The One Hitter – Trade Value

This is the One-Hitter, don’t forget to exhale….

The SoxMachine Off-Season Plans are upon us, as we talked about in detail on the most recent podcast.  You can find my plan here and Chorizy’s plan here, but that’s not why you called.  I want to talk a little bit about trade value.  Remember when you were a kid (hopefully) and you’d get to the lunch table and your mom would pack you a goddamn Fruit Roll-Up (I mean, I love them, but ALLEGEDLY others don’t) and you couldn’t wait to trade that thing to the one fat kid who loved them (apparently me)?  You’d find that kid and you’d immediately get their Oatmeal Cream Pie (this is not an euphemism, that’s just a delicious cheap treat).  Whatta fucking score!!!  Yea, Trade Value in baseball is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING LIKE THIS!!!  Although judging by the way some of yous (not me, and definitely not you reading this, other people) are making trades you think this IS how it works.

When constructing a trade for your Off-Season Plan or even just maybe you are making a trade in fantasy baseball league or some shit like that, you need to trade something that the other side would actually want.  You need to construct it so that if you were on the other side of the trade, you’d be interested.  Now, you really shouldn’t make either side THRILLED with the result.  It should hurt a little bit for both sides, that’s how you know its fair.  As they say, a good compromise leaves nobody happy.  These things should hurt a little bit and have both sides taking some risk.  So when you try to ship off Bernardo Flores by himself (for anything) you know you have failed, try again.

-BeefLoaf