Baseball Articles

Every new baseball season brings us big stories, big names doing big things, small names doing big things, major milestones, unexpected stars, and unexpected flops. 2006 promises to be no different, and may give us a few things we’ve never seen before.

In anticipation of the upcoming season, I’ve compiled a list of the Top 10 Stories to Watch in 2006, arranged in no particular order. New issues could emerge at any time, but these ten should certainly capture our attention at some point in 2006.

Making Deals to Maximize Your Keepers, Too Few Keepers?

As we have just discussed, even if you are short on keeper talent, you can make a trade that will improve your team. Since you are short on talent, what you must do is turn the few talented players you have into the number of keepers you need. Your trading partners will try to capitalize on your weakness, but by offering them a better keeper than they offer in return, they will feel as though they are getting the better end of the deal. In many ways they are, but keep in mind that this is about maximizing your “profit” potential heading into the draft and not maximizing your talent. Your team is better off with two players that only “profit” $10 each than having one player than “profits” $15. Remember, this trade can, and should, be a win for both teams.

In order to make this kind of trade, you will need to do some preparation.

As described previously, you will need to rank your own players. After that, you will need to rank the other teams probable keepers to determine which teams would make good trading partners. For this type of trade to work, you must be able to trade them a player that increases the value of their keeper list. Remember, you want to increase your quantity of keepers and ultimately improve the overall value of your list as well.

Lastly, you need to evaluate your league’s rules as described before. If, for example, your league allows six keepers, you may be better off with six keepers even if their total value is the same or slightly less than the five keepers you started with. It helps in this analysis to include the sixth player that you considered a non-keeper in the total value of your keeper list prior to making the trade. By doing so, an apples-to-apples comparison of the total value of your keeper list before and after the trade can be made. The illustration below describes how this can work to the benefit of both teams. Again, for simplicity, it is assumed that only six players can be kept.