There’s nothing better in dynasty sports than making a huge trade that rocks the league. The second-best thing to doing it is being in a league in which it happened, because it vitalizes the whole shebang.
I am, as usual, talking about something I did. In my 24-team baseball dynasty league, the best league I’ve ever seen, let alone been involved with, I am on my third year of rebuilding. Year 1 was dedicated to selling off every asset that wasn’t a brand new draft pick, while Year 2, which was 2020, was about whatever the hell 2020 is about. I had expected to compete this year, but the lack of a minor league season put a damper on the “play the minor league market” strategy, so Year 3 has turned into a two-part problem. The first is aligning the windows of my players so I can be ready to go at the start of next year with my blue-chippers. The second is collecting enough meh players to fill out a lineup on a nightly basis now, so that I can turn my general attention to improving the roster position by position rather than just haphazardly collecting assets.
To the second point, my roster is *wild* right now. I have every multi-position-eligible infielder who’s been on the waiver wire in the first month, which is a few of them, and since they all play once every three days having three of them means having a good solution on a rotating basis—and I have way more than three of them. They’re not “good” at Major League Baseball per se, but they play Major League Baseball, and that is good enough for me.
It’s the first point that inspires this column, though, because it’s aligning windows that led me to do a pretty rad trade, as far as these things go.
In the 2019 FYPD I had three picks in the top six: the third, fifth and sixth choices. I picked Andrew Vaughn third, C.J. Abrams fifth and J.J. Bleday sixth and traded Bleday relatively soon thereafter. Vaughn was always a foundational piece for me, regardless of the umbrella conventional wisdom against relying too heavily on a first baseman if you can help it, though it’s possible I’m just imagining it’s even a thing. It’s a thing for me, at any rate, and I think Vaughn will be an elite hitter for a decade starting whenever Tony La Russa lets him play every day. I’m not holding my breath.
But his playing time exists, unlike that of Abrams, who could honestly be the next Ichiro but, it seems, likely not until next September at the earliest, though in theory he’s so fast he could be called up as a potential pinch-runner if they wanted to far before he’d otherwise get the call. Abrams was a great pick, if I can pat myself on the back, but he never really fit my timeline. That said, I wasn’t eager to trade him, just willing to do so if the right deal came up. I didn’t think it would.
And then it did.
Two of the teams in our league have decided to tear down within the last year. One of them owns I think literally half the first rounders in 2022 after having about 10 picks this year, and is set, whereas the other instigated the turndown by trading for Wander Franco and Jasson Dominguez at the same time, thereby concentrating his rebuilding value in two humans. Dominguez doesn’t appeal to me for reasons of The Window, but Franco does, so the owner, who is so much like me I make jokes about it, and I exchanged some good-natured trade banter a few months ago, at which point he suggested he’d trade Franco for Abrams and Austin Martin, who I picked second this year. I said no at the time, because I was riding the high of picking Martin, but when he reminded me of this offer earlier this week I had changed my tune.
Martin, for his considerable maturity, seems to be on the same timeline as Abrams, whereas Franco seems destined to be up by July. The Franco owner needed depth and I needed—wanted—to consolidate and speed up the timeline, and when he reminded me I suggested that my previous rejection was a mistake for which I was willing to atone. Which I did. And the league loved it, because it was fun. There were lots of messages and congratulations and whatnot, almost certainly for both parties (it’s good for both of us), but the point is it was a shot in the arm, a vaccine for the plodding ways of the baseball season. I highly recommend it.