Trading Draft Picks

In the 2009-2010 season, 15 trades were made that involved draft picks.  In that first season, managers were fairly conservative in this area and particularly reticent to deal high round picks. Only 9 of those 15 trades involved a pick inside the top 6 rounds, and only 2 trades involved picks inside the top 4 rounds.

Immediately after the draft on September 26, 2010, I was asked to look into what those draft picks became so that we could retroactively evaluate the trades and perhaps even begin to settle the raging debate about the value of a draft pick relative to present roster players.  With more systematic analysis of the value of draft picks on-going, this review will focus on evaluating trades based on what those draft picks became. [Total fantasy points and/or Fantasy points per game average in brackets]

I've struggled all year to find a better way to present this data.  For now, you're stuck with a list of trades.  I've broken them up into different periods of the season to establish some context for the trade (ditching extra keepers vs. acquiring depth players etc.).  I've also listed the trades according to what each team acquired, rather than what each team gave away.  I've assigned (guessed at?) winners for the stats presented.  I've not considered whether players are/will be kept or their chance at getting better or worse.




Draft Day Deals:

Billcago made two whoppers on Draft Day 2010.

1) Billcago acquires Marleau [120/1.5] and ESCH's 2nd round pick (Alex Burrows [79/1.1])
Eschatologists acquire Malkin [64/1.5] and BAY's 9th round pick (Andrew Brunette [67.2/0.8])

Winner: Billcago
(Editor's Note: Fuck.)

2) Billcago acquires Kopitar [123/1.8] and EM's 3rd (Ian White [58/0.7])
Mercury's acquire Kaberle [98/1.2] and Gaborik [86/1.4]

Winner: Tie?

Did anyone else see him coming even close to winning either of those trades?  I thought he'd lost his mind.

Off-season Deals (before the keeper submission deadline):

Five trades were made in the offseason that involved draft picks.

1)  Eschatologists acquire Bats' 4th round pick (David Booth [61.5/0.8])
Batarangs acquire Brian Rafalski [97/1.5] and the Bats' own 9th round pick traded earlier in the year (Jordan Staal [49/1.2]).

Winner: Batarangs

2) Team Seamus acquires Ehrhoff [123/1.6] and a 3rd (Bryan McCabe [64/1.0])
Billcago gets Marty Turco [30/1.0] and a 6th (Jon Quick [123/2.0])

Winner: Team Seamus

3) Eric Stall Resplendent! acquires Mike Knuble [76/1.0] and a 6th (Henrik Lundqvist [154/2.3])
Mercury's get Pavel Datsyuk [92/1.6] and a 13th (Brendan Morrow [87/1.1])

Winner: Mercury's

4) Eric Staal Resplendent! gets an 8th (Brent Seabrook [99/1.2])
Eschatologists acquire Jakub Voracek [68/0.8] and a 12th (Derrick Brassard [70.8/1.0])

Winner: ESR!

5) Mercury's get Selanne [130/1.8] and a 14th (Matt Lombardi [0.1/0])
Mama Ramotswe acquire their own 9th back (Troy Brouwer [57/0.7])

Winner: Mercury's

In four out of five off-season deals, the team the acquired the best roster player won the deal.  It was almost always better to trade picks for players.  That said, some of these were clearly teams dumping guys before the keeper deadline, so these are perhaps bargain trades.

In-Season Deals 

Ten other deals, all made inside the 2009/10 season, involved draft picks and are presented below in loose chronological order.  Because these were made during Definitely Offside's inaugural season, the statistics for traded players are for the 2009/10 season, while statistics for players taken in the draft (with traded draft picks) are for the 2010/11 season.  Make sense?

A key externality to consider in all player for pick trades is that the roster spot is an opportunity cost.  In some cases, managers may have picked up better players from waivers than they traded.  In others, the player dropped to accommodate the acquisition may have been a difference maker for another team.  In other words, these trades can't been seen as accurate analysis of the successes and failures of managers per se, though many of these trades do have clear winners and losers when we ignore this externality.

The first draft pick trade ever made in Definitely Offside was this stunner:

1) Mercury's acquire Alex Picard [19/0.4] and a 6th (David Backes [110/1.3]
REMS get back Kimmo Timonen [82/1.0] and a 14th (Ray Whitney [88/1.2])*

Winner: Tie?

