Trading Stats
It has long been mankind's dream to reach the distant lights in the night sky. This pioneering mindset has been the banner call of one agency in the fantasy space - The National Analytics and Strategy Administration. With breakthroughs in optimal roster construction, data analysis, and player evaluations, the brightest dynasty scientists and engineers are closer now to answering the most pondered questions about the fantasy cosmos.
The Dynasty Abyss
We send those men up into space to unlock the doors of the universe, and we don't even know what's behind them.
Mulder - The X-Files
The Twilight Zone
It has long been mankind's dream to reach the distant lights in the night sky. This pioneering mindset has been the banner call of one agency in the fantasy space - The National Analytics and Strategy Administration. With breakthroughs in optimal roster construction, data analysis, and player evaluations, the brightest dynasty scientists and engineers are closer now to answering the most pondered questions about the fantasy cosmos.
But there are rumors of another unexplored country in the deep depths of dynasty football. Hidden in this pitch-black realm are organisms that exist in the harshest conditions, under immense pressure, and would seem to defy the laws of nature. The creatures that inhabit this abyss are your leaguemates and it is the trenches of their mind that I wish to explore trading in this article.
The League Ecosystem
Like many projects, this one began with a few questions that many assume they already know the answers to. But speaking to these topics without data is like sailing past an island and saying your feet have touched the beach. Whether a frigid tundra or a rainforest teeming with activity, each league is an environment with unique cycles, seasons, resources, hierarchies, and patterns of behavior. As someone who is obsessed with trading, I’ve always wondered:
“What are the most commonly traded assets?”
“Is the trading market typically dominated by a select few?”
“Is there a time of year most ripe for trading?”
“Are certain assets better value-insulated than others?”
In this article, we will explore four major categories associated with trades: Times of Year, Types of Assets, Value Fluctuations, and Managers. With a better understanding of these areas, perhaps we can become more effective in navigating trading.
The Background
The data in this project involved analyzing every trade from all nine of my 12-team dynasty leagues from the 2023 season (from the day after the 2022 Championship till the day of the 2023 Championship). The dynasty leagues are eight Superflex leagues and one 1QB league, which include four lineup leagues and five bestball leagues, and a diverse sample of roster settings (including 2 starting TEs), scoring settings (various TE premiums), trade deadlines, and various lifetimes of the league (first year to third year).
In total, 278 trades were completed across these nine leagues during the 2023 season, all of which were 2-sided deals (556 managers). Let us first examine the types of assets being traded.
Picks Vs Players
A total of 1,115 assets were traded across these dynasty leagues in 2023. Of these 1,115 traded assets, 439 of them were draft picks, 672 were players, and 4 were FAAB transactions. This amounts to an average of 123.88 assets, 48.78 draft picks (39.38%), 74.66 players (60.27%), and 0.44 FAAB assets (0.36%) traded per league year. The average amount of pieces involved in a trade was 4.01.
Draft picks were categorized using the following criteria: picks 1-4 in a round were ranked “Early,” 5-8 “Mid,” 9-12 “Late,” 2024 picks were classified as “Next Year,” and picks in 2025 or beyond were deemed “Future.” The “#” and “%” in the right-hand column of the table below represent the total number and percentage of trades the asset was involved in.
First-round picks barely edged out thirds as the most commonly traded picks (123 vs. 122). Regardless of the round, Next Year picks were by far the most commonly traded, followed by Future picks.
Players were categorized using various criteria dependent upon the league’s starting roster settings. The ranking of these players is based on Keep, Trade, Cut (KTC) dynasty values by position at the time of the trade. Each position ranked players in increments of 12 since all of the leagues were comprised of 12 managers (ex - WR1 = Wide Receiver ranked 1-12 on KTC, WR2 = 13-24, WR3 = 25-36). All FLEXs and Bench players were dependent upon the league’s starting rosters. For example, a league that requires 3 starting WRs and 3 FLEX positions will have any WR ranked by KTC 1-36 classified as a WR-1-3, any WR ranked 37-72 would be deemed a WR FLEX, and any WR ranked 73+ would be categorized as a WR Bench for that particular league. Three of the nine dynasty leagues require 2 starting TEs, hence there being a distinction between TE2 and TE FLEX.
To no one’s surprise, the most commonly traded players in dynasty are WRs, followed by RBs. Of these positions, FLEXs were the most frequently dealt players. Interestingly enough, Bench QBs were the third most traded players. Elite WRs and QBs appear to be amongst the most rarely traded players in dynasty football.
The Unforgiving Market
Taking the above data a step further, the following section analyzes the change in market value from the day these players were traded to their present market value. Little did I know that this simple question of how a player’s value fluctuates would cut through my mind like a soft cheese and lead me to write this article. As noted above, I tracked each player’s positional numerical value and ranking at the time of the trade compared to their present value based on Keep, Trade, Cut. The value change of draft picks was not tracked given the well-known fact that draft picks do not lose value throughout their lifespan.
On average across all leagues, the combined value of the assets involved in a trade added up to 6,496.88 at the time of the transaction (equivalent of a late 1st + late 3rd), which in turn amounts to each manager giving up a mid 2nd worth of assets per trade. At the time of trade, these players on average ranked in the top 35.21 at their respective positions. These results were not surprising, but what came as a shock was the change in player values in less than a calendar year.
