush to get that money ASAP.

It's not a bad thing to get called out for making, in my opinion, shitty trades. It's all a learning process. We all have made shitty trades and hopefully learned from them.



Also, since I'm in a big opinion mood this morning, this trade was way more one-sided than the deGrom trade and slid through without a peep.


Marlins trade :
Ramon Laureano

Pirates trade:
JA Happ
Myles Straw
Andy Ibanez
10.915 M 2020 cash


Again, I feel like some GMs will call me out on wanting to control what other GMs do. And that's not it at all, manage your team however you want. But there's no way, we as a league can just ignore trades that are a penny on the dollar. And again, few trades in this league are like that, but a couple do seem to pop up every year. And at the very minimum, they warrant a critical discussion about the merrits of the trade.

Deron Crawford 1
NSBL 0

All good points Mark. I've always appreciated the GMs (many, yourself included), who I could bounce some of my crazy ideas off of.

Also, I am pretty sure, after lots of the hysteria wears off, most trades that seem "unequal" actually are not. They seem bad at the time but, after a few years, you still have a piece or pieces laying around that help solidify your roster while the "stud" player who you sent packing has gone to FA. DeGrom will be gone next year and SD will have 2 players on options and two possible players from picks.

I would imagine I lose more deals than anyone but it would have been worse if not for the advice I have received.

I know I really don't post a lot. I am really trying hard to build a winner. I did want to mention my experience with the league since I have been in it. I am not sure if it will help at all. It may give some perspective as a new owner to teams that have been doing this a long time. Very early I made a trade of Aaron Hicks for Courtney Hawkins. I accepted the trade due to the excitement of doing something. In hind sight it was a terrible trade and I regret it. I did get a little gun shy after that trade. I have never run a team with a salary cap and thought I understood everything and made a free agent signing of Bumgarner for 6 years at 31.681 mil. My total available salary cap was 106 mil. Although I really didn't think he would still be terrible. In the big picture I thought my team was better than it really was. I invested most of my salary on one player not understanding the monetary value of players in the league. I was unaware how difficult it would be to sign players with very little money.

I understood the projected values with yahoo and every other league, but didn't completely understand FanGraphs. I will say, although I have learned a great deal from errors I have made, I think my team would be a little further along with a coach for the first year. I have had a great friend to run stuff by, Mark (Texas Rangers), I thought I knew how the league worked and didn't listen to good advice or didn't ask. A bit of pride. Who wants to say they don't know. I have been in yahoo fantasy baseball since it has started. I created a league in the 90s reading the newspaper every day. This league is way more complex than anything I have ever been in. I am a huge baseball fan and have been all my life. I realized finally 2 years ago I can't evaluate players based on yahoo, espn, cbs, etc.... for my projections. They are a tool, but since this league is so much more driven by Fangraphs I have had to do a crash course in learning all there data. I am still finding new stuff all the time. I feel I am finally getting competent in what I am doing, but now its more about strategy and trying to field a team to get more wins so I can have a higher salary cap. Its been tough having the lowest cap. I am certainly not complaining, but it has been a great challenge. I truly feel like I am a expansion team and appreciate the growing pains. This year I feel is going to be my best team.

I still have trouble understanding how everyone evaluates players, the value of draft picks, and how much players are worth.  I still have a lot of catching up to do. The depth of prospect research is amazing. That's the biggest reason I trade picks away. At times I have no idea how you all find these players. Again, I am learning so much all the time. I feel by trading a lower pick I can at least pick up a player all the research has already been done for and hope he pans out.

I have in the last year in my opinion made some great trades to improve. I have made trades of veterans for players like Austin Riley and Ryan Mountcastle. I have understood the way fangraphs rates prospects and drafted Andrew Vaughn and Luis Rodriguez. I finally am heading in the right direction. Ultimately I think if someone would be willing to coach the new guys I think a lot of the poor decisions may be avoided or the learning curve can be improved. If I didn't have some help I would likely not be active and completely lost. Yes I should have asked for more help, and that is my fault alone.

Mark
Houston Astros

People aren’t attacking you; they feel bad seeing you hurt your own team.

Again, even though I wouldn’t have done it and I think you undersold him, I understand why you traded DeGrom. He was on his last year of contract, and FA is nuts in this league, so re-signing a player is never certain.

But if you’re trading him to rebuild, why then take the only two long-term value pieces of that trade, and sell them to Ty for pennies on the dollar before the first trade is even approved? You contradicted the direction of your first trade with the second, and basically traded DeGrom for other short-term pieces that don’t have nearly the combined value.

***

While we’re at it, I don’t know whether Ty has nudes of everyone on the Committee, but the amount of hijinx that little motherfucker has gotten away with in this league without even a slap on the wrist continues to boggle my mind.


JIm

Maybe because I'm not breaking the rules? A complete understanding of the rules and their holes and the balls to actually use them to better my team isn't against the rules. But it has caused rule changes. But don't blame me because you can only see what's there while I see what isn't.

I wrote a number of responses to this that I thought better not to post. Needless to say, the attitude that is represented by Ty and JB frustrates the shit out of me. I feel like I've been railing against that way of doing things for a decade. It sucks. That attitude sucks. Yeah, if it isn't in the rules then it's not against the rules. But shouldn't we be looking for ways to be better? Like, if there is something obviously broken that could be used to gain an unfair advantage, report it to the committee. That didn't happen. And Jason is correct that we shouldn't expect that to happen. Doesn't make it ok. Just confirms that it sucks.

Maybe there should be a trophy for being honorable. Would that improve everyone's behavior? Fucking savages.

An effective apple and oranges argument, except not remotely the same thing. But I could argue the "spirit of the rule" and the "spirit of competition." It's not the same thing. A loophole by definition is something that is an oversight or an unintended consequence. It's a choice to "just use it" versus "attempt to fix it."

I agree that by the time you joined this league that it was not "incorrect" or "wrong" to use these loopholes. I even acknowledge that headway has been made to close the most obnoxious and egregious of them.

IT STILL SUCKS! Ty's attitude acting like he was a better GM because he saw something before others did is fucking horse shit. You know it. I know it. When people abuse the system and decline acknowledge good faith operations in a FREE GAME being run by volunteers, I would say that "sus" is an understatement. Now, I know most of these GMs on some level after damn near 20 years of league operations, and I don't believe anyone to be a bad person. I do think there are some assholes in this league though. I do think there is too much predatory behavior. But I understand that it's been rewarded for long enough that people just accept it.

It still sucks. You can put a bow on it and tell me it's "normal operating procedure" at this point. None of that spin makes it ok in my estimation.