Thursday, August 4, 2011

Should I trade away more holds?

We looked at the reason that I made the Daniel Bard for Andrew Bailey trade in L.A. Slackers...securing 2nd place in saves (and breaking the extant four-way tie) while providing a non-contending team with some holds that might allow him to bring down some of my pursuers.

I'm fairly comfortably in first in this league, and have a fairly dominant lead in the holds category.

If we do a similar projection of holds (as we did with saves), Harder's Hitters are likely to end up at worst tied for first in holds with current rostered players, not including any contributions from Rafael Soriano (that's the 30-day version of the projection, and he's been injured so had zero holds in the last 30 days). With any contribution from him, I should waltz.

But, any excess holds will be wasted, so I wondered whether I could leverage them into something else.

Now, the ChowdaHeads, the team that traded me Andrew Bailey, have a commanding lead in saves, but sit sixth (of seven) in holds. The addition of Daniel Bard will, at best, let them finish third in holds (if we look at 30-day projections), but possibly stay at sixth (season-long hold rates projected).

It is possible that they would want more holds (four more would give them second place to fourth place in the projections, up from third and sixth) and would deal saves for them.

I'm thinking a Rafael Soriano or Mike Adams for Kyle Farnsworth (or Jonathan Papelbon, but he'll keep him) kind of thing.

Projecting Farnsworth for 10 saves from here on out (1/2 his total of 20 so far in 2/3 of a season), this would ensure my finishing second in saves (which is likely, but this would cinch it...slim chance I'd overtake him for first with this move), while either Adams or Soriano is probably good for at least ten holds the rest of the way.

The danger, of course, is that I trade away so many holds that I drop to second for a net negative one point while finishing second in saves, which might be the outcome without the move.

But that's one point in the standings and my current lead is eight. And I'd be reducing risk on saves, which is clearly very competitive and harder to pick up on the free agent market.

Does it make sense to propose it?

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