Why do people use the league email to solicit trades? This is poor strategy in my view and here’s why.

In one league I am in, a keeper dynasty draft league, I am a background adviser with a co-owner. He is my partner in the high stakes league, and since I run that team, he essentially does the day-to-day management of this other team. So I essentially act as a consultant for this team, and get all of the league wide emails.

A few days ago I received the following:

“Willing to deal the following if anyone is interested…

Alex Gonzalez
Zack Duke
Ruben Gotay
Jeff Kent
Nomar Garciaparra
Armando Benitez
Brett Tomko
Salomon Torres”

Any problems here? Well, just a few. The first is that virtually none of these players has any significant value that is worth acquiring in a trade, aside from Kent. Even in an NL only league I doubt anyone will be rushing to acquire Nomar Garciaparra or Brett Tomko.

But what is worse is that the owner who sends this email is telling the entire league that he doesn’t value these players. He is saying he will deal them to anyone for whatever he can get. Does that sound like good strategy? I hope not.

So, even if he values Kent, he signals to the league that he doesn’t. It is guilt by association. If he includes Kent in a list of flotsam like this, he is lumping them together. So anyone who is interested in Kent knows that he needn’t give up great value for him. At a minimum the owner interested in Kent will at least think that he can be acquired for less than fair value.

Two more problems: the first is that your motives are transparent and lazy. Everyone in the league knows what you are up to. Since everyone knows it you have far less negotiating power than you might think. Generally the league wide email is an attempt to get as many trading partners as you can, a laudable goal. But rarely does this happen. The more likely scenario is that no one responds or very few. Since everyone knows what you are trying to do no one wants to be the patsy in a scheme to get as many trading partners to drive up the price.

The second is that no one has any obligation to respond. You aren’t telling an owner how you can help him, or how he can better his team. You are asking him to help you out. Why should he respond to this? He won’t unless he is desperate, and if he does you won’t get fair value for any reasonably good players.

The fact is that taking a list of your worst players and saying “someone give me anything for one of these” is never good strategy. Laziness and sloth are not characteristics of a winning fantasy owner. Put in the time to make a few phone calls and to look at people’s rosters.

In this particular instance it may not make a difference since the players being offered have very little value. But for good players or better there is no reason to go the email route.

One of my co-owners in my high stakes league called me yesterday to talk deal. We are not allowed to make deals until after thanksgiving. But he was laying the groundwork. We discussed what I thought of my team, whether I would be rebuilding after my victory, what players I liked etc. So when he is looking to do a deal he will know how he can try to help me and help himself. That is the smart way to do it.

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