[JMDurron]

Somehow I have a feeling I'm going to run out of gas before finishing these, but oh well.

Trading

At the start of the franchise, you're going to have some crap contracts to deal with. The "Shop A Player" function is your friend, particularly on day 1 of the League, before additional stats and/or scouting reports have percolated through the league. Trade early, trade often, trade aggressively is my tactic. The approach has to differ based on where you are in the timeline.

Preseason/Offseason

I am all about clearing out older, more expensive contracts. This has to be done even with players who are producing, because even at default AI trade settings, the computer generally isn't stupid about trading value for garbage. If you try to dump a Daisuke Matsuzaka, you're not getting more than a Luke Hochevar in return. If you need to dump a John Lackey, you're going to have a staple a David Ortiz or an Adrian Gonzalez to him, but at least you can get massive salary relief that way. This actually seems quite realistic, given recent events.

There are two key dates, one for Day 1 of the League, and the other for every subsequent season. If you need to try to take a salary dump, you need to shop that player around IMMEDIATELY. This needs to be done on the day that players file for free agency, as that is the moment of greatest budget freedom for the majority of teams in the league. If only 1-2 teams are going to be interested in taking on an older, expensive player, you need to hit up those teams before they have executed the rest of their offseason plans.

One of the relatively few house rules I have is that I generally only try to work out a deal with teams that respond to a "Shop A Player" query. If no team responds, then you're in a "pick someone valuable you can lose to staple to the crap" situation, and you need to shop that valuable piece, then try to match up available budgets with interested parties to add in the player you want gone. As an example, this is how I ditched John Lackey in my MLB Quickstart. Shockingly, no teams responded when I shopped him. Since, for some bizarre reason, the MLB roster set I started with had David Ortiz signed at 12.5M per year for 4 years after 2012, so I shopped Ortiz around on the day free agents filed after the 2012 season. There were enough offers that I was able to trade Ortiz and Lackey together, when there was no way to trade Lackey on his own. You have to give up something to get something, but being aggressive in other venues can mitigate what you give up.

Every now and then, scouting and/or odd internal AI decisions lead to a "WTF?" offer. Take, for example, Carl Crawford. I shopped him on day 1 from his return from the DL in 2012, before he played a game, because I "knew" he would suck. Several teams responded with mediocre salary dump players in return, which is fair, but one team responded with a substantially valuable corner OF piece in exchange. You just don't know until you shop him. Assume Nothing, Shop Always is my motto. Obviously, these scenarios become less likely with harder trading settings.

Then, you have where the trading strategy merges with the waiver wire. You need to go into the offseason with a good sense of which players you are building around, and which players you can lose for the right deal. This is because when you pick up a potentially valuable piece from the waiver wire, even if you think you want him, you need to shop him. This is because some other team, despite ignoring him on waivers for some bizarre reason, may want him MORE. One of the high draft picks I claimed in the offseason waiver hunt led to a significant upgrade in youth and value at the DH spot just after my Ortiz/Lackey trade, so I ended up making a lateral move by combining a salary dump trade with a surprise easter egg hunt waiver wire maneuver.

Check out every player offered to you, every time, if you have the patience to do so. You never know when a team might significantly differ from your evaluation of the talent level being offered by you, or by them. You can get major pieces in seemingly random trades during the offseason.

If you have a waiver wire pickup/trade scenario that you want to combine with a salary dump, be absolutely certain that you execute it BEFORE SPRING TRAINING STARTS. As noted in another recent thread, Spring Training adds the salaries of all 40-man roster spots to the projected budget calculations, which shrinks the available budgets by 2-5 million per team. That will cut out a fair number of potential buyers for your 10-20 million dollar salary player that you want to try to ship out. Once you hit ST, you're generally stuck with him.

If you enable draft pick trading, as I have, always, ALWAYS try to upgrade your draft spot in every single deal you make. Once I get a deal agreed to, I always make a habit of seeing if I can trade a 2nd for the other team's 1st (basically never happens), 3rd for a 2nd (also rare), 4th for a 3rd, etc.. Once you get into the "4th for a 3rd" range, the AI tends to bite more often in my experience. No single deal is likely to make a major impact on your draft position, but adding this into every deal attempt will add up to that major impact.

Also, when you make your salary dump trades, if said salary dump is of a genuinely good player (think Ortiz or Adrian Gonzalez as opposed to Crawford or Lackey), you can try to target the team with the highest draft pick in the set of teams that responded to your offer, and see if you can build a package around that player for the team's #1 pick. That is where adding your 2nd to a request for their 1st can pay off.

After The Draft

As pointed out in the waiver wire post, this is where things get hectic, but in a fun way. If you can pick up a set of 5+ relievers on the waiver wire, you can shop those relievers around for packages that can make a significant impact on your team. You can focus on the present or the future, but I tend to try to use these deals more for the long term than the short term.

The key information here is to keep track of the relative draft positions of teams, and the team focus. "Win Now!" teams will tend to make more aggressive trades for relievers, so you want to focus on them.

Fair warning, we are now in the cheesy evil zone, so those of you picking up minor, legitimate tips and want to stay realistic should probably just skip this part.

[Begin Evil]

Using these relievers, target the "Win Now!" team with the best draft pick position at the time, or the Win Now team with the highest position that has responded to one of your shop player offers. I generally try to shop the players with the highest OSA ratings first, as I use that as an approximation of what other teams around the league might think about said player.

Unless you have a very specific need that the team (or one of the teams) can meet, there is where I go all in on the draft pick trading. Generally, these Win Now teams will give up a 4th-6th round draft pick for a package of 4-5 relievers put together. Since those relievers are generally ALL on MLB deals, the receiving team will then put all, or all but one of those relievers back onto the waiver wire. Claim them, target *the same team* again for the best draft pick you can get, and repeat to your heart's content. I personally only focus on 1st-6th round picks, I don't care once the 7th round comes up. Generally, I can get 4th-6th picks without giving up anything myself from 1-2 teams, then those same 4th-6th picks can be packaged with the relievers for upgrades into the 2nd or 3rd rounds. The AI is generally quite good at protecting their 1st round picks. It will take multiple 2nd/3rds plus the relievers to pull that off, which becomes feasible if you are dedicated and spend June-July making those trades every 3-4 days, followed by every 6-7 days in August-October.

Again, the key is to trade all 5 of the relievers to the same team, in order to ensure that at least 4 of them end up back on the waiver wire for you. Breaking up the trades into 1-2 relievers will leave you with a one-shot deal since the receiving team can make room for them on the 40-man roster more easily.

[End Evil]

I generally ignore trade offers via e-mail and emphasize the shop player functionality, but there are really no other hard and fast rules.