(*) MASTER NOTES: Dumping on dumping

Earlier this week, a topic came up again recently in the always interesting BaseballHQ.com subscriber forums (membership required).

This very detailed and thoughtful Forum post was placed by a member who is poised to win his league, thanks in part to two adroit dump trades he made a little while ago.

But now this owner is ticked off. The fifth-place team, just 15 points behind, has executed his own dump trade, which has the potential to win him the league.

This deal upset the angry owner so much that he said he will consider leaving his league of 20 years, even if he hangs on to win it.

The resulting discussion was very lively and engaging. And since I want to avoid lowering the tone on the Forum thread, I’m going to put in my two cents here, thereby handing you a quick two-cent profit.

I am doing this in the certain knowledge that I will not be ending this debate. Arguments about dumping have been going on longer than the discussion about whether the toilet paper should go over the roll or under. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were sound bites by comparison.

‘He Should Have Let All the Teams Know'

The two main complaints in this situation were much the same as they always are: the dumping trader didn’t alert the league to his plans, and he didn’t get proper value for the studs he traded.

I think both of these arguments are, in the words of the great philosopher Jeff Spicoli, totally bogus.

First, there’s this idea that a guy must announce his intention before a dump. It’s an excellent rule for an army barracks, but a terrible idea for a fantasy league.

On the surface, it seems to make sense that if someone is selling something, he should want the widest available market. Thus the success of eBay: That pair of 1980s size-11 boot-style roller skates with the bad wheel bearings will get you $2 (if you’re lucky) from one of the 50 or so people who attend your yard sale, but the millions of browsers on eBay might include someone willing to pay $10.

But that should be the seller’s choice. There are plenty of good reasons for an owner not to announce his trade intentions.

For instance, telling the whole league his plans removes the owner’s first-mover advantage. There’s a reason Wall Street mergers are done in secret, besides boinking the shareholders: If word gets out that a deal is in the works, other buyers might start turning up and bump the price.

Similarly, if an owner thinks he can snag a prime keeper in a dump deal, he doesn’t want the whole league in there making offers.

As well, if the dumping owner announces that he’s dumping and receives multiple trade offers, who gets to decide that he made the best possible deal? The rule encourages multiple offers, and owners whose offers are rejected will gripe that their offers were better than the accepted offer. The only change is that more owners are mad.

Also, there is the distinct possibility that the dumping owner wants to deal with Team “X” because Team “X” has a very specific trade target in mind.

In this case, the dumping owner wanted a $27 Bryce Harper, so his required announcement would have been, “I’m willing to trade Paul Goldschmidt (and other expiring contracts) to anyone who is willing to give me Bryce Harper.”

Of course only one other owner has a $27 Bryce Harper to offer. The same deal gets done. All that is added is a layer of bureaucracy. If that was our aim, we’d play fantasy DMV.

As someone said on the Forums thread: “The rebuilder may have wanted Harper above all else. Yes, other teams may have had players of value to deal off, but if the rebuilder doesn't want those players, it's moot. He's going to do what it takes to get the guy he wants.”

Finally, this notification rule is a bad idea because it imposes added transaction costs upon the owner, specifically his time. Let’s return to the roller-skate example. If he sells the skates to the hipster doofus at the yard sale, he gets two bucks. If he puts the skates in from of all the hipster doofi on eBay, maybe he gets 10 bucks.

But he also loses a bunch of time. He has to go through about 44 steps: create the auction, wait for the auction to finish, arrange payment and delivery, find (or buy) a box, go the Post Office, stand in line, and get the parcel into the post office system.

It’s somewhere around Step 6 or 7 that a guy starts to think, “I shoulda just taken the $2 at the yard sale.”

Git ’er Done

The time element means there’s also real value in making the deal all at once. As one Forum participant saw it:

“I'd actually do exactly what he did. Trade everything I have in one swoop to walk away with Harper and two (other) risk-free cheap guys… (r)ather than trying to piecemeal 2-3 different deals that might leave me with a hodgepodge of decent-ish guys that need sorting out.”

I once had a yard sale where I had tagged 200 or so VHS movies at a buck apiece. Five minutes after we opened, a dealer came and said, “I’ll give you $100 for the whole pile.”

That was only half of what I was asking, and had I stood there all day selling them one-by-one, maybe I would have ended up with more. But I grabbed that C-note. I lost a potential hundred, but I wouldn’t have to stand around in my driveway on a blazing Saturday afternoon, haggling with a parade of old geezers trying to bargain me down to $1.50 for Howard’s End and Eraserhead together.

Instead, I pocketed the money, sauntered back into our air-conditioned house and watched a ballgame. Best hundred bucks I ever didn’t get.

Similarly, the fantasy trader might see some value in dealing all his fantasy yard-sale junk in one go, so he can move on with other aspects of his life, such as prepping his football draft, watching a ballgame or looking for his old roller skates.

This owner wanted Harper, and got the deal he wanted. The only way to argue that this owner made a mistake is to assert that his judgement—about current player value, future player value,  and fairness—isn’t as good as yours.

In this particular instance, there was a wide-ranging discussion of the 2016 keeper value of Harper at $27. I happen to side with those who think he’s a hell of a bargain in that league at that price.

But what I think doesn’t matter. What everyone else thinks doesn’t matter. It’s not our deal.

This doesn’t mean any owner should stay in a league whose rules are bogus, unsettling, unfair, prone to exploitation, or otherwise unacceptable to him.

The Forum members agreed, seeing the issue for what it was.

“You just have to shake your head and not let it bother you. I've been in keeper leagues for years and have felt exactly how you do now. The thing is, if the selling owner has been in the league and is expected to stay in the league then you have got to let him manage his team.”

Two Races On One Track

Finally, the real core issue: This argument isn’t really about Bryce Harper’s value or that the dumping owner didn’t announce his plans.

The problem is that the first owner’s assessment is based on his commitment to this season, and the second owner’s assessment is based on his commitment to next season.

In the words of John Benson, they’re running two races on one track. It’s like the International Olympic Committee decided to run the 10,000 metre race and the 100-metre sprint at the same time on the same track (and they might have to, given the problems they’re having with cost overruns in Rio).

You can bet that Usain Bolt will be griping that Galen Rupp slowed him down, and he’d be right, but you can’t ask Rupp to run a 10K the same as a sprint.

The only solution is to play the game by the rules of your league.

And, in the words of the esteemed philosopher Alice Cooper, “If that don’t suit you, that’s a drag.”

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