This article is part of our The Long Game series.
Two-plus months are now in the books, and things haven't gone your way. The team that you thought looked like a contender in March has limped out to a second-division finish and the standings hole you're in seems to get deeper every day. Your stars aren't starring, your gambles haven't paid off, and no matter how hard you squint, you can't see a path to a money finish even if everybody on your roster turns things around tomorrow.
Yup, it's time to dump.
Dumping, of course, is the time-honored tradition in keeper and dynasty leagues where you trade away all your expensive players, veterans with limited futures and expiring contracts for younger, cheaper and hungrier players who can help you down the road. When done well, dump deals can transform your roster from bloated and underperforming to lean, mean and built for future success. Executing a good dump deal can be tricky, however. Your league might have rules to restrict them, but even if it doesn't, other owners aren't simply going to hand over their best keepers because you asked nicely. There are principles and guidelines I use to try and ensure I get, if not a perfectly optimal return on my assets, at least one that can set me up for my next title run.
Talent trumps need
The most important goal you should have when rebuilding is simply the acquisition of as much talent as possible. Don't worry about positions or categories. If you end up with a
Two-plus months are now in the books, and things haven't gone your way. The team that you thought looked like a contender in March has limped out to a second-division finish and the standings hole you're in seems to get deeper every day. Your stars aren't starring, your gambles haven't paid off, and no matter how hard you squint, you can't see a path to a money finish even if everybody on your roster turns things around tomorrow.
Yup, it's time to dump.
Dumping, of course, is the time-honored tradition in keeper and dynasty leagues where you trade away all your expensive players, veterans with limited futures and expiring contracts for younger, cheaper and hungrier players who can help you down the road. When done well, dump deals can transform your roster from bloated and underperforming to lean, mean and built for future success. Executing a good dump deal can be tricky, however. Your league might have rules to restrict them, but even if it doesn't, other owners aren't simply going to hand over their best keepers because you asked nicely. There are principles and guidelines I use to try and ensure I get, if not a perfectly optimal return on my assets, at least one that can set me up for my next title run.
Talent trumps need
The most important goal you should have when rebuilding is simply the acquisition of as much talent as possible. Don't worry about positions or categories. If you end up with a glut somewhere, or even more potential keepers than your league allows you to protect, you can worry about it in the offseason by making more trades. Just bring in as much talent as you can, by hook or by crook, and sort out your actual keeper list in the offseason.
As part of this vacuuming up of talent, don't get too attached to anybody. If you can package a keeper as part of a deal to get a better one, do it. Be ruthless. Some fantasy owners, even when going for it in the short term, like to try and stash some long-term resources too. Sweetening an offer with a little bit of keeper value in order to bring back a real difference-maker can be an important tool in your negotiating toolbox.
Set your targets
Before I initiate any roster purge, I take a look at all the teams ahead of me who seem poised for a title push and scour their rosters for any players I might want, no matter how unlikely it is that they'll part with them. Examining the full universe of possible trade targets can help determine which deals you'll be more interested in pursuing, and give you some idea what it would take to acquire your top targets.
Think of each team's roster like a jigsaw puzzle. Yours is a big, mismatched jumble, and nothing you do this season is going to result in your roster looking like the picture of the trophy on the box. Other owners, however, have puzzles that are nearly complete. All they need is one or two more pieces to put together that championship picture. What you want to pay attention to when it comes time to actually talk turkey is less the pieces you want back, and more the pieces you have that can help them complete their puzzle. Finding those best fits on other teams will allow you to maximize your total return across all deals, as ideally you'll be able to determine who can give you the most for specific players or specific packages. Team 1 might want players A, B and C from you and can offer you the best single package, but maybe you can get two smaller packages that add up to more by trading A and C to Team 2, and players B and D to Team 3. It's all about how you can make those pieces fit together the best, on both ends of your deals.
Know your window
While stockpiling talent is the primary goal, it's also important to have a window for your rebuild in mind. In large dynasty leagues, it's not unreasonable to plan for a two or even three-year rebuild, where you slowly stockpile elite minor league talent that all project to hit the big leagues at about the same time. In such cases, picking up current major league players tends to be only a means to an end, as you often flip those players before your window for success fully opens. In more traditional keeper formats, however, where players are protected for shorter periods of time, you can't afford to wait that long to turn things around. Getting an elite prospect like Brendan Rodgers or Anderson Espinoza in a dump deal is nice and all, but you could in theory go through an entire success cycle (rebuild-win-rebuild) before they even get to the majors. Focus instead on cheap, young major leaguers who are contributing right now, or prospects in the upper minors who are on the cusp of a call-up.
One good rule of thumb to judge how quickly you should be able to perform a rebuild is by looking at the typical rate of inflation at the auction table. Inflation is a reflection of the amount of talent that returns to the free agent pool every year, and the more talent that gets kicked back (due to large salaries, expiring contracts etc.) the lower the inflation rate gets. Leagues with fairly low annual inflation, in the 10-15 percent range, allow you to perform quicker rebuilds, as you can still acquire significant talent at the auction table at a reasonable price. An inflation rate of 30 percent or more, on the other hand, indicates that more talent is being hoarded on protected lists, driving up demand on what little trickles back into the free agent pool. In such cases, your only real recourse is to build from within. Rather than chasing overpriced stars at the auction table, you need to develop your farm system and let those kids grow into the core of your next winning roster.
Knowing how quickly your rebuild should happen also guides how much you value draft picks. If you are expecting a quick, one-year turnaround, draft picks are less valuable to you as assets in a dump deal. It's usually better to get a cheap but relatively low-upside major league keeper to supplement next year's protected list than it is a high draft pick who, at best, might provide you with a prospect you can flip as part of your anticipated title run. When your expected window of success doesn't open for a couple of years yet, however, high draft picks are just one more way to bolster your farm system with a fresh infusion of talent. In those cases the incentive is reversed, and netting that high pick is more valuable to you than a decent and affordable major leaguer who may not even be on your next championship roster.
Focus on what can go right
When deciding which players are worth pursuing or trading for, focus about their upside and not their downside. Sure, pitching prospects may flame out more often than position players, but hitting on the next Noah Syndergaard is worth 10 arms that fall by the wayside on their way to the majors. Sure, Jackie Bradley's ridiculous May might be the best he does all year, but despite his peaks and valleys, if he learns how to make the former last longer and mitigate the latter, he'll be an All-Star. Part of the advantage of the pure stockpiling of talent I recommended above is that it comes with built-in risk protection. You don't need every player you trade for to pan out in order to put together an impressive keeper list for next season. And if you get really lucky and enough of them become more productive than you have roster or keeper spots for, that just gives you better trading options later.
Part of this focus on upside also involves acquiring players whose current value takes a sudden dive. Julio Urias didn't take the majors by storm as a 19-year-old prodigy? Mike Moustakas is out for the year with a torn ACL? You don't care, since you don't care what their 2016 numbers look like. Add them to your talent stockpile if you can. It's all about putting together the cheapest, most productive roster you can for the future.
