Welcome to trading season!
Like clockwork, Memorial Day weekend opens the dialogue for swaps, as the 50-game mark has passed and managers are more comfortable addressing their needs with more impactful moves.
The best trade offer you can make is one that you would actually want to accept if it showed up on your screen.
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Sure, you can take the garage sale approach of offering $1 for the $10 item, and haggling your way to a $3 or $5 sale price, but that approach can be off-putting and even shut down the lines of communication completely depending on the temperament of your trading partner.
Here’s a simple and effective guide to getting trades done.
- Look at the categorical and positional needs of the person you are hoping to trade with. Imagine you are in charge of the other manager’s team. Figure out what you would be trading for, and what you would be willing to part with. If the other team’s needs can be met with players on your roster who you are willing to part with, proceed to Step 2. Otherwise, find another team in the league and repeat Step 1.
- If you know the other manager’s preferred method of communication (e-mail/call/text/DM), use it.
- Use in-season valuation tools — Rest of Season projections, 2024 Year-to-Date earn values, or something similar — to establish a reasonable common ground for value. The goal here is to come up with a fair accepted offer that makes both teams better.
- Be comfortable making an initial offer. If you are in a position of trading away elite players, it’s wise to drop a note to the league to make sure all contenders are aware that you are looking to make a deal, but you are more likely to find the best deal by putting in the effort to find the right fit.
- If the proposal hurts as you prepare to click submit, you’re probably making a very good, fair offer right off the bat.
The focus of our mid-week episode (Wednesday) was on veteran players who might be showing signs of aging, and young players whose performance has lagged at the major-league level to date, but whose long-term outlook remains bright. Timing the aging curve is tough, but here are a few things to keep in mind as you consider parting ways with very good veterans while building for the future.
Declining zone-contact rates (Z-Contact%)
- A multi-year decline in Z-Contact% can be present, even for players who might age gracefully.
- Notable drops in each of the past two seasons:
- Randy Arozarena (81.1% in 2022, 78.9% in 2023, 73.9% in 2024)
- Bryan Reynolds (88.0%/85.8%/82.6%)
- Max Muncy (82.3%/81.4%/78.7%)
- Paul Goldschmidt (81.8%/79.8%/77.1%)
- Christian Walker (88.2%/85.2%/83.6%)
- Notable one-year drops to monitor:
- Ronald Acuña Jr. (87.8% to 79.2%) — The biggest drop of any hitter from 2023 to 2024 so far. Something just seems off.
- Freddie Freeman (88.0 to 84.3%)
- Cody Bellinger (87.4% to 83.3%)
- Gleyber Torres (87.8% to 80.9%) — Summer of Gleyber?!
- Jeimer Candelario (87.2% to 78.9%)
- Notable drops in each of the past two seasons:
Note: You could also look at changes in swinging-strike rate and find a similar group of players, but I believe that making contact less frequently in the zone is more problematic than chasing pitches outside the zone, all other factors being equal.
Increasing chase rates (O-Swing%)
- Swinging at more pitches outside the zone, especially for a veteran player, might be a sign of declining plate skills.
- Two-Year Increases
- Jose Altuve (31.4% in 2022, 34.8% in 2023, 38.7% in 2024)
- Paul Goldschmidt (27.6%/29.1%/32.3%)
- Eugenio Suárez (24.7%/26.4%/30.5%)
- Notable One-Year Increases
- Michael Harris II (41.6% to 49.2%)
- Marcus Semien (25.3% to 30.5%) — Likely a graceful decline, as we suggested in the Wednesday episode, but maintaining extreme durability is a challenge too.
- CJ Abrams (38.6% to 43.8%)
- Adley Rutschman (27.0% to 35.4%) — Things are still going well overall despite this, but chasing outside the zone might explain the sharp drop in his walk rate and the bump back up to an 18% K rate.
- Nolan Gorman (30.1% to 35.2%)
- Matt Chapman (22.5% to 31.2%)
- Jesús Sánchez (34.1% to 43.1%) — Maybe I should finally give up on him as a post-hype sleeper?
- Mauricio Dubón (44.6% to 49.0%)
- Two-Year Increases
Declining hard-hit rates (HardHit%)
- A reduction in hard contact (batted balls at or above 95 mph) can be an indication of lost bat speed. Once we have multiple years of bat-tracking information, this will be much easier to line up.
- Two-Year Drops
- Gleyber Torres (44.9% in 2022, 40.3% in 2023, 32.6% in 2024) — More like Summer of George.
- Xander Bogaerts (39.5%/34.3%/30.4%) — Eno Sarris’s Xander Slander might have been warranted.
- Luis Arraez (30.2%/25.2%/21.1%)
- Justin Turner (40.6%/39.0%/34.7%)
- Anthony Rizzo (40.7%/37.2%/32.7%)
- Alejandro Kirk (45.0%/38.3%/32.4%)
- Wilmer Flores (35.2%/32.5%/25.0%)
- Notable One-Year Drops
- Ozzie Albies (38.9% to 28.2%)
- Corey Seager (53.2% to 43.1.%) — The level you fall to matters — a 43.1% hard-hit rate isn’t bad, especially for a player who missed most of spring training.
