Prospectus Idol Entry

There's not a whole lot to say since there's not a whole lot in the article. The introduction re: Peavy was relevant because it brought to mind the relevance of trades for fantasy owners (despite ignoring the NL/AL-only aspects of situations like Peavy's), but the rest of the article had zero connection to fantasy baseball.

For me, this wasn't a swing and a miss, it was closer to missing your flight on a road trip. Jeff didn't even show up for the game this week.

Much of the article rests on this premise: "Each trade has the potential to be a fantasy boom or bust as the player moves on to a league or park with an environment that enhances or reduces his production."

I'm not sure if that's so true for fantasy owners (unless they're playing in an NL or AL only league). Aside from league-exclusive fantasy leagues, would you really add or drop anyone based on a trade?

I thought the beginning was interesting - how does a trade in which a player changes leagues (or even stadiums) effect their fantasy stats? For the rest of the article, I was waiting for Jeff to come back to this, and explain how the performance of each player on the list might change based on potential trade options.

Jeff, this wasn't what I was hoping to read from you this week.

How do these potential trades affect fantasy owners? Can we quantify through analysis which players are most likely to be traded? Can use of the Retrosheet trade database show anything useful?

I hate to write this, but I perceived yours as an article without value this week. Your previous work has been better, but votes go week-by-week.

The beginning is an interesting point about trade value. The last three quarters of the article is a list. Illustrating an interesting point by making a list makes for an uninteresting read.

Why not illustrate the point with an in depth analysis of the situations of two or three players who will be subject to trade rumors in the next two months? Why not discuss potential trades? This is hard to do well, given how many writers already do those sorts of articles. But it presumably would have been better than listing the contracts of most of the players who meet the criteria developed at the beginning.

And this isn't even the main problem. The main problem is that this article doesn't have anything to do with fantasy baseball. If I could, I would vote for this as the worst of the week.

This is an interesting set of data, but mostly irrelevant to fantasy and very little actual writing. Even the data presented is weird for the presented topic.

The list of players has salaries, but MLB doesn't have a cap. Yes, it gives an idea of what a receiving team might have to pay, but contending teams are usually willing to pay the rental fee, so the salary data doesn't really eliminate any team from the picture.

On top of that, the guys that are not going to be FA's after this season don't have the cost of the remaining years listed. Does Atkins make 7.05 in 2010? How much is owed to Kousmanoff in '10, '11, '12 ?

This article has too many holes.

I liked the article until it got to the discussion Clay Davenport's ELO's. To be within 5 wins of 86-93 wins doesn't mean diddly in the American League East and the fact you listed the Red Sox, Yankees, Rays and Blue Jays all as buyers indicates you were quoting source material without realizing how it contradicted the concept you were trying to show. Then, in the haphazard list that followed, you identified a trade candidate on one of those "buyers" teams (Penny). None of anything I read really applied to fantasy baseball, which was this week's theme.

This is the third article I've seen with questionable structural issues. Everything after the "So what names are candidates for a trade?" seemed like filler. If that's the case, why not just use a chart? Maybe Jeff's style is more suited to short blogs than full-length articles... and if that's the case, how can I trust he would have the stamina to write a well-researched article and maintain thorough analysis of the topic throughout? Even the parts of it that I had liked, though, really didn't introduce me to anything new or insightful that couldn't have been gleaned from all the Peavy trade rumors that happened over the last year.

He was asked to sing country, and he sung pop.

Jeff’s writing seems to improve with each entry. This was clear and strait to the point.

However:
It seems too early to be discussing buyers and sellers. Too much can happen between now and mid July, when teams really have to consider committing themselves one way or the other. I appreciate the notion that it is a good idea to get a jump on the rumours, although I missed your making that point explicitly.

I, too, thought the connection to fantasy baseball was weak.

As Richard noted, the list of starting pitchers includes Penny who is on one of the teams in the “sweet spot”. That doesn’t make sense – or needs an explanation.

And, yes, I had the same thought as Will that availability of players is often related to plenty of things other than payroll. Some teams will pay more attention to the payroll than others. The analysis here is a bit shallow.

Finally, one nitpick (the rest are major problems), it was discussed on one or more of the entries last week that ending an article with a list is a little abrupt. Some of these post article commentaries have been as interesting as the entries – although some are a bit nasty. You would have caught the objection raised against articles ending in lists if you read them all, although, I admit the quantity of comments was daunting – and I realize you had another article to write. Nonetheless, the article ended with a fizz.

Okay, where's the second half of the article? Did I miss a link somewhere? Oh, wait...

