It looks like only ESPN still has trading and I believe this week (Wednesday, December 1) is the cut-off. So you better get out there and finish your last-minute trades. With most leagues’ trade seasons being over, I will focus once again on some “buy” or “sells” relating to the waiver wire. With some big-name injuries happening in Week 12, the landscape has shifted a bit.
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This week I included the trade values for 0.5 PPR leagues for both 1- and 2-QB formats. All other values, including 6 points per TD, can be found on the downloadable Excel document at the end of the post, and here: The Athletic Adjusted Trade Values Week 13
Reddit Adjusted Trade Value Charts with a Twist
Under the moniker PeakedInHighSkool, I have been producing trade value charts over on Reddit and my Patreon for several years now, and I am excited to be collaborating with the awesome team here at The Athletic to make an exclusive weekly edition.
I started the process to model fantasy football trade values in 2017 based on a lot of negative complaints on Reddit (shocking, I know). Linear positional ranks seemed to be solid, but the ranks between positions had some bias, particularly at the top and the bottom of those traditional charts. So I went into the arduous task of trying to correct these observed issues using crowd-sourced data from Reddit. In case you aren’t familiar with Reddit, there is a weekly trade thread where users can post individual players, and other users will respond with your momma jokes “reasonable” trades they have seen or think might get accepted. There are often hundreds or thousands of responses of varying quality.
What I did (and still do) was to go through and look for cross-over points between positions. Where people do a one-for-one trade of a running back for a wide receiver/tight end/quarterback, and used these deals to adjust linear ranks in terms of each other. I used these inputs to build an empirical model that defines positional value in terms of running back value. I feed in seed data each week (Expert Consensus Ranks) and generate updated weekly Trade Value Charts.
I am super excited to be working with the expert rankers here at The Athletic, and using their exclusive ranks as the seed data for my model — Brandon Funston’s ROS rankings were used as a baseline for this week. You can’t find these anywhere else!
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How to use these Charts
My goal was to make these as user-friendly as possible. I did this by creating two different formats. First are embedded images that are for specific formats. Second is an exclusive CSV file I created that all The Athletic users can download and play with.
The left-most column is the player’s trade value. All players in that particular row have the same trade value. This is the best way to look for even one-for-one positional swap trades (i.e. running back for wide reciever). When you are looking at larger trades like a two-for-one, make sure to sum the trade values on each side to look for fairness. Typically, the side selling the most players needs to overpay for the right to consolidate and open up a roster spot. Not all trades need to be perfectly even, but they should be relatively close. The goal is to look for win-win trades and to keep the league happy and healthy!
Buy
Most of our trade deadlines have passed, so it is time to start trading with the wavier wire. I wanted to highlight some players I am looking to stash for the end of my bench in case of emergencies in the playoffs. As the season wears on, I am more looking for people that have the potential to explode in the playoffs, and less for baseline. It is basically handcuff season. I like to handcuff my players and love to handcuff my opponents.
Ameer Abdullah, Khalil Herbert, Sony Michel, Devontae Booker, and Ronald Jones II are all players I want on my bench. I am looking for players that are one injury away from being very relevant. You do not need to roster the RB in front of these guys to grab them. You get even more value if you don’t! It is very likely none of these players will matter for your playoff push, but their potential upside could be very relevant. Abdullah is particularly interesting to me because the injury in front of him has already occurred and we don’t know the split between him and Chuba Hubbard going forward.
I am less interested in acquiring many wide receivers. I am interested in some that have spike potential like Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Van Jefferson, and Kendrick Bourne. These guys might be able to win you weeks going forward.
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Sell
Now it is time to make room for those stashes. It might be a week or two early, but it is time to consider dropping your depth TE or QB pieces. At this point, many managers have already given up, so there is just more depth on the wire for these positions. I totally understand if you wait until week 14 or 15 for this move. Don’t drop players that will help your opponents make the playoffs. It is all about league context.
The baseline wide receivers like Christian Kirk/Cole Beasley/Tyler Boyd/Marvin Jones Jr./Jarvis Landry/Tim Patrick are all sells at this time. Most byes are over and it is time to free them back to the wavier wire to grab some lottery tickets or stash an extra defense. The wavier wire is almost an extension of your bench in the playoffs due to less demand and active managers. So the WR and QB positions usually are in excess. This does not seem to be the case for DSTs in my experience. I see many managers stashing up to three DSTs for their playoff matchups and finding a streamer can be an issue.
Week 13 Trade Value Charts
Spreadsheet: The Athletic Adjusted Trade Values Week 13 — Excel download
If you have any trade questions, drop them in the comments and we will try to answer them! You can also find me over on Reddit or on this Discord that is focused on Trading.
Have a great week!
(Top photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