- Spencer Torkelson (50.5% to 39.0%) — Note: Was at 41.4% as a rookie in 2022
- Paul Goldschmidt (50.7% to 43.8%)
- Nolan Arenado (38.1% to 28.8%)
- Alex Bregman (38.2% to 34.6%)
- Anthony Santander (46.0% to 32.8%)
- Ke’Bryan Hayes (48.3% to 38.9%)
- Nolan Gorman (48.5% to 38.4%)
- Eugenio Suárez (43.0% to 31.7%)
- Matt Chapman (56.1% to 46.4%)
- Two-Year Drops
Finding players who are losing ground in multiple indicators is one way to soften the blow as you enter a rebuilding window. Even if you think Freddie Freeman will age particularly well (he should), the smart money is likely behind moving on now rather than waiting for more proof of power (or speed) loss.
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Monday
Eno was joined by Max Bay — the co-creator of Stuff+ — to discuss baseball research, where it’s currently headed, and how far a team using public data could get.
- Eno highlighted the difficulty of making trades for a team relying entirely on public data, since opposing clubs would be able to completely decode their process. This is even more true in fantasy. Understanding how the other managers in your league think about and value players is extremely helpful.
- Recommended reading: Analyzing Baseball Data with R by Max Marchi and Jim Albert | Recommended resource: baseballr from Bill Petti
Tuesday
I returned for our usual Monday format to discuss Cooper Criswell’s extended opportunity in the Red Sox rotation, Edwin Díaz’s hiatus from the closer role, the ascent of Luis Gil, and a few other mailbag questions.
- We wondered in this episode how the Astros would handle the return of Chas McCormick from the IL. McCormick flanked Jake Meyers in the outfield with a starting nod in left field Tuesday night before yielding a start to Mauricio Dubón against a left-handed starter Wednesday. Joey Loperfido sat out both games, and a return to Triple-A might be in the cards even though he’s put together a nice .333/.381/.436 line despite 17 strikeouts in 43 plate appearances.
- Brett Baty and MJ Melendez were our featured “healthy” drops this week, and we wondered if our patience with both players will ever be rewarded. Melendez continues to receive regular run as a big-side platoon bat for the Royals, while Baty was benched against a right-handed starter in favor Mark Vientos in each of the Mets’ final two games against the Guardians this week. The surprising drop in hard-hit rate for Baty (from 43.8% last season to 30.3% in 2024) paired with the ongoing struggle to lift the ball consistently has quickly reduced my optimism about a breakout this season. At this point, he looks more like a throw-in for a rebuilding keeper/dynasty manager than a building block.
Wednesday
Inspired by the ongoing struggles of Paul Goldschmidt, we wondered which aging stars might be showing signs of decline.
- By age, the outlier in our group of veterans was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. A career-low .404 slugging percentage entering play Friday marks the third consecutive season in which he’s dropped in that category since his massive 2021 campaign (.311/.401/.601, 48 homers). Still just 25, the debate as to whether he can return to that ceiling rages on, but the opportunity to trade him away in long-term leagues while still getting a significant return exists. Guerrero finished just outside the Top 50 among hitters in earn value in 2023 (12-team league, FanGraphs Auction Calculator) after tying Mike Trout as the 23rd-best bat in 2022. (He was No. 2 among hitters in 2021.)
- In the players to target section, I mentioned Jordan Walker’s “Best Speed” — average exit velocity of the hardest 50 percent of his batted ball — as a reason for trusting he might be less of a liability in batting average than Spencer Torkelson in the long run. Torkelson ended 2023 with a better Best Speed (102.7) than Walker (101.9 — both very good), and the difference in their batted ball distribution is more likely going to determine whether Walker ends up a more balanced hitter in the long run. Since the start of last season, Torkelson has a 48.1% pull rate compared to Walker’s 39.2% mark. Walker has also shown an 80th percentile Sprint Speed, which will help on some batted balls and give him a chance to offer categorical value in the stolen base department.
Thursday
With the long holiday weekend ahead, our livestream episode with Trevor May moved up one day as we discussed pitch tipping, several young pitchers we passed on during last Friday’s “Choose Your Fighter” segment, our favorite strikeouts of the season (so far), and a plan for massive expansion that would change MLB forever.
Our favorite strikeouts of the season so far?
DVR: Mason Miller v. Juan Soto (second matchup of the week), April 25.
Trevor: Andres Muñoz vs. Aaron Judge, May 20.
Eno: Paul Skenes v. Cody Bellinger (first matchup of the game), May 17.
Enjoy the long weekend, the show is back Tuesday!
(Top photo of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports)
Derek VanRiper is a podcast host, producer and writer at The Athletic. For more than 13 years, he wrote about fantasy baseball and fantasy football, and hosted radio shows and podcasts at RotoWire. Follow Derek on Twitter @DerekVanRiper
