Long term results of trades

[jmknpk2]

In one of the online leagues I played in, we manually kept track of trades, to see over many seasons how those trades fared.

It was really cool, but took a great deal of manual human effort and record keeping.

The game could do this rather quickly and simply by presenting data already available. It would only be presented in a different way.

An example would be:
Team ABC traded 23 year old minor league pitcher Joe Schmoe to team XYZ for 30 year old outfielder Robert Shmoltz and a 1st round draft pick.

Trade score 100 in favor of XYZ:
Joe Schmoe had a 20 year career with 500 wins and WAR of 100.
Robert Shmoltz had two more seasons with a batting average of .195 and WAR of -20. The player drafted in the first round was Albert Einstein who never played in the majors.

There could be reports of best and worst trades in the league, as well as best and worst trades for an individual team.
And to be really helpful, financial considerations would be taken into account. For example cost per WAR, or something like that. This would be necessary to have a reasonable accounting of salary dumps and the like.

[Bluenoser]

Just curious, but what exactly was the "great deal of effort"?

The game already keeps all the records, all you have to do is look at the players history to see what he did after the trade. Am I missing something?

I do it all the time, look at how a trade fared out at different intervals.

[jmknpk2]

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

Just curious, but what exactly was the "great deal of effort"?

The stats are all there, as you mention. The effort comes in the evaluation, then summarizing the trades in a comprehensive list. And mostly the presentation.

Currently, in-game, I can go team by team and sort and sift through the trades. Or I can go player by player and review the history. But, I need to click individually on each player, one at a time, to see their stats (then return to the trade summary for just one trade to look at the next player).

Some are minor or insignificant. Others are quite substantial. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is not so easy, especially when one is not intimately familiar with the league history.

In the feature I suggest, the trades are highlighted, evaluated for balance, and compiled in one comprehensive list. No clicking of links for details of individual players is necessary to see the relevant highlights.


So the part we put together that isn't available in the game, was a list that looked something like this (with links to burrow deeper into the player details by hyperlink):

Best historical deal:
Boston traded player Bob Smith (career WAR 150, .295/450/980), Joe Dotel (500 wins), $1,000,000 and a first round draft pick to Detroit for John Wright (20 saves). Over the course of history this turned out to be quite lopsided for Detroit (e.g. similar to Babe Ruth).

Next best deal:
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Balanced Trades:

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Insignificant Trades:

Two minor league players were traded, neither ever playing in the majors.

Salary dump aging veteran traded along with 10th round draft pick for $1.

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