There are as many rules on trading as there are fantasy baseball league. These rules usually evolve to suit the personalities of the particular owners of each league. Sometimes I think leagues, including all four of the leagues I’m presently in to a certain extent, legislate themselves so much it makes it hard to work trades. What is to blame for such contentiousness about trading in some leagues?
To a certain extent, leagues that play for money have a built in reason to protect one’s interests. If there is a significant cash prize, each owner, for as long as they are in contention, have motivation to pick through each aspect of a competitor’s player swap. In my experience though, money is always a secondary reason to want to restrict opponent’s trading powers. The main concern is simply winning. This point was driven home for me very recently. This season, I joined a four year old, 20-team, mixed, head-to-head league that does not play for money. In twenty plus years of fantasy, this is the first league I’ve ever been in without playing for money. I did not know what to expect. There was a trade in which one owner traded Neal Walker and David Wright for Mike Moustakus (still in the minors at the time). This is a limited keeper league and this deal created quite a stir. With no money involved, it was all about the league itself and the competition. I felt much better about the ensuing discussion because it wasn’t really about personal agendas, just about the best interests of the league and I was thrilled to see it.
The thing a lot of owners worry about is collusion. This is when one owner purposely colludes with another to help one of them win a league by trading him star players. In all my many years and leagues, I have only seen one trade I really, truly, believed was collusion and it was in the early 1990s. While I’m sure this may happen on occasion, I doubt it happens too much. Most of my fellow owners are too competitive to help anyone else or they have too much integrity to even consider this kind of thing. In my four leagues, there are 65 total owners and I just couldn’t imagine any one of them purposely colluding with another owner on the sly.
I have a firm belief that each owner MUST trust the judgment of every other owner in their league to do what is best for their own team. One should always trust that no individual owner would purposely hurt their own team. I am loath to question trades because I have enough problems managing my own rosters, let alone the rosters of every other team in my leagues. Of course, I am not saying that some owners don’t make moves I consider stupid. Each and everyone one of us have our own opinions and our own methods for rating players. By questioning someone’s trade, we are basically telling them they are idiots and aren’t fit to own a fantasy team.
There is a flip side to this coin. Sometimes a trade can be so lopsided that it can affect the league as a whole by causing an unfair swing in the standings. This is a very fine line. In keeper leagues, most trades tend to happen between the teams still in contention that season and those teams who are trying to rebuild for the next season. These trades, by nature, will not be even. One team is receiving, usually, non keepers, but statistically useful players, often star players. The other team is receiving cheap, young players, sometimes prospects with no major league experience. One team is getting proven commodities and the other team is speculating on the increased value of certain young players for the following year. They will not be equitable. Owners need to stop expecting them to be. If you are not someone who likes these kinds of trades, then you probably shouldn’t be in a keeper league. I don’t know how anyone can evaluate someone else’s trade because doing it on stats alone just isn’t possible. Too many variables are in place here – salary and contract status have as much, or more, to do with it as statistical value.
What are leagues and their commissioners to do? It is my opinion if you are in, or are running, a keeper league, then you must let these trades go through. If you are of the belief that a specific owner has a history of making trades that hurt the league as a whole, then maybe that owner needs to be replaced. You MUST trust the simple fact that the other owners know what is best for their own team, regardless of how you feel about any particular trade or how it affects your own team. Personal agendas have to be put aside. I am not sure what other solutions are available that can truly work.
I’m also don't know how possible it is to completely trust in the fact that every other owner knows what they are doing. In reality, some don’t. Maybe they don’t know as much about baseball, or don’t have as much time to study stats and trends, or maybe they just do it for the fun of it. I have seen some trades go through that have quite frankly really ticked me off because of their lopsidedness and I have reacted negatively because it hurt my team and helped a competitor. This is simply human nature. We must fight these bad feelings and accept the fact that we are not going to agree with all trades. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean the owner is wrong or doesn’t know what he is doing.
I have seen many ways leagues have “solved” these problems. Some leagues hold a league wide vote to approve all trades. I don’t see this working because most owners will just vote their personal agendas. Some leagues leave it to the commissioner to decide if a trade should go through. This works if the commissioner isn’t an owner in the league or is above reproach. I applaud any and all commissioners out there who can pull that off. Some use a trade arbitrator, someone on the outside, with no stake at all in the league. I think this can work to a certain extent. The biggest problem is the arbitrator only gets a limited look at your league and you must make sure he has a complete look at your league’s rules and standings. This can be difficult at best. You also have to deal with owners who don’t get their way when a decision goes against them and this can be trying. You can also use a committee to rule and trades, say 3-5 owners. This way, you get different opinions and hopefully owners who will think about the league as a whole and not how any trade will affect their own rosters. Or, quite simply, you let everything go through and trust your fellow owners.
I don’t know if this possible for most leagues. I think that bitching about trades is a time honored tradition for most fantasy league players. It is not human nature to trust other’s opinions enough to separate our own personal agendas from what is best for others. I just wish there was a clear cut solution to this perennial problem of competition and human nature.
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