I'll put this one through on Wednesday, so the players will be available to their new teams for Thursday.
I agree with JL 100% (for a change) about comparing their point totals, BTW.
I've said this any number of times before, but I'll say it again:
The only way to examine whether or not you think a trade will be good for you or not is to compare what your team looks like "before and after".
In other words - and I'm just making up numbers here; I'm not attemting to evaluate this trade - if Smoltz averages 10.0 FPPG and has 16 starts left, and JL uses Smoltz to replace a guy who has 16 starts left and only averages 7.0 FPPG, he can expect to gain 48 points.
With the season half gone, if he expects Rodriguez to score 50 points the rset of the way, and he has to replace him with a guy who hw figures will score only 30, he can expect to lose 20 points on that end of the transaction.
So his net gain for the whole trade is +28 points.
Of course these are estimates and judgements that you have to make, but that's what trading is all about. If it were an exact science and the future performance of the players was predictable with certainty, it would be a different story.
That's why I thought the Carpenter for A Rod trade was good one for JL.
I thought he would gain far more points by using Carpenter to replace whoever he replaced than he would lose by replacing A Rod with Blalock.
And I thought that JG would lose more points by replacing Carpenter with whoever he did than he would gain by replacing A Rod with Blalock.