The average positional ranking of traded players had fallen 5.31 spots from 35.21 to a current ranking of 40.52. Of the average 74.66 players traded per league, 45.56 (61.02%) of them fell in the rankings at their respective positions, leaving only 29 (38.84%) players who retained or rose the ranks. Most eye-opening was how big of a loss these players had when you graded the league as a whole on their player trades. The total value differential from the time of trade to their current rankings for players added up to a cumulative (-383.11). This was the result of not only the majority of players being traded tumbling down the rankings but a lot of them free-falling as many as 30-40 spots at their positions.
Not a single position was invulnerable to value loss, but QBs and TEs as a whole were better insulated compared to RBs and WRs when observing their average change in rankings. It should be noted that when analyzing the various tiers within the positions, the RB Bench and TE FLEX were the only types of players spared a negative grade because of the massive ascension of outliers Kyren Williams and Trey McBride skewing the data. The WR Bench position nearly achieved this same feat off the back of Puka Nacua. Outside of these positions, QB1s, QB2s, WR1s, and WR3s were the safest players to trade for.
Just as intriguing as this player data are the managers pulling the strings on these transactions.
Bloody Pirates
On the open waters of your league, there roams a select few who control the vast majority of trade routes. But as capable as these captains may be, there is only one worthy of being called king of commerce. These high-volume traders took part in 44.10% of all trades, meaning they comprised 22.05% of all the managers involved in deals since each transaction in this sample was associated with two managers. When added together, these top-level negotiators comprised 122 of the 556 parties involved in trades, and on average shook hands with their leaguemates 13.56 times a season. When the scope of this data is expanded to include the top four negotiators, they encompass a 60.9% average of all managers involved in trades. On the flip side, the bottom-four volume traders constitute only 10.89% of managers involved in trades.
The final category of interest for this trading study pertains to timing.
What’s The Rush?!
The timing of trades was broken up into 17 periods during the calendar year associated with the most significant events of the NFL and Fantasy season. Based on the results, leagues do not typically register any trade activity until the beginning of March, when College Pro Days occur after the NFL Combine. It isn’t until mid-March, at the beginning of NFL Free-Agency, that the second largest cluster of trades transpires (avg. of 3.44 trades, 10.58% of all trades). There remains a steady pulse of trade activity throughout the Summer from the NFL Draft (7.02%), through Rookie Minicamp (5.32%), OTA’s (6.35%), and Mandatory Minicamp (7.39%). But by far the most popular time to trade is during the NFL/Fantasy regular season (before the Fantasy Trade Deadline/Fantasy Playoffs), accounting for a whopping 40.78% of all trades, with an average of 12.44 deals being completed.
In terms of buying and selling, I confirmed that the best time to buy veterans was during the off-season (the best time to sell was during the season), while the best time to acquire rookies was during the season (the worst time was during the off-season). I also discovered that even though rookie picks gain value over their lifetime, 2nd and 3rd round picks slightly dip in value for two weeks immediately preceding the start of the NFL season, so buy then! To close out this category, it should be noted that managers who traded for players during the off-season had a slightly higher chance of inheriting a player that would LOSE value (65.12%) compared to if they had waited to trade during the regular season (62.37%).
Key Takeaways For Trading:
Trading for FAAB remains the most underrated asset to trade for (only 0.36% of trades in the average league)
Managers won’t roll out of bed for players worth less than a 2nd. Need to get their juices flowing with top-35-ranked players
Elite QBs & WRs are worth their weight in value insulation
Load up on a few extra Bench QBs; they have a healthy trade market
If you can’t get a deal done with one of the top five traders in your league, chances of getting a deal done are low
The biggest takeaway from this article should be the 60%+ chance that any player you trade for could lose value, and depending on the type of player, it can amount to a significant loss. After last season, I vowed to leave the days of making significant off-season trades long behind. But after conducting this research, I’m taking it further by swearing off players throughout the off-season altogether. Better to load up on draft capital throughout the off-season and use those picks as ammo to trade for the players that separate themselves as real-difference makers when they make themselves known during the regular season.
Conclusion
They say we know much more about the surface of the moon than what lies at the bottom of our oceans. Similarly, our technical knowledge of fantasy football far exceeds our understanding of leaguemate behavior, which is a subject I wish to explore more in future articles. Having started this project in late August and analyzing each trade by hand, this is by far the most time-intensive project I’ve ever completed. As I embarked on this journey, I wasn’t sure what data I would find or if it would even translate into trade strategy. But after looking into these Trade Stats for each of my leagues, paired with The Lab’s capabilities to divulge portfolio data, I now have the most comprehensive Dossier I could ask for on my competitors. It is necessary to note that this data and perhaps some of these takeaways may not look the same for your league; I could only go off of what I had access to, so take this article with a grain of salt. I do not possess the technical prowess that many gifted analysts have, who can effortlessly harness far greater stores of data in the palm of their hand, so this article is nothing more than a free dive into this topic. But I hope that it will inspire others to dive deeper than I can into the trading abyss.
