Written by Scott Pisani
February 1, 2008

Does anyone else see the parallel between the Johan Santana deal and a really bad fantasy deal? In that manner, it highlights how some deals that may look horrible are not always done with malicious intentions – but that still doesn’t make it a good deal.

For example, the Twins are like that owner in your league at deadline time that is way out of the running and has a great commodity (lets use Johan at $40 for simplicity’s sake), and announces to the league he wants to trade him and is looking for keepers. So this owner sends out a few proposals to some of the contending teams, asking for the moon. And why not? Santana is a great pitcher and can help any of these teams win the pennant. He asks not only for their best keepers, but for several of their best keepers. He offers deals that probably aren’t going to happen, but Santana’s owner is being greedy, and who knows - it's a tight race and maybe someone will overpay.

Initially, these contending teams are very excited about the prospect of adding a Santana, and 2 of the owners are always in a rivalry with each other, so half of their excitement is fueled by the thought of keeping the other away from Santana. Team 3 doesn’t have a lot to offer after the initial outrageous proposal from Santana's owner, but he sticks in it and tries several counter offers.

Now, Santana’s owner knows the players he really wants are on the first two teams, so he tries several combinations trying to lure these great keepers away. While the offers are getting more reasonable, they are still too much. Team 3 is way behind what Santana’s owner wants, so he doesn’t completely rebuff him, but he’s not really paying much attention to team 3, either.

Finally, it’s trade deadline day. Santana’s owner realizes that if he doesn’t pull the trigger today, he’s stuck with a great player he can’t keep. He tries one last time with owners 1 and 2 to get the players he wants, and fails. Owner 3, who has been sitting back this whole time, still has his less than great offer that he’s been sticking to for weeks. With a choice of getting something, or getting nothing, Santana’s owner says, fine, I’ll accept your deal of 4 potential (but not great) keepers.

With our RotoUmpire service, we get stories like this all the time – “I offered him around the league and this was the best offer I got,” “nobody else wanted him,” etc. While we do sympathize with the owner of Santana in that hypothetical case (and with the owners in our RotoUmpire cases), as the Twins’ case highlights, sometimes it’s his fault he didn’t get a better offer than the one he got because he wasted his time on deals that weren’t going to happen. Just because he didn’t get an official offer better than the one he made, it doesn’t mean it’s a good deal, and it definitely doesn't mean it's always a deal that’s to the benefit of the league.

A golden rule we always follow when evaluating trades is: “The good of the league outweighs the benefit to any 2 individual teams.” Both teams may have gotten something of benefit, but getting the best pitcher in the game for a very young OF who hit .230 last year, and 3 pitchers, 1 of whom is many years from the majors, and 2 of whom don’t project higher than a #3 starter at best, is not really a good deal for a fantasy league – far too much balance is shifting for far too little payment.

Now you can’t compare major league situations exactly to fantasy owners. After all, fantasy owners are really at the mercy of the whims of the major league GMs: how they treat their youngsters, when they promote them and how often they play them. So much can happen before a minor leaguer makes the majors that a fantasy owner has absolutely no control over.

If Carlos Gomez were to miss the entire 2008 season, he would not be kept in 99% of fantasy leagues (and almost never by choice). But the Twins are not hurt nearly as bad by an injury like that as they can just play him in 2009 and other than a little bit of salary that might even be insured, he’s not cutting into a salary cap or keeper limit or anything like that for the year they have to keep him when he doesn’t play. A fantasy owner would be devastated by that same turn of events if, for some unexplainable reason, he had to keep Gomez.

Now from a real baseball standpoint, as a lifelong Mets fan, I love the deal. I was actually not against the Mets trading Reyes for Santana, but in hindsight, I’m obviously glad they didn’t. Gomez is a nice player – very, very fast and should develop into a useful speedster with decent stats in the other 4 categories, but he’s not really a superstar. None of the pitchers make me nervous the way I was when the Mets gave away Scott Kazmir. And even if they did, it’s going to be years before we’d see any success out of them on the major league level. Santana is producing now, at a superstar level, and should continue to for many years. Sorry Twins fans!

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