Aside from an ill-thought out swap of Jonathan Broxton for Matt Thornton, the trade front has been quiet in both of my leagues. That ended Tuesday, when I received this trade request in my inbox: [Name omitted] proposes SP CC Sabathia and RP Matt Capps to Frozen in Cargonite for SP Jon Lester and RP Matt Thornton.
I am currently sitting in third place in this league, the 12 team roto keeper referenced in the draft recap column of March, and aside from some easily correctable batting average and home run deficiencies, the only weakness to my team is the lack of a saves-producing bullpen. I'd drafted Jake McGee and Drew Storen believing that they'd had the closer's job locked up for their respective teams, and handcuffed some of the more "volatile" closers with David Hernandez, Wilton Lopez and Hong Chi-Kuo. As of today this had netted me all of 4 saves, all from Broxton, who was traded for the healthier Thornton after Week 1.
Back to the trade. Capps holds very limited interest for me being as he's a temporary placeholder for Joe Nathan until his velocity issues are sorted out. A week or two's worth of saves isn't nearly enough to offset the long-term keeper edge that Lester holds over Sabathia by virtue of his age. This year, however, their value should be nearly identical according to ZIPS, with Lester having an edge in K/9IP and Sabathia an edge in WHIP and a greater volume of innings. I rarely keep pitchers, and because of the lack of HR power in my keepers was targeting a young stud like Eric Hosmer to fill my last keeper slot instead of Lester anyway, so essentially anything I can get on top of Sabathia is pure profit this season. With those thoughts in mind I wanted to counter-offer, but not too strongly that it would scare away the other team. Upon a second look he might very well notice the same things that I did, and back out. I offered Lester and Mark Melancon (the new likely handcuff for Brandon Llyon with Lopez hitting the DL) for Sabathia and Leo Nunez, who has shown improved swing-and-miss ability with the introduction of a new slider. An hour later, I'd come a great deal closer to fixing my saves problem, retained Thornton (who should win back the endgame role once he settles down) and hadn't weakened my starting rotation for 2011 at all. In fact, with Brandon Morrow soon to come off my DL and boost my K/9IP numbers, I could make the argument that Sabthia is a better fit for my team because his lower walk rate should help to bring down my whip better than Lester was.
There's always an initial negative reaction when a trade is proposed to you by another manager. It's easy to assume that they're doing it because they know something that you don't, and that you need to re-dictate the terms in order to feel like you're in control of the situation. That's something that can close you off to some nice deals though, and would have been the wrong reaction to embrace here. I took my time to research, vetted all the players involved from an injury standpoint, and made gains where my team was lacking. It helped greatly that my trading partner obviously put some thought into the offer and is not a close competitor in the standings. He's no doubt rubbing his hands thinking about being able to pair Lester up with his remaining ace Tommy Hanson for years to come, and when both managers leave the table feeling like they've gotten the better end of the deal it's a good one. Trade-rape only leads to no trading, while trade-fuck buddies leads to...CC Sabathia?
