Part II - Trades

Milton - “What were my words to you? Maybe it was your time to lose. You didn't think so.”

Kevin - “Lose? I don't lose! I win! I win! I'm a lawyer! That's my job, that's what I do!”

Milton - “I rest my case. Vanity is definitely my favorite sin. Kevin, it's so basic, self-love; the all-natural opiate. You know, it's not that you didn't care for Mary Ann, Kevin. It's just that you were a little bit more involved with someone else: yourself.”

John Milton - The Devil's Advocate

Free Will, It Is A Bitch

“T-Rock sent me another trade request late last night,” Kevin began.

“Was he drunk?” Milton asked.

“With his team shitting the bed, probably.”

“T-Rock’s got himself in trouble again,” Milton said. “And he wants me to save his playoff hopes. Only this time, I can't.”

“T-Rock, T-Rock,” Milton continued. “I nursed him through Twitter scandals, a Wild Turkey rehab, and failed investments into meme coin. God's special creature? I've warned him, Kevin. Like a fat guy at a buffet, he can’t help himself.”

“Take a good look because he's the poster child for the next generation of fantasy players. These people, it's no mystery why they act like this. You sharpen their appetite for rookies to the point where they can split atoms with their hype. You bombard them with analytics until their egos are the size of stadiums. You hold their hand through every trade and roster crisis. You grease their brains with gold-plated content until even the dullest dynasty players become aspiring GMs. Becomes his own god!”

“But as they’re scrambling from one deal to the next, who's got their eye on the roster? The IR is at capacity, the roster is ancient, and the breakouts never come. It’s buy draft picks, sell draft picks, but you have nothing to sell or buy with! We got a billion T-Rocks all at the dinner table, ready to order their pristine prospects to pair with their elite constructions, trying to buy a title run. Then the dinner bill comes. Championships were never on the menu. You have to pay up, Rock. You can’t orphan your team now. You're screaming in the Discord for someone to help. But guess what? There's no one there! You're all alone, Rock. You're God's special little creature.”

Deal With The Devil

We’ve all seen it before. One minute your team is sweeping across the league like a tidal wave. The next minute, you’re down by 20 points with only Rico Dowdle left to play. Then it hits you “I’m fucked.” All of that hard work and success over the last four months has turned to shit, ready to be flushed. Panic creeps up your spine and you remember Switch’s last words from the Matrix, “Not like this. Not like this.”

Refusing to accept the Fates, you frantically place some of your best players OUT with injury on the Trade Block. With only one person responding, you desperately trade away your picks and players, praying for a miracle. Instead, things end badly for you. Game Over.

This reoccurring nightmare is all too common in the fantasy playoffs. Having already examined Seeding and Scoring in Part I of this series, Playoff Odds & Strategy, we now shift our focus to Part II - Playoff Trading.

Playoff Trades

The data for this research comes from 25 seasons of dynasty playoffs, including 12 playoffs from Lineup leagues and 13 from Best Ball leagues. Every league has 12 teams, and 4/12 Lineup seasons come from a one-QB league.

I limited my sample of trades to the teams that were ALIVE in the playoffs and had money to play for (a Top 2-3 finish, depending on league payouts). If a team was eliminated during the playoffs or the parties with no monetary stakes to play for, I did not include the trade in my sample.

The trades in my sample were limited to two windows: If the league had a Trade Deadline, I only included the Week Before and the Week Of the deadline (two weeks). If the league had No Deadline, I began my sample the week before the dynasty playoffs (Wk. 14) and included all trades throughout the playoffs for all ALIVE teams.

I considered several factors when evaluating trades:

The points scored by the newly acquired players
The points scored by the players the manager traded away
What impact, if any, did the trade make on the outcome of the playoff matchup

There were a total of 56 trades that I analyzed amongst the Seeding sample:

1st Seed - 12 trades

2nd Seed - 12 trades

3rd Seed - 8 trades

4th Seed - 8 trades

5th Seed - 7 trades

6th Seed - 9 trades

52 trades in the Points Sample (Only teams that made the playoffs have their trades included in this sample, and the top-scoring teams did not always make the playoffs):

1st Points For - 11 trades

2nd Points For - 9 trades

3rd Points For - 10 trades

4th Points For - 7 trades

5th Points For - 7 trades

6th Points For - 8 trades

Main Takeaways

Of the 56 trades, 46 trades had zero impact on the outcome of the playoffs (82.14%)

Of these 46 trades, the most common patterns include:

In 8 of these trades, the managers would have won regardless of the trade. The other 38 trades did no favors for their managers
In 10 of these trades, most of the players they traded for either didn’t make their lineup at all in Best Ball leagues or completely shit the bed in Lineup leagues
8 of these trades were for the future (the player was either hurt or not playing at all)
2 of these trades were only for depth purposes (the players didn’t even start)
In 1 of these trades, the manager would have scored more with their original players but luckily still won despite their trade

In 2 instances, I deemed the trade as a 50/50 deal

In one instance, the manager lost by ½ a pt, where 3/5 players they traded for didn’t even make the lineup in a Best Ball league. Brutal.
In the other instance, the manager would have scored more points and made it to the Final if they hadn’t done the trade in Week 16, but they needed the trade if they wanted to win the Final. Hard to fault them for that.

Finally, 8 trades did have a major impact on Winnings/Championship (14.29%).

In 4 cases, the manager needed the trade to get through Round 1/2 of the Playoffs and into the Championship where they could win money, but ultimately still lost.
In 2 brutal instances, the manager would have won the Championship with the original starting players they traded away.
In only 2 cases (3.58%) a trade had a direct impact on securing a Title!

In the first case, the previously mentioned manager who lost by ½ a point lost to the eventual Champion. Their trade for K. Allen & C. Rush came absolutely clutch in Week 16 of the 2024 playoffs.
The second case is perhaps the most impressive. This manager right before the Final executed 5 trades. He traded away:
25 1st, 26 2nd, J. Hurts, AJ Brown, 27 3rd, 25 4th, R. Dowdle, 26 1st, 25 2nd, 27 2nd, J. Bobo, and J. Brooks
FOR
G. Kittle, B. Nix, P. Nacua, Z. Ertz, O. Zaccheaus, 25 5th, M. Evans, D. Henry, A. Abdullah, and I. Likely

The Result:

An astounding 8/9 players he traded for made his lineup, scoring 154.4 more points than the original players he traded away/players on his bench that would have otherwise made his lineup
The manager won the championship by 97.56 points and scored the highest total in league history
That manager was me

Sheep Amidst The Wolves

Losing in the playoffs can be heartbreaking, but losing after trading away your future can be devastating. This research is far from Gospel - I am limited to a data sample that only includes my leagues. But even if you had access to every league on Sleeper, it would be impossible to assess the effectiveness of trades on such a scale. If there is only a few major things you took away from this article, it should be these:

The odds of a playoff trade helping you secure a Championship are extremely slim.

If you making a trade, wait until the Final and be sure your newly acquired assets have value going into next season if you lose.

Trust in the team that got you this far without meddling with it too much.

With so many playoff matches ending in double-digit wins/losses, changing the outcome through a trade is nearly impossible. With a flash of fire and smoke, your leaguemates manifest themselves as demons with pitchforks and contracts, waiting to strike a lopsided deal at your most vulnerable moment. Some may be tempted to make a Faustian bargain at the expense of their soul, but these deals usually end very badly. Accept the cards you're dealt if you're destined to lose. Save your picks for where they matter most and draft the next Jayden Daniels, Malik Nabers, or other godsent rookies at the most affordable price they’ll ever be - The Rookie Draft.

The Dossier

Image created by DK