2) Batarangs get Brandon Dubinsky [75/1.1] and a 14th (Dennis Seidenberg [72/0.9])
Eschatologists acquire a 9th round selection (Jordan Staal [49/1.2]).*

Winner: Batarangs.  This is particularly true as the Eschatologists would later send that same 9th round pick back to the Batarangs in a deal for a fourth round pick.  In other words, the Eschatologists traded Dubinsky, Rafalski, and Seidenberg for David Booth. Ouch.  Who am I, Dale "Dave" Tallon?

3) Mercury's receive a 5th round pick (Brad Boyes [89/1.1])*
Billcago gets Jarett Stoll [83/1.1] and a 13th (Sami Salo [15/0.6])

Winner: Mercury's (if only because RW is more valuable than C)

4) Eschatologists acquire Pominville [109/1.3], Brian Campbell [87/1.3] and a 7th (Mike Ribeiro [100/1.2])
Billcago gets Justin Williams [49/1.0], Dennis Wideman [61/0.8] and a 13th (Scott Gomez [57/0.7])

Winner: Eschatologists

5) Eschatologists acquire Ray Whitney [85/1.1], Hejduk [75/1.3], Sami Salo [71/1.1], Quick [114/1.6], and Billcago's 5th round draft pick acquired earlier in the year (Brad Boyes [89/1.1])

Mercury's got Cammalleri [87/1.3], Steve Sullivan [77/0.9], Joe Corvo [39/0.7], Pekka Rinne [103/1.8], and a 12th round selection (Clarke MacArthur [88/1.1])*

Winner: Tie

6) Eric Staal Resplendent! acquire a 6th (RJ Umberger [94/1.1]) and a 9th (Mike Fisher [56/0.7])
Eschatologists get Brian Rafalski [100/1.3], a 10th (Mark Giordano [92/1.1]) and an 11th (Martin Erat [82/1.3])

Winner: Eschatologists

7) Billcago gets Ponikarovsky [76/1.0] and a 14th (Jarret Stoll [69/0.8])
ESR! gets Brendan Morrison [70/0.9] and an 8th (Eric Fehr [37/0.7])

Winner: Tie?  Edge goes to Billcago for his loyalty to Jarret Stoll year after year

8) Young Guns acquire Rick Nash [110/1.5] and a 14th (Kevin Bieksa [62/0.9])
Stultifiers get Shea Weber [100/1.3] and a 5th (Kimmo Timonen [86/1.1])

Winner: Stultifiers

9) REMS acquire Rich Peverley [80/1.0] and an 8th (Dennis Wideman [82/1.1])
Batarangs get Rene Bourque [98/1.3] and the Mercury's 14th (Ray Whitney [88/1.2])

10) Mama Ramotswe gets Joe Corvo [39/0.7], Jack Johnson [68/0.8], Huselius [94/1.3], Kariya [69/0.9], the Mercury's 12th (Michael Leighton [1.2/0]) and the Eschatologists 12th (Clarke MacArthur [88/1.1])
Mercury's acquire Knuble [89/1.3], Tom Poti [60/0.9], Bertuzzi [70/0.8], Hagman [72/0.9], a 6th (Nik Antropov [54/0.7]), and a 9th (Troy Brouwer [57/0.7])*

Winner: This is reasonably even, but I think Ramotswe wins it with Huselius and MacArthur.  Still, this is a complicated trade with a lot of connections to future deals.  To start, Ramotswe would later reclaim their own 9th round selection back by trading Selanne to the Mercury's (a trade the Mercury's won when Selanne blew up).  Next, Knuble was later moved by the Mercury's in a deal for Datsyuk (that they also won).  So a different way to put this deal would be: Datsyuk, Selanne, and some bums, for MacArthur, Jack Johnson, Huselius and some bums.  As Ramotswe would later drop Johnson and miss out on his explosion last season, this is eventually becomes a clear win for the Mercury's and a cornerstone deal in the Mercury's winning the regular season in 2010/11.

_____________

In sum, I think the jury is still out on whether trading draft picks for players is an advantage or a disadvantage.  Ideally, it should be an issue of timing (a player now for a player later) and managing opportunity cost on a limited roster.  Still, in many cases above, better players were selected with the lesser pick(s) exchanged in the deal.  In these 17 cases then, there is no clear relationship in the round of the draft pick and the quality of the player.

Everyone should keep in mind that this is very anecdotal evidence of the value of draft picks.  From what we've seen so far, higher round picks still hold more likelihood of selecting better players.  But some managers may be beating the odds.  All we can be sure of is that winning trades that involve draft picks is contingent on a manager's ability to draft as much (or perhaps more) than the spread between the picks exchanged.


* This draft pick was involved in another transaction and may not have been used to select a player for the team acquiring the pick in this particular trade.