The owner who swindled me in the Marcum/Wilkerson trade asked me to post his thoughts. So here they are, with a few editorial notes.

Being the erstwhile owner of the ‘Bad’ Wilkerson party, I thought it be would interesting to provide some color on the aforementioned trade.

At the time of the proposal, I was in dire need of pitching as I only had Bedard, Burnett, Schilling and Loewen as my front 4 exiting the auction. Luckily I picked up Carmona three weeks prior (mid-May) or I would have had no chance making innings (Ed. Note: we have a strict innings requirement of 1200 with ten pitchers. It isn’t that easy to make it) or putting up respectable win totals. Loewen was already done for the season and Burnett was due for his annual stint on the DL at any moment. Since I also was alternating Dukes, Lind, Wilkerson and Hillenbrand at two different lineup spots, I knew I could afford to trade an extra stick.

Not many people in my league could afford to part with a decent AL pitcher, but I had to try. Marcum was coming off three decent starts before I made the proposal so I was concerned his price tag was rising.

I also view Pat as a shrewd owner, so I didn’t know if he valued Marcum as highly as I did. Marcum had some dominant years in the minor leagues and was certainly capable of being an average major league starter - given our minimum inning requirements, this was all I needed. Pat has a tendency to have ‘man crushes’ (as he terms it) on some young unproven players, so I wasn’t sure if Marcum had caught Pat’s gaze yet (Ed. Note:a good example of knowing your opponent and capitalizing on flaws, but not true in Marcum’s case though, which was fortunate for him and bad for me).

I was very surprised to see my offer was greeted with ‘let me take it to Alden’(Ed. Note-my somewhat silent co-owner), which usually means that Pat is seriously considering an offer. Anyway, I was more than pleased Pat came back shortly with a ‘Let’s Post’.

It was exactly what both of us needed at the time, but I really believed I was getting a good deal here and a potential keeper.

ALSO - my final motivation was to clog up Pat’s salary cap with 16 units of a no profit player and remove 16 units (as Marcum was 0) from mine, so I could go on a buying rampage later in the season. This worked out better than I had hoped as Pat quickly became hamstrung by the cap early in the dump season and was unable to counter some big deals (Ed. Note: to be fair this is a good strategy, but not really an accurate reflection since I am still now well under the salary cap after all of my deals). He also lacked the desire to mess with his keeper roster since he had a commanding lead.

I am hoping that his decreased ability to capitalize on dump deals will help me challenge him for the top spot and erase a 90 point deficit, which is down to about 35 now with 6 weeks remaining (Ed. Note: hopefully he will beat Team B for second at least. And if he does catch me I will at least be able to say a cheater didn’t win).