It’s amazing how quickly one month passes. Just a couple of weeks ago, I’m preaching patience and today, I’m neck deep in trade talk. Not just with answering questions from all of you, but in my own leagues as well. You’ve heard me say it here – let your team marinate a little; give them a month and see who comes back down from the stratosphere and who rises from the fantasy doldrums. Well, that time has come and gone, your waiver wire has probably been picked clean and it’s time to start evaluating your roster and start exploring the trade market.

If you caught my last Kicking Rocks article, you know the level of frustration I feel sometimes when talking trade with people. It drives me nuts when league mates offer me players I have no need for and it makes me even crazier when I get an offer that insults my intelligence. How difficult is it to look at someone else’s roster, check their place in the standings for each of the categories and see if you have a player they may need? It’s not difficult at all. I’m first in the league in home runs by a decent margin, last in strikeouts. Hmmm. I have a surplus of offensive players and I need starting pitching. Let’s check the standings for someone leading the charge in strikeouts and struggling in home runs and RBI. That takes as much time to do as it did to read this article up to this point here.

And when you do make an offer, know the person with whom you are dealing. If the person is your league’s annual donator and chief buffoon, okay fine, you can push the envelope a little. Maybe they have a history of making dumb trades and no matter how much your other league mates bitch about it, that owner holds firm that it’s his/her team and they can trade however they like. But if you’re in a competitive league with owners who do their research and take this seriously, a bad offer is only going to piss them off. Not everyone subscribes to the “first offer is just the start of a negotiation” philosophy. If you’ve taken the time to evaluate both your and their rosters, you shouldn’t need to float a stupid offer to get the ball rolling. You can propose something a lot more balanced for both teams and see if there’s wiggle room on either side.

Remember, a bad trade reputation spreads a lot faster than a good one. A LOT faster. If you’re the owner who sits there and continuously offers your garbage for your opposition’s best players, everyone is going to hear about it. How many times have you sat there with a buddy of yours and complained about a fellow owner’s offers? Sometimes the complaints aren’t even intentional. All it takes is a passing comment from an owner or two before every offer you make is immediately dismissed as trash. Even if your offer is a reasonable one, it will be met with immediate skepticism and no matter how you try to negotiate it, your intentions will be questioned.

All of that aside, there are definitely some things you should take into account when evaluating teams and making offers around the league.

Now is the Time to Take Some Chances – While you may see a significant margin between you and the next tier of owners in a particular category, a bold move can vault you up the ladder in no time. Take a shot on some of these players who people are souring on. David Dahl owners just got word that he’ll be out for another couple of weeks. Check that price tag and prep for the future. The guy who owns Jonathan Lucroy is probably moments away from dropping him. He’s likely to accept pennies on the dollar because he knows he’s about to dump him and getting something for nothing has some appeal. I know several owners getting antsy with Carlos Correa, Carlos Gonzalez, Jake Arrieta and Rougned Odor. You may not see an immediate return, but you’re making plans for the future. If they turn their season around, you’ve made out like a bandit. If not, again, there’s still plenty of time to make adjustments.

High-Profile Players Coming Off the DL Still Have High Value – Name recognition can take you very far in the realm of trading, especially when it’s a high-profile player coming off the disabled list. Players like J.D. Martinez and Ian Desmond have strong value and if you time the deal right, you can get a strong return for a guy who has done nothing for you to date. You don’t know how Desmond will perform coming back. You can’t say for certain that he will be just as productive as everyone thought before the injury. But I mean…Colorado, amirite? A perennial 20-20 threat? He was being drafted in the third or fourth round in most 12-team leagues and someone in your league, without hesitation, still believes in him that strongly. Think back to Draft Day when you drafted him. Who was the first person to complain that you sniped them on Desmond? Find that guy and float an offer.

No Player is Untradeable – Yes, I know…blasphemy! Everyone falls in love with their big studs and everyone wants to build around them. But if someone is offering you a clear-cut upgrade for your team and it comes at the expense of owning Manny Machado, then so be it. Your team may have other needs that Machado can’t fill, so if you have to take a slight downgrade in power in order to boost yourself elsewhere, why not do a two-for-one that helps you out? I had a guy who was offered Kyle Seager and Kenley Jansen for Machado and he didn’t want to do it because he drafted Machado in the first round. No, Seager isn’t performing well right now, but moving forward, how much more power production are you going to get from Machado than from Seager? 10 home runs at the most? You can make that up with some savvy waiver moves, but where are you going to get that kind of a boost in saves? The deal makes sense and for the right price, you should be willing to move anyone on your roster.

Don’t Be Afraid to Trade with the First Place Team – While you aren’t seeing the same swings in the standings you saw two weeks ago, there is still plenty of time to move up and down. People often dismiss even making offers to the team in first because they don’t want to improve an already dominant squad, but how closely did you even look at their roster? Maybe they’re overloading with guys who got off to a hot start. Maybe they feel like they’re strong enough offensively to deal away some of their more underperforming hitters to acquire a closer or a starting pitcher. Owners who are in first place right now are riding high and fall in love with, not just their players, but themselves for making such savvy draft picks, and they’ll be quicker to sell off either some of their underperformers or potential breakouts they may not have as much faith in and are willing to part with for less than face value. Cater to their ego and you could be passing them in the standings in a month or two.

I’m sure there will be plenty of other thoughts down the road, but the important thing for you right now is to make sure you are viewing your team objectively and understand that winning a championship is business. You do what it takes to make your team better, whether it’s a gradual step forward or a bold move. So much can happen in a very short span of time, so if you’re not continuously evaluating your players and overall roster, you’re doing it wrong.