Fake Teams Banter - Week 2

At the end of each week, I’ll post responses on Fake Teams that were sent in through me at Rotobanter.com. I’ll notify you via email as well when the post does go up.

Overall, week two requests were a great depiction of the Fantasy Baseball questions many early-goers have:

"My MI needs help, but I’m in a deep league"

"Should I show patience in Ichiro Suzuki, Ryan Doumit and the already soon to be annual Ike Davis?"

"Should I keep Danny Espinosa? I could handle .250 but not .230."

The last and the one I will attend to first because I just put up a somewhat relevant post here:

"How can I evaluate/what type of return can I get for top prospects?"

The easy answer is it depends. It depends on what others in your league are willing to give up. I am in a unique dynasty league and I would say ¾ of the guystruly know what value prospects have and the other ¼ don’t fully. I tried landing Mike Zunino from one guy and he’s treating him like Buster Posey already meaning he knows what he has but doesn’t fully know how to value him. So the slightly more in-depth answer is, evaluate how others in your league value prospects – simply ask rather than send out half-ass offers.

In another dynasty league, prior to the season, I traded Albert Pujols, Jon Lester, Brandon Morrow, and Ben Revere for Oscar Tavares, RymerLiriano, Anthony Rendon, Lorenzo Cain and David Price. Based on who others were keeping (15 MLB keepers), I wanted the sure-thing ace and needed to work on my farm system (took over for a team and wanted my identity associated to the team). I also had other CI’s in Anthony Rizzo, Paul Goldschmidt and Ike Davis + speed from the likes of Desmond Jennings among others.

In any case, my recommended solution is always a win-now approach so you can value prospects in this way.

1a)With all this in mind, here’s request one from Jack:

Jack wanted to know how he should value his top prospects in a trade scenario with a win-now approach, which I am glad he had in mind. Here are his prospects: Dylan Bundy, Jurickson Profar, Tyler Skaggs, Taijuan Walker, Nick Castellanos, David Dahl and Jameson Taillon – a pretty impressive group which includes 5 of the top 15 prospects according to MLB.com.

His team should be in the money, but he wants to ensure a win. He was offered Billy Butler, but for quite the package: Bundy, Taillon, Skaggs and Castellanos. My first question was to see what other prospects were available. I was surprised to see this group available for the taking: OswaldoArcia, George Springer, DelinoDeShields, Kaleb Cowart, Courtney Hawkins, Tyler Austin and a few solid pitchers (Max Fried, Kyle Crick, Robbie Erlin among others). With these guys available, I told him I was all for that Butler trade. For reference, his other CI’s include Paul Konerko and Pablo Sandoval.

Recommendation:

Pull the trigger and replace your lost keepers with Arcia, Springer, Austin/DeShields, Cowart/Hawkins while I do like Erlin’s peripherals in San Diego and the potential of these available starters.

Jack, is Tyler Guerrieri available?! If so, jump. Then see what type of return on investment you can land with Konerko/Sandoval.

1b) In addition to the Butler trade, other teams are continually asking Jack for Jurickson Profar. My thoughts on him at this point is to sell high. There’s talk that the Rangers are going to potentially put together and offer for Giancarlo Stanton. Whether or not this is qualified, you have to think the Rangers certainly have the farm system to pull it off – one would think Jurickson Profar and Mike Olt would be involved. The Rangers have committed (bigtime) to Elvis Andrus at SS, they still have Adrian Beltre (and a young Joey Gallo) at 3B and Ian Kinsler is set in the 2B stone. That makes Jurickson available. If this happens, the Marlins would have a very intriguing 2015/2016 team, but it makes me de-value Profar in the short-term.

Jack also has Troy Tulowitzki at SS and Robinson Cano at 2b without an MI for his 14-team keeper league. Again, I think this validates the opportunity to trade Jurickson.

Recommendation:

Jack, you don’t have any glaring holes. See what you can get for Jurickson and feel free to comment the offers you see. My only thoughts are that you pair him with Shin SooChoo for an elite OF upgrade or Yovani Gallardo and/or Anibal Sanchez for a top 5 SP Upgrade (Strasburg, Kershaw, Verlander, Price, Bumgarner). Madison Bumgarner is only 23 and you can see what I think of him in my Ballsy Forecast, and I'd say his performance to date is validating my thoughts.

Thanks for the request Jack.

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Daniel Schwartz owns and contributes for Rotobanterr - a site dedicated to visitor requests and live discussion. You can follow him on Twitter @rotobanter.