If you’re a hardcore fantasy player, there’s simply nothing like a dynasty league. No longer can the consequences of a bad fantasy decision be confined to a few months. Instead, one wrong move can set your team back several seasons.
Valuing players in a dynasty league is a difficult exercise. If you’ve played in the format for awhile, you know that some managers put an incredibly high value on young prospects, dreaming of a contending team for years to come. Others build for the near future, not willing to mortgage their present for a shot down the road that may or may not work out.
Personally, when valuing players in this format, I’ve always advocated somewhere in between. Performance over the next two or three seasons (2018-2020) needs to be given significant weight, as it’s not only the most projectable but also to ensure that you’re not depleting your team just for the uncertain chance at success far in the future. But projected performance four seasons out (2021) and beyond can’t be ignored, as the long-term health of your franchise is the overriding goal. For me, it’s roughly a sliding scale, where around 65% of a player’s value comes from his projected performance from 2018 through 2020, with slightly less weight given to projected performance in each of the three years in succession. The remaining 35% comes from projected performance beginning in the 2021 season and beyond.
In addition, unlike redraft leagues, if you’re in a dynasty league, there is no real offseason. You’re always doing what you can to improve your team for both the short- and long-term, regardless of whether games are being played.
To that end, below you’ll find our inaugural dynasty fantasy baseball trade chart. We’ve been running these charts all NFL season (and did so for redraft rotisserie leagues in baseball last season), so chances are you know how they work. But if this is your first time checking these out, it’s pretty simple – you’re merely adding up the values on each side of the trade to see which side wins. Easy-peasy.
We’ll be updating the chart periodically throughout the offseason to make sure we’re accounting for all relevant developments. But not to worry – we’ll make sure to note any changes in value and discuss them if they’re significant.
Before diving in, let’s establish some ground rules. First, obviously your league size and format may impact these values, so you certainly don’t need to be married to them – these are essentially values assuming everyone has the same contract/cost associated with keeping them. Second, I’m limiting this to the top-200. Anyone not listed you can assume has a value of two or less.
Finally, as I said, rarely do values diverge moreso than in a dynasty league. These won’t match up with exactly with the FantasyPros expert consensus dynasty rankings when they’re published because they’re based on how I personally believe you should value players in a dynasty format. Now, just because I’ve been doing almost all of our trade charts in football and baseball for the past year, and at least one reader emailed me to let me know they were “not terrible,” that does not mean you ought to blindly follow the values listed below.
Like anything else you read from any fantasy site/analyst, this is merely a recommended way of analyzing players. I hope that you too find it “not terrible,” and encourage you to reach out any time you want to have a little back and forth.
Enough chatter. Let’s make some trades.
Dan Harris is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Dan, check out his archive or follow him on Twitter at @danharris80.
