Throughout the season, I’ve been getting a lot of trade offers thrown my way, particularly in my Yahoo! Winners league. In the case of that league, one team in particular has been sending me trade proposals virtually every week. In almost all of these offers, he offers me three of his players for one of mine. The player he asks for is either Jake Peavy or Jonathan Papelbon. Needless to say, I paid a lot for both of those guys during the draft, picking them, along with Brandon Webb, to form the cornerstone of my pitching staff by the end of the fifth round. This other manager, clearly unsatisfied with the current state of his pitching staff, keeps trying in desperation to hit one out of the park in the trade department, by landing either the highest-ranked closer entering the season, or one of the best ace pitchers in the game. Fat chance.

It’s hard enough to find an all-star caliber pitcher that you can leave in the active roster everyday, regardless of real-life opponent, stadium, lineup, and statistical splits, while knowing he may single-handedly carry you in the pitching department when your marginal pitchers, like Oliver Perez and Bronson Arroyo, falter or implode. When you get them, and they stay fairly injury-free, you feel a sense of security that helps neutralize the risks you take on the other parts of your roster. I’m reminded of a rotisserie baseball-themed episode of the old HBO show “Arli$$,” when one persistent manager finally wore down another by offering a hot-hitting Pete Incaviglia (yeah, remember him?) to acquire a star pitcher. In the words of Arliss Michaels, who was wielding a bat and threatening to beat down his team’s co-owner for the deal, “you never trade an ace.”

Although I don’t fully agree with that logic, especially considering how often pitchers get shut down with various injuries, I do have the sentiment that they’re worth a lot, and they demand more than a sampling of third-rate players. The owner continuously after my best pitchers typically offers me a package of starters, usually along the lines of Jose Contreras, Jered Weaver, and Armando Galarraga, for Peavy, or might replace one or two of them with Kevin Gregg and/or CJ Wilson when asking for Papelbon instead. Keep in mind, this is not a keeper league, there are innings/games limits, and the roster holds only a certain amount of players. So when a manager like this tries to dump his entire back end of the rotation in my lap, I’m essentially left with deciding if I have junk to drop to waivers, or if what he’s giving me is the junk that ends up on waivers. Either way, I’m really just comparing the merits of a one-for-one deal (like Contreras or Weaver for Peavy), and go from there. Not only would I lose my ace, but my marginal starters are not being improved upon, so I have no reason to accept the trade. Soon after, I see one or two components of the same basic offer end up dropped to waivers, and it’s clear the other manager knew he was offering garbage, and he somehow thought Peavy or Papelbon were attainable with what would become waiver wire inhabitants.

I don’t have a problem with one team offering me one more or one less player than the number requested on my end, but when you start approaching three-for-one, four-for-one, or higher, the likelihood is that the package is not going to really help the team getting quantity, because the talent offered could simply be on the level of players easily found on the free agent list, for free. I can find a .500 pitcher like Weaver, or an aging veteran like Contreras, for nothing, by searching the free agent list. So why would I give up a top pitcher to water down my rotation, or give up a top slugger to water down my offense?

I try to be respectful to my fellow managers, and I am always willing to listen to any offer, and create an appropriate counter offer to see if something clicks. I still continue to respond to owners like this, yet even when I express an interest in players like Aramis Ramirez and Jose Reyes to improve my weaknesses, they go back to their fourth outfielder or fourth starter to get my premier talents. For some fantasy players who have roster space or are planning for rebuilding years, they may let a big player go for three or four players on the cusp. All too often, though, fantasy owners forget to consider the potential needs of the trading partner; all they care about is what they want to take away from the deal, and they think you’ll take their fringe players. Keep this in mind during your trade negotiations, as you’ve got to give something to get something, and Mark Ellis doesn’t qualify as “something” when you have your eye on Manny Ramirez.