Time to Be Careful With Trades

Photo courtesy of Dinur Blum.

The Biogenesis scandal just will not go away this year. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about them this year and now, T.J. Quinn and Mike Fish of ESPN are reporting that MLB will look to suspend as many as 20 players after the All-Star Break.

The only names listed in the report are Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez. Now, A-Rod has no fantasy value anymore. But while Braun has been disappointing this year and has been injured, he still carries a lot of fantasy relevance. Remember, he’s an all-category contributor on par with Mike Trout, which is why we ranked him No. 1 at the beginning of the year. Most sites did that. So, he carries a great deal of fantasy relevance.

From a fantasy point of view, it’s pretty natural to wonder what we should do with these players. My advice right now is to sit on your hands, because there are a few scenarios that will leave owners incredibly frustrated.

• Scenario 1: You make a trade for a player like Braun, and he ends up suspended for 50 or possibly 100 games
  

It’s pretty obvious why you wouldn’t want to do this. If you’re acquiring a player like Braun, even in a down year, you’re probably unloading a lot of talent yourself. Anyone smart enough to have Braun on his roster wouldn’t trade him for a couple of mid-level starting pitchers and a one-dimensional hitter, right?

The bottom line is that unless you’re involved in the investigation, you don’t know what kind of evidence MLB has. You also don’t know how many people are talking. If it’s just Tony Bosch, you probably don’t have much to worry about. If you’re talking about several people, baseball would then have some pretty firm ground to stand on.

The other problem is that again, Braun and A-Rod are the only names listed. We don’t know who the other players are. We can probably assume that Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon would be at risk, but do we know that their involvement goes beyond what they’ve already been suspended for?

The point is that there are a lot of unknowns here. So, if you have even a doubt about how clean a player is, this is not the week to trade for him, especially if it’s a high profile guy.

• Scenario 2: You trade a player like Braun, and he ends up not being suspended

Do you remember at the beginning of this, when Robinson Cano was mentioned as a player in danger of a suspension? Well, he was, but according to John Harper of the New York Daily News, he’s now in no danger of being suspended. Even good reports have bad information, and things change incredibly fast.

Maybe it will come out that MLB isn’t looking to make any suspensions from this any time soon. More likely to me is that they’ll try to do something but the MLBPA will fight like crazy to keep any suspension from happening if no positive tests have occurred. Remember, steroids were in baseball going at least as far back as the mid-late 1980’s. They were used in other sports for decades, and testing and punishments were implemented. Ben Johnson was stripped of an Olympic Gold Medal in 1988. Still, MLB didn’t have any real form of testing and punishment in place until 2005. Even then, it took a year for the penalties to become stiff.

The moral of that story is that baseball has an incredibly strong union, and they always have. It’s why players have guaranteed contracts. It’s why MLB is the only American sports league without any kind of a salary cap.

So, if you think they’d let their players get suspended for 50 (or 100 games) without a positive test, you’re crazy. This would become a drawn out battle.

From a fantasy point of view, how stupid would you be to run out and trade a star player like Ryan Braun for below what he’s worth thinking he’ll be suspended, only to see him stay active and be one of the best players in the league for the rest of the year?

• What should you, the fantasy owner, do?
  

Sit tight! Let some of this stuff play out. Again, if you have a player who you have a thought might be one of the 20 or so suspended, don’t trade for him, and don’t trade him. Information changes fast, and suspensions don’t come easily.

Now, if it’s a fairly inconsequential trade, there’s no reason to really worry. But if it’s a big deal where you’re pulling in/giving up an elite player, stay patient. This is a process that needs to play out.