Because of our changes to the structure of Fantasy Juice,

I will be reposting my some of my former entries so that they are accessible in the new format. This is both for your enjoyment and so I do not have to re-explain myself every time that I post about The Season.

Here is a reposting of Entry Three, with the other entries to follow.

Turning Two – Entry Three: My 2007 Season Part 2: My Trades and Moves Last Season

This is the second part of my recap of my 2007 season in my head-to-head 6x6 (OBP and holds) dynasty league. You can go to Part One to learn more about what the league is about and to see my beginning and ending rosters.

I will now talk about how I came to my final roster and my reasons for why I made the moves I made.

Again, you can see that there was very high turnover as I made 126 moves and only ended up with 6 of the same players that I started with (one was on the DL the whole year and one I had dropped early and didn’t pick up until August).

I do not remember all of my roster moves, and Yahoo no longer allows me to view them, but I do remember most notable moves I did or did not make.

Before the season started I traded 1B/2B Jeff Kent for SP Curt Schilling to try to bolster my pitching staff. At the time I felt that I needed pitching help and felt pretty confident in my 1B and 2B players.

I wish I had kept Kent, who had a solid (if unspectacular) year, and would have been an excellent replacement for Barfield (he sucks), while Schilling spent the majority on the DL or struggling to keep the ball in the park.

I shuffled 2B and SS constantly throughout the spring, picking up (and dropping) Kahlil Greene, Dustin Pedroia (d’oh), Kelly Johnson, Kazuo Matsui, and others. I passed up on Troy Tulowitzki, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake (understatement) in which rookie SS to have on my roster (I went with Stephen Drew…go me!).

I ended up with Chone Figgins at 2B and the capable Ryan Theirot at shortstop, which was definitely an upgrade from the Barfield/Drew fiasco. Dropping Adrian Beltre also hurt me as he turned in a decent season and would have helped before I picked up Aramis Ramirez.

I made three big trades in the 2nd part of the season, as well as turning down a big trade for Magglio Ordonez (who would have thought he could keep up that pace?!).

The first trade, made in June, happened to be my biggest and best of the year. I was trying to make a trade (I cannot find who the players involved were) and the other manager countered to give me Erik Bedard and Torii Hunter for Kelly Johnson and Roy Halladay.

Naturally, I jumped at this offer and prayed he'd go through with it.

He waited a couple days to decide if he did indeed want to make that trade, and I assumed he would back out but finally said ok I immediately upgraded in strikeouts (Bedard went on his tear shortly after) and in having a solid outfielder in Hunter (even though he regressed a bit from his excellent start).

In August before the trade deadline ended, I spent several days in talks with the same owner from the Bedard trade. He was looking for help for his team in the playoffs, while my team was a very long shot to make the final seed, so I was looking for young talent to bolster my roster for next year.

Another manager who was looking for playoff help caught wind of our talks and made me an offer I felt that I couldn’t refuse:

He gave up 3B Aramis Ramirez and rookie SP Jeremy Guthrie for Daisuke Matsuzaka and Josh Willingham.

This trade might have been a bit controversial because it appears to give a nice edge to the other manager in that I was essentially giving up two good players for one very good player and one unproven player but I liked it for several reasons.

The first is that my outfield was overloaded at the time, with Willingham, Hunter and Jason Bay, as well as the two hot bats of Josh Fields and Chris Duncan. My infield was still a weak point, with Kaz Matsui at 2B, Theirot at SS, and Fields at 3B.

I wanted to get another solid power hitter in the infield and by getting Ramirez I was able to move Fields to an OF spot and keep Duncan (or Andy LaRoche) at my other Utility spot. This gave me another top bat to my line-up.

Admittedly, Ramirez did not have his best year in terms of power but he was no slouch and put up good overall numbers. He also gave me solidity for the future in an area that I had struggled in all year.

I gave up my second best pitcher for an unproven Guthrie but that did not concern me as much because I was confident in my ability to find capable pitchers on the waiver wire.

I feel that it is much easier to find pitching help than hitting help and my team was very unbalanced in terms of pitching strength vs hitting strength. I was generally winning between 4-2 and 6-0 in pitching and losing 2-4 to 0-6 in hitting, which made it almost impossible to go anything above .500.

I also still had Bedard, rookie Lincecum, and John Maine for strikeouts and was able to rotate other pitchers to get me the results I needed.

I made one more big trade before the deadline. My hitters were improving but I still had no speed and felt I needed one more solid bat to let me compete in the hitting categories.

I was good on saves because I was able to pick up new closers throughout the year and I felt that Mets pitcher John Maine was due for a drop off (he did) and my friend Dave was in the opposite position as me in that he had too many good bats and no pitching help.

The trade we made was that I would give up John Maine and closer Todd Jones for the speedy Chone Figgins, who was eligible at second base, third base, and outfield.

At the end of the season I was pretty happy with my progress. Until the final week of the season, I was in a three team race for the final playoff spot. I only missed it by 3.5 wins and finished with a winning record from Weeks 7-22 (92 wins and 90 losses).

Unfortunately, I still do not think that this team is ready to make a run at the title, so I will be redrafting March 16, along with three other teams, which I will be writing about in my next entry.

Ryan Luby