Dynasty, in Theory: Making a Big Deal

Last week, I outlined how I make small deals. This week, things get more fun as those small deals spiral out of control into sprawling blockbusters.

What's So Great About Large Trades?

Let's say that you and another manager are on the line and the trade talks are starting to get productive. You could shoot for a small, quick deal and move on. Why bother trying to go big? Doing so solves two problems, and they're both big ones.

Problem #1: Player Values Are Discrete, Not Continuous

Here's the biggest challenge with finding a trade, in my opinion. The other manager might have three players she's looking to offload, and there might be three players on my roster she's interested in acquiring... but unless one of the players she's looking to give and one of the players she's looking to get are close in value, there's not much that can be done.

Maybe she has Ashton Jeanty and Cam Skattebo and feels skeptical about both. Maybe you have Chase Brown, and she really wants to acquire him. But she's not willing to give Jeanty for Brown, nor are you willing to trade Brown for Skattebo; the values are just too far apart.

Enter: combinatorics. If your partner has three players on the block (let's call them A, B, and C) and you have three players on the block (let's call them D, E, and F), there are nine possible 1-for-1 trades you can make (A for D, A for E, A for F, B for D, and so on through C for F). If you start counting packages, she can offer A, B, C, AB, AC, BC, or ABC, giving seven possible combinations, and you can offer seven combinations in return; suddenly there are 49 possible deals you could make.

And that's with three players on each side. With five players on the block each, there are 25 possible 1-for-1 deals to be made; factoring in package deals, this balloons to 961 possible deals in the offing. (There are 5 single-player groupings, 10 two-player groupings, 10 three-player groupings, 5 four-player groupings, and 1 five-player grouping, giving 31 possible packages on each side. 31 times 31 is 961 potential deals.)

Now, many of those 961 deals will be nonsensical. One of those possible packages involves you giving all five of your players for her worst player, for instance. But some of the 1-for-1 deals will be nonsensical, too. Even if a higher percentage of potential large deals are non-viable, starting with such a large number of possibilities dramatically increases the chances you'll find one where the values match.

And these are still rookie numbers. If you each have 8 players on the block, there are 64 different 1-for-1 deals you could make. This rises to 1,296 possible trades if you include 1-for-2s, 2-for-1s, and 2-for-2s. But if you really open the floodgates and consider every possible match, there are 65,025 possible deals available to you. And you only need one of them to work!

Not only does increasing the possibilities increase the chances that there's a match somewhere, it also increases how close you can get the two values. (In small deals, you might get the two sides within 5% of each other and call it good enough. With larger deals, you can regularly get this closer to 1 or 2%.)

Problem #2: Starting Productive Discussions is Hard

I mentioned last week that one of my secrets to high-volume trading is just having a lot of conversations with managers in my leagues. Most of those conversations go nowhere, but occasionally one will develop legs.

If I'm looking to turn over a significant chunk of my roster, doing it one piece at a time requires getting a lot of different trade talks off the ground. Sometimes that can happen, but in my experience, it's usually easier to take an existing deal and push it bigger than it is to find a new deal.

Think of it like going to the store. If it costs $5 worth of gas to get there and back, and you only buy a $5 gallon of milk, then you just spent $10 on that gallon of milk. If you also grab eggs, bread, butter, apples, and a bunch of other products, then you can spread that fuel charge over everything, and now maybe that milk only costs $5.50.

Sometimes you'll try to make a larger trade and nothing will make sense. Or you might find that some managers simply aren't comfortable with big deals. That's fine; small deals are still good! But if you can learn how to build up to bigger deals, you'll likely find it's a useful club to have in your bag for when the situation warrants.

How to Make Large Trades