Wow, Week 3 of the NFL season is already here. Football season always seems to move quickly once it starts, and fortunately, The Machine rebuild is moving quickly too.
Last week I showed the rebuilt Waiver Analysis and Waiver Recommendations pages. This week, four more important pages are taking shape: Trade Analysis, Trade Finder, Trade Judge and Drop Recommendations. As with the previous updates, these are the actual pages customers will eventually use, but they are still running with sample data. The calculations and live league connections behind them will come later.
Trade Analysis: Is This Deal Good for Me?
Most fantasy owners have looked at a proposed trade and wondered whether they are really improving their team. The Machine takes a broader view than simply comparing the projected fantasy points of the players involved. On the Trade Analysis page, you select the players moving in each direction and The Machine evaluates how the trade changes the championship probability for both teams.
Looking at both teams matters. A trade that dramatically improves your team while badly hurting the other team probably isn't a great offer because the other owner is unlikely to accept it. The Machine helps you look for trades that improve your team while still making sense from the other owner's point of view.
Trade Finder: Let The Machine Find the Deal
Trade Analysis helps when you already have a trade in mind. Trade Finder works in the opposite direction. You tell The Machine which players you are willing to trade, what positions you want to improve, which teams you are willing to deal with, and how large a trade you want to consider. The Machine then searches the possibilities and returns the trades it believes can improve your championship chances.
Again, the results consider both sides of the deal. Finding a mathematically great trade isn't very useful if the other owner would never agree to it. This was one of my favorite ideas behind the original Machine: rather than forcing you to manually examine every roster in the league looking for a possible trade partner, let the computer do the searching for you.
Trade Judge: Should the League Allow the Trade?
Trade Judge tackles one of the most contentious problems in fantasy football: deciding whether a disputed trade should be allowed.
A fair trade does not have to benefit both teams equally. Owners value players differently, use different projections and have different needs. The important question is whether there is a reasonable case that both teams can benefit from the deal. If there is, the owners should generally be free to make the trade. The concern comes when a trade clearly helps one team while making the other team worse. That can be a sign of a severely lopsided deal or possible collusion.
Many leagues already have rules for handling disputed trades, but the process can be slow and frustrating. A trade may be appealed and put to a league vote, but late in the season many owners who are already out of contention may not care enough to participate. Sometimes there are not even enough interested owners to overturn a questionable trade before it goes through.
And somehow, no matter what the league rules say, the commissioner usually gets blamed anyway. I know — I'm a commissioner. Trade Judge was designed to provide an objective analysis that can help settle those disputes. It evaluates the trade using multiple independent projection sources and looks at whether each side has a reasonable path to benefit. If different credible projection sets see the trade differently, that itself is evidence that reasonable owners can disagree.
Drop Recommendations: Who Makes the Cut?
This one is personal for me. I like to stockpile draft picks in my dynasty league, which means every year I eventually face one of my least favorite decisions: who do I cut before the rookie draft?
When you have a deep roster, that can be surprisingly difficult. You may have several players you still like, but you need roster spots before you can use those draft picks. I genuinely miss this feature of The Machine.
The Drop Recommendations page ranks the players on your roster based on what losing each player would cost your championship chances. You can also protect players you don't want considered for a cut and set minimum roster requirements by position.
What makes this different from an ordinary waiver decision is that you aren't dropping one known player for another known player. You are giving up a player now to create room for someone you haven't drafted yet. That is exactly the kind of decision where I want as much information as I can get.
What Comes Next
The next group of pages on the rebuild list is the Draft section, which includes five screens: Your Draft, Mock Draft, Simulated Draft, Auction Table and Auction Draft. These pages cover the major ways fantasy owners prepare for and participate in drafts. Your Draft will provide live draft recommendations during a real draft. Simulated Draft will help users test different draft paths and see how their choices affect the rest of the draft.
Mock Draft is a little different. It is a free product that lets you take The Machine into live mock drafts, giving you a chance to get familiar with its recommendations and draft experience before using it in a real league.
The Auction Table and Auction Draft pages extend the same kind of decision support to auction-style leagues.
The Machine rebuild rolls on — next up, the Draft Room!
