Quote:
Originally Posted by skywalkr2
What house rules should I use? I actually think trading is much harder than it was several versions ago when I could raid anyones minor league system.
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It's generally pretty easy to trade quantity for quality, which I think is an abuse of the AI. "Hey, St. Louis, I know I don't have anyone to offer you who is nearly as valuable as Oscar Taveras, but I do have three kind-of-alright but aging major leaguers and a AAA starting pitcher... Great! Pleasure doing business with you!" It wouldn't be too much of a problem if the AI actually had a need for those guys, but often they really don't. The AI has a problem recognizing that four decent prospects do not equal one super-prospect. I generally try not to trade with the AI at greater than a 2:1 player ratio. As in, I trade 2 players to the AI for one player. I make exceptions when I'm putting together a realistic package of prospects to trade for a major-leaguer. Sometimes I add another prospect even when the AI is already willing to accept the deal if I don't feel that it's fair.
The other is that I typically try not to trade players to the AI that they really don't need. For example, this happened in my recent Houston game. Oakland is five games out at the deadline. I have a crappy Jason Vargas (it's 2014) signed to a cheap one-year deal. He's still rated okayish, but his ERA is through the roof and he's been worth about 0.5 wins. I also have Yunel Escobar signed to a cheap one-year deal, and while he's been great defensively, he's been so bad offensively (OPS a bit above .500) that he's been worth negative wins. Oakland's starting rotation has actually been alright, but OSA still identifies the rotation as a "slight weakness" because of how the pitchers are rated. Yunel Escobar has basically the same value as Oakland's shortstop. Oakland is set to "Win Now!"
Oakland is willing to trade me Addison Russell, a great prospect knocking on the door to the majors, for Jason Vargas and Yunel Escobar. The deal makes no sense for Oakland. They have needs at shortstop and in their rotation, but neither of the guys I'm offering do anything to address those needs, and they're giving up the guy who actually will address those needs in the very near future. Here, I don't make the trade, because it makes no sense.