I just made a trade with Joe Sheehan from Baseball Prospectus. I've been in first place in AL Tout Wars since the early part of May and I'm confident that I put together a pretty decent squad. However, my weakness has been in starting pitching - both my WHIP (thank you Roger for that fine outing yesterday) and wins are hurting. For more details, you can see the standings and the rosters.
My primary competition for the past few months has been Matthew Berry from ESPN.com and Sam Walker, author of Fantasyland. Both have been active on the trade market and both have been closing the gap - just a day ago, Matthew was just four points behind.
While I'm a little worried about blowing up my offense, I think I need to be aggressive, and not just wait for the competition to make their move. I've been trying to trade a closer with little success so far - with a 14-save lead over second place and owning Papelbon and Putz, I need to make a deal, but it's hard to find people willing to trade for saves.
Anyhow, Joe needed offense and approached me about trading for Lackey. I came back and told him that I couldn't trade any speed in the deal. Ultimately, I made him two offers:
1. Robinson Cano for Lackey.
2. Manny Ramirez and Jason Kubel for Lackey and basically a throw-in (he has both Freddie Bynum and Brandon Wood active in the MI right now) - Alex Cora or Marco Scutaro.
He wanted Manny, but while I balked at doing it straight up, he thought that Kubel was too valuable. We finally agreed on:
Manny + Santiago Casilla
for
Lackey + Jason Michaels
I know that the acquisition of Kenny Lofton squeezes Michaels a little, but Michaels still has some value in this league. Right now, there is literally not a single active outfielder on the waiver wire, and only two that have had any at-bats in the last two weeks: Darnell McDonald and Jon Knott, both sent down since. Adam Jones has been on someone's reserve all year.
So, did I blow up my team unnecessarily, or was this a good move?
Posted by Jeff Erickson at 8/3/2007 2:59:00 PM
