Last Thursday, I decided that I wasn't really in love with my dynasty team this year, so I made three trades in 24 hours to turn over 40% of my roster (11 out of 28 players).
That would be pretty unusual for most managers. In fact, the manager I traded eight of those players to was sure it had to be a first for me. But it wasn't, and I shared screenshots from previous seasons showing that I do this sort of thing a lot.
My counterparty was most bemused by the fact that I'd initially approached him looking for a quick 2-for-1 deal, yet it somehow spiraled out of control until sixteen players and two picks were changing hands. I told him that there's a bit of a knack to making big trades, and I was all set to explain the trick this week until I realized I was putting the cart before the horse. Before we get to how to make big trades, we should probably talk about how to make small trades.
How to Trade
Trading is a huge part of the way I play in dynasty. I see a lot of managers in this hobby who trade in a very specific way and then complain when others in their league don't respond well to that particular style. Concretely, there's a type of manager who loves to send out a mass of trade offers, hoping to trigger counteroffers to which they can respond with counter-counteroffers until, finally, a middle ground is reached.
A lot of dynasty managers hate these unsolicited, frequently lowball trade offers and will largely just ignore them or reject them without countering. To the initiating manager, this can be frustrating and make it feel like it's "impossible to trade", which would be terrible for a dynasty league... if it were true.
I've played in several of these so-called "inactive" leagues, however, and I've never found them any harder to trade in than my "active" leagues. As a case study, I once documented an entire rebuild from start to finish. I started negotiations for the first trade on September 10th, 2020, and I completed negotiations for the last trade on October 10th, 2021; in the thirteen months in between, I turned over 22 of the 24 players on my active roster and was responsible for 67% of the league's total trade volume (by number of players moved), compared to a baseline expectation of just 16.7%.
It's not like I just found two or three receptive managers, either. Out of eleven potential trade partners, I completed deals with eight of them and completed "significant" deals with seven of them. I nearly had a deal with a ninth manager before an injury derailed negotiations. I had productive discussions with a tenth manager, and the eleventh manager... just didn't have anything I wanted (though he's a nice guy and I'm sure I could have traded with him if he did).
How did I pull this off? I wanted to share the rudiments of how I trade (when no one else can). This is not meant as a primer on how to approach trading or how to identify who to trade for (this is Dynasty, in THEORY, not Dynasty, in Practice). Instead, these are the steps I find most effective for bridging the gap between "offered" and "accepted".
#1: Meet People Where They Are, Not Where You Wish They Were
Life would be a lot easier if everyone liked negotiating the same way, but they don't. If you want to get something done, it's important to find out where the other manager is comfortable and negotiate there.
I make it clear to everyone in my leagues that I am happy to discuss any trade at any time and, most importantly, on any platform. I've negotiated trades in back-and-forth offers, on the league message board, via email, via text, on the phone, through the office communication platform, and in person. Wherever my leaguemate is, I make an effort to be there as well.