FFPC: Market Efficiency Trading

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While in most dynasty leagues you keep every player on your team until you drop them or trade them, FFPC can be a little different. Something to remember: in FFPC, obvious tanking is strictly prohibited, so you must start a competitive lineup every week, and can’t just throw games to get a higher draft pick. Cutdowns are in March, from 20 to 16 players, with a combined seven-round rookie and free agent draft in May, and now it’s June, and it is time to start looking at how to improve your team through trades before your team has to be cut down back to 20 players for the season. When you are part of a dynasty league on FFPC, like in other dynasty leagues, the idea is to look for value in your trades this time of year. Because of FFPC’s unique dynasty format, it can be difficult to swing big trades or swindle an opponent; thus looking for market efficiency is the way to approach trades. Market efficiency occurs when asset prices fully reflect all available information, making it difficult to consistently achieve above-average returns. First, decide what you are looking to achieve with a trade. Is it to acquire someone you personally think is underrated, is it to upgrade at a specific position, or is it filling a huge hole in your roster? For some references, I looked at our DLF RotoViz TriFlex league on FFPC. It is a 12-team league, 10 starters, two RB, three WR, one TE with two flex spots and one superflex spot. The bench is only eight spots, so taking advantage of those bench spots is important, but some of those players will have to be dropped back into the player pool next season, so keep that in mind when making trades. I looked at some recent trades to show how to look at some unexpected trade value. Let’s dive into some of these and look at the market efficiency. Courtesy of FFPC Trade: Bengals RB Chase Brown for Buccaneers QB Baker Mayfield Courtesy of DLF Trade Analyzer I plugged this trade into the DLF Trade Analyzer to get a sense of the value for each team. As you can see from the graph, in a Superflex league, Mayfield still holds more value, but Brown has passed him up in ADP value at this point, even if Mayfield is still ranked higher overall. You also have to look at age: Brown is 26, Mayfield is 31. Breaking down the rosters, Fourth and Drunk was looking to add a consistent starting QB with CJ Stroud as his only QB on the roster. He drafted Fernando Mendoza and Carson Beck to help out, but without Mayfield on this team, he would have had trouble competing this season. He has some older running backs to help win now with Saquon Barkley , Travis Etienne , and Aaron Jones , so Brown was a player he could give up in this situation. Eric Hardter had a treasure trove of QBs with Patrick Mahomes , Jared Goff , and Tyler Shough , so he could afford to move Mayfield on an RB-needy team. James Cook and Kyle Monangai were his top two RBs, so he needed to make a move here. Looking at the market efficiency, this is a good trade that worked out well for both teams. It is what each team needed to compete this season. Trade: Colts WR Josh Downs and Jets QB Geno Smith for Panthers QB Bryce Young Courtesy of DLF Trade Analyzer For full disclosure, I was involved in this trade. My team is Steel Horseshoe. On the surface, the value is slightly with Bryce Young, as you can see, but it is close. Let’s break it down. As you can see in the graph, Downs’ value has mostly increased over the last two years, while Young’s value has gone up and down…