When negotiating a trade **EDIT** AND THE TRADE WAS...

[A Fleshner Fantasy]

You can do one of a couple things:

1) Do the same thing that he just did
2) Cancel the trade offer and basically make him come to you begging for the deal again

[AllDay]

Pull it off the table and offer less. You gotta mess with the guy a little IMO.

[BALCO All-Stars]

Another post for pulling it back. The other owner has the right to post the message, but then I'd pull the offer back and e-mail the owner that I'm still interested, but that I'm going to send out offers to other teams while he's waiting to see if he can get a better offer from someone else. This situation happened in one of my keeper leagues this year...i worked out a deal via IM to either send my Chipper for his Figgins or my Maggs for his Ichiro (I really needed steals), then when I sent the offers, he let them sit out there for a few days and he wouldn't return e-mails or respond to the offers. So i went out and traded McGowan/Yunel for Weeks and Loney/Casilla for Pierre to shore up my SB while he was thinking about it. Then the original team came back and said that he was ready to trade Figgins for Chipper and I told him that he was too late because I didn't need SB anymore and that he was nuts since Figgins is on the DL.

Bottom line: If the other owner is trying to up the offer, pull your back and shop those same players around.

[AussieDodger]

What he is doing is acceptable, but not very friendly.
I would definitely shop your guys around, if you are shopping similar guys it will drive down the "market value" of his.
Make sure you do it in the same way that he is to get up his nose

[deutschland]

In the general this would piss me off, however, how you react depends on your standing within the league and how bad you want the trade to happen. My gut tells me to get back at the guy and "punish" him by pulling the offer or sending him a nasty email but over time I have learned that this probably isn't the most productive approach if you really want to make a trade happen. In my main league I'm kind of seen as the villain because of my past success so I realize that I usually have to give a little more in trades and be willing to deal with crap like this. Whatever you decide to do, take a couple of deep breaths before reacting and make sure you're not just letting your pride get in the way. Then do what you think will help your team in the best way.

[RocketsDWM]

If you are in a Yahoo league, you could use the trade block feature and put some of your players (perhaps the one in the proposed deal you sent him) on that block. Or you could make the trade public (which would jeopardize it) and tell him that you might not be interested anymore after receiving some offers for your player (perhaps a day or two after putting them on the block). Personally, I would let the trade sit and hope he accepts it.

What is the trade by the way?

[raiders_umpire]

One owner in this league pulls this crap like this all of the time.

Last week, I desperately needed a shortstop(he has 3 backups to Hanley, which is ridiculous) and his pitching is so bad that his 3,4,5 starters are Owings, A. Miller and Bannister, so I offered him Garza for Guzman, which is definitely in his favor and fills needs. Anyway, he said he'll do it, but he wanted to field other offers. So basically I told him to either accept it within the next couple of hours or I'm retracting it. He didn't, so I retracted. He sent me the trade proposal the following day, I declined it and told him off. I picked Greene up and moved on. He's done that to me and other owners in the past, so that's why I had a short leash.

If you really need to do the trade, then I'd leave it up, but if it's just a move that you could make either with other owners or on the FA market, just go that route. There's no need to deal with people like that.

[OneLoveBoomer]

From a game theory perspective you should pull the offer if faced with this kind of tactic.

You'd only have to do it once, because he'd learn his lesson and would not pull the same trick next time. You're also demonstrating to everyone in the league not to pull the tactic.

[mak1277]

So does nobody else do this sort of thing when having trade discussions?

I do this all the time (although I don't tell people I'm doing it). If I get a trade offer, I am almost always going to do some leg work to find out if my players could get more from another owner. I think if you don't do that, you're selling yourself short, big time.

What about the other angle....hasn't everyone seen a trade between two other owners and though, "Man, I'd have given that guy more for Player X if only he'd asked me about it."

The worst move, in my mind, is to only discuss a particular player with one other guy.

[OneLoveBoomer]

So does nobody else do this sort of thing when having trade discussions?

I do this all the time (although I don't tell people I'm doing it). If I get a trade offer, I am almost always going to do some leg work to find out if my players could get more from another owner. I think if you don't do that, you're selling yourself short, big time.

What about the other angle....hasn't everyone seen a trade between two other owners and though, "Man, I'd have given that guy more for Player X if only he'd asked me about it."

The worst move, in my mind, is to only discuss a particular player with one other guy.

I think the public posting is the key -- I also all the time will well someone "okay, sounds pretty good. let me discuss my player with a couple other owners before I confirm the deal for sure" -- but I don't tell the guy the deal sounds good then just post it for public leverage or something. that's a bit much.