Trade Etiquette Question

[Howie]

Let's say that you have a struggling/crappy player (Andruw Jones or Corey Patterson for example) that you are for sure going to drop. However, before you drop him, you send out a some trades to a few owners in your league just so you can try to salvage some value out of your player. These aren't terrible deals, they are like Jones for Corpas or Jones for Lidge, for example.

However, once all of your proposed deals are rejected, you end up dropping your player anyways. So now everyone in the league knows that you just proposed them a trade with a player that you were going to drop anyways once your trade was rejected.

How would you feel if that happened to you? Is this breaking trade etiquette?

[Field]

I don't see any problem with it. I would just reject it and move on. People really get offended wayyyyy to easily in both fantasy and in real life.

[Old_Style]

I don't see a problem here.
I think I'd be more offended if a manager picks up a couple free agents and than directly afterward, tries to push them off on my for one of my superstar players.

[Crippler]

Who cares?

Seriously...

[phatty]

i don't believe in trade etiquette. i lowball like crazy haha. that's just my style. othe rmanagers usually get offended but eh... whatevers. i think its part of the fun when you get a really insulting offer and then counter with something equally or more iinsulting

[Grounded Polo]

I look forward to mid-May. It's almost impossible to really trade guys unless they were already nice in '07.

[noseeum]

i don't believe in trade etiquette. i lowball like crazy haha. that's just my style. othe rmanagers usually get offended but eh... whatevers. i think its part of the fun when you get a really insulting offer and then counter with something equally or more iinsulting

I just did that a few weeks ago. Someone offered me Kerry Wood for Aaron Harang, so I offered him Khalil Greene for Matt Holliday.

[Russell James]

i don't believe in trade etiquette. i lowball like crazy haha. that's just my style. othe rmanagers usually get offended but eh... whatevers. i think its part of the fun when you get a really insulting offer and then counter with something equally or more iinsulting

Lowballers annoy me. Offend is too harsh a word, but they do annoy me. The first couple times it will result in a quick veto, but if it continues I will take the liberty to start posting your trades and insulting you. This only happens when I am actively shopping a guy and fielding offers for him and some idiot lowballer sends me his middle reliever for Prince Fielder. There is a couple guys in leagues that I won't even try to trade with because they lowball me in a counter offer.

As far as the first statement. There is nothing wrong with that, however I know of a few guys that have been blacklisted because of that strategy. One guy in particular always does that in a league so when he sends out a trade everyone rejects it and waits for him to drop the player. Usually it doesn't matter that much though.

Something that I have never been a fan of is the idiot who believes they are sweetening the deal by adding more players. This week I received an offer for Johan Santana and the opposing player tried to sweeten the pot by giving me: Scutaro, Guzman, Gathright and Rowand for Fielder. Wow! 4 guys for 1? Are you serious? Of course that means I have to drop 3 other players to fit those deadbeats on my roster, but what a sweet deal.

Trading to me is quite a bit like poker. I don't like to tip my hand too early because I want to pay as little as possible. Usually the average trade that is accepted for me has went through 3 counter offers.

[mak1277]

Offensive or not, you are not doing your job if you don't attempt to trade someone that you're considering dropping. Now, I am not advocating sending out unsolicited offers to every other owner, but if a guy you're going to release has value to someone, you should try and get that value out.

Real MLB teams do this all the time. If they are going to drop a guy without options, for example, they'll see what they can get in trade beforehand, even if everyone in the world knows the guy's going to be free soon enough (ex. when the Braves traded Tyler Yates to the Pirates earlier this year).

[hot4tx]

If you do it every time you're dropping someone to every player, then yeh that sucks. But it happens. How do they know that you weren't really going to drop him but when player X hit 2 more HRs or you became more confident with young pitcher Y, you changed your mind.

No biggie.