Time to Buy or Sell?

Trade season has begun for those of us in ottoneu leagues. In the last couple weeks, the following names have been sold in my ottoneu leagues: Robinson Cano, Clayton Kershaw, Yasiel Puig, and Craig Kimbrel, among others. Justin Upton, Madison Bumgarner, and others have been put on the block.

My guess is that your leagues are seeing the same thing and that means that it’s time to make a call – do I fight for first or is it time to sell? The first place to look is at the standings, but – particularly in ottoneu points leagues – that is not the only place to look.

Let’s start with this – the hardest part of any of this is being honest with yourself. Is my team really good enough to compete this year? Are these standings legit or a fluke?

I am in a 20 team industry league that is extremely competitive with an extremely deep player pool (45 man rosters) and an extremely active trade scene. Early this year I was surprised to see myself in first (for about two weeks) and then bouncing around the top five (for 3-4 more weeks). And so I made a couple aggressive moves – I got out of Jean Segura (who I was never a fan of) and used that deal plus some prospects to add Jed Lowrie, Adrian Beltre, and LaTroy Hawkins. Remember, in a 20-teamer, some teams have no closers at all, so anyone getting saves is at a premium.

But realistically, I was probably being overly optimistic. Now my team has fallen to 11th and I have to reconsider. I already traded Beltre again, and now I am trying to figure out what to do with a number of other pieces. Had I looked at my team with an unbiased eye, I would have seen unsustainable starts from Brian Dozier and Charlie Blackmon, signs that Domonic Brown may not turn it around, and a number of old and injury prone players holding down key positions. Big mistake.

The next piece of the puzzle is how well situated you are to buy (or sell) even if you want to. In the original ottoneu league, I over-indexed on young prospects (David Dahl, Josh Bell, Sean Manaea, among others) knowing that a) other owners in my league tend to undervalue them and b) that in a year or two, they will have much bigger values than their prices. But that means I can’t use them to buy much now.

That meant that any buys I made would likely come at the expense of my current roster, which is what happened when I traded Julio Teheran and Charlie Blackmon for Robinson Cano, Michael Morse and Trevor Bauer. I am pretty sure that makes my team better this year, but I would have much rather nabbed Cano for prospects.

Selling can cause the same problem. In the aforementioned 20-team league, there are no prices, so I don’t HAVE to lose anyone for 2015. My most tradable assets – Max Scherzer, Carlos Santana, Brian Dozier, among others – are also my best keepers. I have a couple older guys (like Hawkins) and a couple injury prone guys (Jaime Garica, Carlos Quentin) who may be worth selling, but what makes them expendable also limits their value. In ottoneu leagues, a $49 Cano like the one I acquired can be a huge asset to a competing team but is not useful to a seller. Without guys like that in place, selling doesn’t do you much good.

Finally, make sure the standings are actually reflective of reality. This is particularly true in leagues like ottoneu with games played and innings pitched limits. A team can be leading HR or pulling away in points because they are overusing their bench players and accruing stats faster than expected, rather than because their team is actually performing that well.

Last night, ottoneu player @nakonech sent me a tweet asking if he should buy in his ottoneu points league. He is fourth but noted that he is on pace for 1500 IP, the two teams in front of him are way over that pace. In fact, the team in third has a pretty poor Pts/IP rate, but is on pace for nearly 1900 IP.

I’ve talked in the past about evaluating points leagues using the equation 1.296*Pts/G+Pts/IP. The reason is that you get 1944 games played between your 12 positions and 1500 IP, so if you take that equation above and multiply by 1500, you would get the total number of points each team is projected to get.

Using that equation to evaluate @nakonech’s league, I have good news and bad news for him. He is right that the current third place team is not all that good – they rank 9th. But his 4th place team actually ranks 5th. In fact, the team currently in 10th has the fourth best scoring average so far.

This doesn’t mean @nakonech needs to sell or can’t buy, but he has a pretty clear need, and that is offense. His 4.69 Pts/G is 8th out of 12 teams so far. He’s about to add new Twin Kendrys Morales, but that won’t be enough. So, @nakonech, I’d start buying up bats – find someone who can change your offense. Ideally, get it from This is How I TwRC+ – that team has much better potential than the owner may realize today.

The key to this is, look beyond what place you are in. The question right now is not “Am I in a good position?” but “Is my team actually a top team?” If you can answer that honestly, you can figure out the right path forward.