The first in a series analyzing my high stakes trades this year.
Robert Greene, in his book The 33 Strategies of War, calls the piecemeal strategy the Fait Accompli Strategy. In support of this strategy he discusses the history of Charles DeGaulle’s rise to power as the leader of Free France during World War II. In fact, Churchill and Roosevelt despised DeGaulle, but DeGaulle managed himself so masterfully that once Churchill and Roosevelt figured out that this heretofore unknown and exiled General was now positioning himself to restore France to its prior position and to defeat the Vichy government it was too late for them to depose him. Even though they were Allies, DeGaulle was imperious and had offended so many people that they wanted to depose him. But it was too late.

It is my opinion that if you go into a season as a strong contender, then pursuing this strategy will likely be your most potent weapon. Feel free to be aggressive right out of the gate; your competitors will likely stand pat for a month or two to see where their teams settle. By that time you may have already shorn up your weaknesses and may be well on the way to a successful Fait Accompli strategy.

As I promised (or threatened if you aren’t happy hearing about them!) I wanted to go through my various trades in my high stakes league this year, with the hope at the end that I would be able to summarize the various strategic principles at work and how to apply them in practice. if I hold on and win it will be the execution of a three year Fait Accompli Strategy (and it will be the third time i have executed a three year rebuild in high stakes leagues).

The very first trade I made was in April. Sadly, I kept BJ Ryan this offseason, since he had a very favorable $12 contract that expired after this year. On April 16 it was announced that he had an elbow ligament problem and shortly thereafter was out for the year.

Given that I viewed myself as a strong contender, and my other closer was (and is) Bobby Jenks, it was immediately clear that I needed a top closer. At that time my prime trade commodity was Brian McCann. I auctioned McCann last year for $12 and boy was he worth every penny! The problem though was that his numbers were simply not supported by his skills. He had a huge second half, and his BA was 30 points higher than his xBA, and his power appeared to be out of line with his minor league numbers. I won’t go through the full analysis here, though I would have at the time if this blog existed in April!

When it comes to players like McCann (or Stephen Drew) that I think are overrated, I am somewhat ruthless in determining to trade them. They almost always have more value in trade than they will actually produce; most owners are not familiar with the more advanced “expected” metrics, or even when they are, they still tend to believe what they see rather than what should be the case. A full understanding of this principle and how to apply it in practice can easily be your most potent tactical weapon.

Who was the best closer?? Nathan or Francisco Rodriguez. Nathan was on a sweet long term contract and his owner was no fool; so he wasn’t going anywhere. The owner that had K-Rod also had Tim Lincecum, who I and many others coveted. However, I wanted him not to keep but as a trade commodity! More on that in my next post on trades.

The deal:
I traded McCann, Michael Cuddyer and Luke Hudson for K-Rod, Mike Sweeney, Tim Lincecum and Rod Barajas. In a very deep league like my high stakes league guys like Sweeney and Barajas have value; we have a 6200 AB minimum and they get ABs, plus have a bit of pop. I had essentially a zero at my second catcher in the NL and in my UT spot in the AL, so they at least had short term value. Of course I had no intention of keeping Sweeney for the long term; I was hoping to get a hot month or two.

So far this has been a great deal for me; K-Rod has arguably been the most valuable closer, McCann has disappointed (not surprisingly), I traded Lincecum to get Ortiz and got Cuddyer back in a later deal. I will have a lot of detail about Lincecum in the next post in this series.

articleId=’12476′;