Started out great, but the laundry list lost me. Instead of the large lists, expanding on the intro sentence or two at each position would've made for a better read. Particularly, which guys moving where will matter to me?

Interesting data. Author might have tried to tie it into how it can be used to win a fantasy league or some sort of analysis.

Btw, I haven't seen Jeff reply to any of the feedback he has received in his three articles...

As he got to the list of available guys, I thought to myself "This is the most useful article so far. I wonder where he'll go with it after the lists."

I'm wondering if there's a second half to this piece lying around somewhere...

Well, you can't really analyze until a guy is slated to go some place. Like Peavy, there was a piece on how his numbers would be inclined in his new windy home. I enjoyed the piece and I think this is something the site does not cover.

Playing Devil's Advocate, the one piece that you missed Jeff..... If you would have just added some metrics for the players for this year and their career... you could have put some stats in this.

Example, Branyan's 2009 VORP along with his career VORP. That would at least tell some more of your story for someone who may have been looking at this from a fantasy perspective.

You have my vote. One of my two btw.

I actually liked that this article had a lot of non-fantasy value in it. Most fantasy articles aren't that helpful to people who don't play fantasy, but if I'm off rosterbating on some team's blog, knowing what players are credibly available helps prevent me from looking like an idiot (which I already do enough on the interwebs).

This article is a list.

And I am not sure how this helps my fantasy team. Knowing Roy Oswalt is a trade target with a no-trade is interesting, but I'm certainly not going to go out and trade for him in my league without knowing A) if he's being traded for sure, or B) where he is going.

It would suck if he accepted a trade to the Toledo Mudhens and my team was negatively impacted.

The other thing about the laundry list is that it includes guys like Ron Mahay, Matt Thornton, and Jack Wilson. I'm not sure they have fantasy value now even in an AL or NL only league. I'm definitely not wondering what value they have if they get traded.

To me, that seemed to be the clearest indicator that the discussion was no longer about fantasy baseball. I liked the concept about the effect of trades and the potential to forecast them, but I'm not so sure about the execution.

I liked this article. It was an easy-to-read list of players filtered for likelihood of being traded. That is not something I can find elsewhere. I found the author's opinions to be more convincing than those of most "deadline deal prognosticators." It may have been a bit off-topic, but the article was quick, painless and informative. I don't need to wade through tortured prose to get at information; I appreciate the author's direct style.

I actually enjoyed this article despite it's non-direct relationship to fantasy. Most of the people reading the articles on this site are going to be experienced fantasy owners that can use this information to determine what it means to their teams (i.e. they don't need to be spoon fed, as some of the above comments seem to suggest). I consider myself hardcore, but even I rarely look at a the players on my team's contractual status. Nicely done article with a lot of informative stuff.

Am I dating myself by saying that I finished the article and in my head I heard that old lady from the Wendy's ad (Clara Peller?) saying "Where's the beef"?

This is definitely useful. I've bookmarked it. Yeah, it'd be nice if there was more analysis of the players involved, but still, gathering the contract data of the likely trade chits, early, has a strong use value to the fantasy player.

Informative but I think he missed the target, "choose the wrong song."

I can not say much more than the 3 BP authors other than to agree that this is a list. Where is the analysis? Really off here for what a BP author needs to deliver, IMHO.

This was just bad. It completely missed the point and worse, it was boring.

I'm afraid I agree with the nay-sayers. It starts off promisingly (though to nitpick, you should have written that the White Sox and Padres "allegedly" consummated a Peavy deal. To recap. 1) Nothing that couldn't be found on several other sites like Rotoworld in terms of player contracts and even extrapolated potential buyers and sellers. 2) Trying to cover too much territory. Throw in a line that it's first in a series. Cover pitchers or hitters (or better, break it down even further). 3) A laundry list -- well-researched, granted -- lacking any sort of FBB context and analysis. True, you can't analyze deals that haven't been made. But for example, you can note player splits (the most obvious being Rockies players... and you can even throw Holliday and his struggles until recently into the discussion as an example of what might be expected from other would-be Rockies sluggers in other environments)... If you'd stuck to one position, you could have speculated even on May 31 about potential suitors. Which teams have the need and/or the money, as well as the trade bait, for Player X? And then how will that key chip's move affect fantasy teams in each scenario? 4) Granted, trade rumors are notoriously fickle. But it looks like the Indians won't shop DeRosa for the moment, given his flexibility and tgheir injuries, and that no one has expressed interest in Atkins. This knowledge has been disseminated for a week. You might consider handicapping the odds of potential trades, as well. Thumbs down (if I can get it to work, LOL). Sorry.