Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

The Lansing Area Rotisserie League StratoMatic League just completed its 7th season (4 at $80M, the last 3 at $100M).

It was also the 7th season in which there were NO trades.

The short of it is, we can't figure out how to make a trade. Every trade we try to make fails, because we can't get the exchanged value dead even between the player salaries and the cash exchanged.

And why is there a Drop button next to every player name on the Trade page? Does it have a secret purpose?

Has anyone had any luck with making trades, and if so, are there any best practices to share?
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PS. Instead of posting, I tried really hard to search the Forum for existing wisdom on this topic, but the keywords "trade" and "trading" would not return results. Why? Because there were too many to return - try a different keyword. Whoever heard of a database so rich with information that the search engine won't return it? And exactly what other keywords? "Swap?" "Deal?" "Barter?" Ridiculous.

I make trades all the time. I send many more offers than get accepted.

You have to have both teams abide by all roster requirements (number of catchers, number of SP's, number of RP's, total number of players, total salary) in order to accept the deal.

So:

Team A has Quisenberry (RP - 5.63) and wishes to acquire Burke (RP - 7.60) from Team B. In order to make the trade happen, Team A has to have an excess of 1.97M in salary available; OR clear that much in the transaction. You could propose a deal where you "DROP" a 2.3M player and "GIVE" Qusenberry to team B for Burke. If Team B accepts the deal, then both the GIVE and DROP would happen and you would RECEIVE Burke on your roster. However, you can't drop a player to fall below the 24 player minimum; so you would need to have 25 players on your roster to pull that deal off.

Trades are like a giant puzzle. You have to figure out what you want; what the other team wants, and how to construct the deal so that it fits HAL's rules.

In the ATG player set, there are so many similar players (price, profile, position) that it often makes more sense to just add a guy from waivers than to try to jump through trade hoops.

Good luck!

I'll take a run at this....
Starting with the easiest, the Drop button can only work when one of the traders has more than 24 on the roster. It allows receiving 2 players in a trade, and dropping someone off of your roster to allow for the dropped players salary to be off the books. I'm sure it works well at higher caps, but at lower caps, it's done in preseason when rosters can change daily.
The other is a simple math problem. The value of the rosters must stay below $60-80-100M, so as you say, the value of the players involved must be very close, within the available cash in reserve for the team taking on higher priced players. As before, this is easier preseason while rosters are in flux and a manager can make a change or 2 to cheaper players to make room for Mickey Mantle for example.
You are correct, in the regular season, it can be impossible to get the salaries to line up.
If someone else can make this clearer, please do.

"The short of it is, we can't figure out how to make a trade. Every trade we try to make fails, because we can't get the exchanged value dead even between the player salaries and the cash exchanged."

Trades do not even to be even value.They just need to leave both teams roster and value compliant. There are very few in-season trades because everyone has settled their needs. It is after the draft where trading opportunities exist. Most people offer fair trades a few will make ridiculous one-sided offers.

Another thing is that with the player pool being SOOOO deep, trades are far less important. Typically if you miss a guy in the draft, it doesn't kill you like it did in the early days of ATG when sometimes ONE GUY was the key to your team. Now there are so many versions of that one guy it's not necessary to make trades.

Hamilton17 wrote:Team A has Quisenberry (RP - 5.63) and wishes to acquire Burke (RP - 7.60) from Team B. In order to make the trade happen, Team A has to have an excess of 1.97M in salary available; OR clear that much in the transaction. You could propose a deal where you "DROP" a 2.3M player and "GIVE" Qusenberry to team B for Burke. If Team B accepts the deal, then both the GIVE and DROP would happen and you would RECEIVE Burke on your roster. However, you can't drop a player to fall below the 24 player minimum; so you would need to have 25 players on your roster to pull that deal off.

Thanks, Hamilton17....so when you "DROP" the 2.3M player, do you get the player's full 2.3M in cash? Or is it subject to whatever drop penalty is in force at the time of the trade?

southpawcom wrote:

Hamilton17 wrote:Team A has Quisenberry (RP - 5.63) and wishes to acquire Burke (RP - 7.60) from Team B. In order to make the trade happen, Team A has to have an excess of 1.97M in salary available; OR clear that much in the transaction. You could propose a deal where you "DROP" a 2.3M player and "GIVE" Qusenberry to team B for Burke. If Team B accepts the deal, then both the GIVE and DROP would happen and you would RECEIVE Burke on your roster. However, you can't drop a player to fall below the 24 player minimum; so you would need to have 25 players on your roster to pull that deal off.

Thanks, Hamilton17....so when you "DROP" the 2.3M player, do you get the player's full 2.3M in cash? Or is it subject to whatever drop penalty is in force at the time of the trade?

There are no drop penalties on trades.

jcheney2013 wrote:
There are no drop penalties on trades.

Thank you, jcheney2013!

Trades are most likely to be accepted prior to waivers. Rarely do I see trades or even offers after waivers, let alone once the season starts.

I have seen and made MANY trades after waivers...a lot less after the season starts because it is sometimes difficult to get the exact dollar amounts to work well (as you had noted).