Trading and the Waiver Wire

Our recent posts have contained a lot of pretty detailed analysis, so I wanted to take a step back and do one of my favorite things - write about the overarching strategy behind one of my favorite things to do in fantasy sports - trading.

Week 3 is as good a time as any to start this conversation. We've seen enough games to figure out which teams/players are significantly better/worse than we expected. We have our first set of bye-weeks, which means that roster depth becomes as important a part of the discussion as having stud starters, and as a team owner, you are probably beginning to have a grasp on whether or not your team is any good.

Trading in fantasy is like trading in the stock market - obviously, you want to buy low and sell high - but this is much easier said than done (in both places). But the concept of buying low and selling high is a little different in fantasy sports - if an athlete is performing at a level completely unexpected at the beginning of the season, is he simply getting unlucky, or is there something beneath the surface of his performance which can clarify the spike or collapse in his value?

When answering this question, a list of potential targets shouldn't be too difficult to muster - indeed, I think The Deeb is going to be discussing a few of them in his next post. What I do want to spend more time on is figuring out the best way to get the players you want.

When making trades, you need to consider the value of the roster spot and your team's depth. For instance, even though bye weeks are coming up and having an extra productive WR is nice, trades in which you give up an extra player are almost always ideal if you trust your ability to find salvageable talent on the waiver wire. In one instance I faced after Week 2, I had my eye on Bobby Engram, a receiver drafted for $1 and subsequently dropped into the trash heap. Engram is returning to the WR-starved Seahawks in Week 5, and he caught 94 balls for 1147 yards in 2007. To me, the level of production I was going to get out of Engram equaled the level of production of some of the WRs on my team. If I could somehow figure out a way to pickup Engram and use my team's depth to upgrade a starting spot, a trade would be a resounding success.

The end result was a trade in which I gave up Muhsin Muhammad, Eddie Royal, and Anthony Gonzalez for Calvin Johnson and Chris Chambers. While this trade might not appear like a clear victory for my squad, when you factor in the potential production that Bobby Engram will provide in Weeks 5-17, I felt the benefits outweighed the costs, and I went through with the deal.

For this reason, when analyzing the trade I made, I viewed it as a win. Though Gonzalez and Royal are great young players in the NFL, by moving them and picking up a free roster spot in the process, I was able to upgrade the overall talent level of my team without missing a beat.

So, yes, you should be looking to move guys who you think might not maintain their present level of performance. You should certainly be looking to acquire guys who are underperforming what your expectations are, but in the end, what you really need to be doing is improving the future performance of your team. So, The Deeb will probably write about guys like Braylon Edwards and Joseph Addai, or Michael Turner and Jerious Norwood, but what you need to realize is that compiling your list of possible trade targets is sometimes secondary to figuring out if there are players on waivers who can help your team, and if so, how you can best utilize free talent.

As an aside, we've really enjoyed posting on the blog so far. We're extremely thankful that some people are actually reading some of our deeper insights into the realm of fantasy. As you can see, below this post is our first guest post by Michael Gottfried. Part of providing fantasy advise is listening to fantasy advice, and we really appreciate any contributions that anyone is willing to make in making this blog a more complete compendium of fantasy knowledge. We look forward to hearing from you.