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Diamond is widely acknowledged as the most successful Fantasy Baseball Pick-up Artist in the world – applying the methods of female seduction to the art of winning fantasy baseball league championships. He travels cyberspace with his wing Saber, teaching those who play fantasy baseball how to be fantasy baseball players.

My name and avatar may be unfamiliar to you.  My schedule is too demanding to distribute my daily thoughts in a weblog.  Or to pontificate via podcast.  Or to share my epiphanies via Twitter.

I am not here to provide advice on which player to start today.  I am here to provide advice on which person to be tomorrow.  I don’t change lineups.  I change lives.

It’s been a long time since I’ve graced Razzball with my presence.  I hope that’s provided sufficient time to osmose my advice and you have:  1) established the proper fantasy baseball avatar (mine this year is ninjassasininja) and 2) taken the initial steps towards becoming an AlphaTrader.

I am going to assume that you are in contention for first place (if you are not, I suggest re-reading my previous posts.).  Your team can use some reinforcements and the best way to get them is via trade.

Most RTS’s (RotoSchmos) follow one of these three losing trading techniques:

1) Trader Joe – Look for the organic, win-win trade (e.g,. you need hitting, i need pitching)

2) ShortChanger – Try to trade two quarters for a dollar (e.g., Melky Cabrera and Jeff Francoeur for Ryan Braun)

3) LowBaller – Make an insulting trade offer (e.g., Mike Aviles for Mike Stanton) thinking that might lead to something.

Trader Joe trades are achievable but are often hard to find.  ShortChanger and LowBaller trades help your team but are hard to achieve.

A true AlphaTrader doesn’t acquire their desired target by battling with their trading partner.  They disarm them.  This requires deftly alternating between aggression and seduction.  In the female seduction world, this avatar is known as the Dogmouse (a dog decides on what pussy to chase while a mouse gets the pussy to chase them).

Our AlphaTrading ground work has established which owners are most susceptible to our advantageous trade offers.

Here are four advanced gambits that I teach my students that produce reliable results (all terms mentioned are trademarked to Diamond PUA LLC):

1) The Garden of Eden – Let’s say I need SBs so I target Michael Bourn and want to give up Seth Smith.  Instead of proposing this trade, we entice our trading partner by offering up fair value while hiding Smith behind the fig leaf of temptation.  Something like, “I like Bourn.  Willing to discuss an OF swap that doesn’t include Seth Smith.”  Now let’s say your best OFs are Braun and Pence.  Your trading partner will be enticed to offer a LowBaller trade of Bourn for Braun.  He’s thinking you’re a RotoSchmo!  You correct him gently with an “Of course I didn’t mean Braun.  I meant any comparable OF to Bourn except for Seth Smith.”  This subtle neg has him wanting to gain our respect by making a convincing argument that the next OF he asks for is comparable to Bourn.  So he provides a couple of lines why Pence is comparable to Bourn.  But he’s also thinking “Bourn is just as good as Smith.  Why won’t he offer him?  What does he know that I don’t?”  We’re simultaneously devaluing his asset while boosting our asset.  We close the deal by deflecting the attention away from Pence without negging…”You made some good points….but I need to keep Pence…..is there any other OF you would take?”.  We don’t come out and say “How about Seth Smith?” as that would remove his ‘forbidden fruit’ status.  We don’t pump up Seth Smith’s accomplishments.  We just let our trading partner squirm until he can’t help but take a bite from our apple.

2) Spite and Switch – Proprietary research by my wingman Saber has shown that 70% of fantasy baseball transactions come from a negative place.  This includes negative feelings towards a player, frustration at a leaguemate’s ‘good luck,’ frustration at their team’s ‘bad luck,’ etc.  Negative feelings have no place in our decision-making as they lead to irrational actions.  In my seminars, I refer to this as Rototilting.   Amateur fantasy baseball pick-up artists recommend actively creating friction between two leaguemates in hopes one of them will Rototilt.  But most people are smart enough to sidestep that gambit.  I find it’s more effective to seduce a leaguemate into thinking you are on Rototilt and thinking they will use your spite against you.  An experience AlphaTrader can move from faux Rototilt to an advantageous trade in three e-mails.  You’ll need to attend one of my seminars for the exact verbiage but the basic outline is:  1) This <leaguemate> keeps asking me for <player>.  I like you better.  Make me an offer.  2) I’d TOTALLY take that <Lowballer/Shortchanger trade> but they’ll veto it.  Let’s just swap these two players so they approve it and don’t suspect anything.  3) Okay, how about this variation.  Oh, man, that <leaguemate> is going to be so pissed!

3) The Neglomaniac – This type of trade takes at least 8 weeks to pull off.  Saber has crazy Neglomaniac game.  I’ll let him explain the gambit….

‘Buy low’ offers insult potential trading partners.  A star player has two poor weeks in April and the ‘buy low’ offers start flooding in.  Our trading partner has invested his ego in this player – divesting from this player isn’t easy for them.  What’s the best way to do this?  If you guessed Dogmousing, you must be watching my subscription-only “Saber Rattling” online video service!  While your leaguemate keeps getting Shortchanger offers for his slumping star, you show him the proper respect and clearly identify your interest in the player – e.g. “Tough going so far with Hanley Ramirez but he’ll rebound – he’s solid.” You continue to do this every two weeks – always complimenting your trading partner’s acumen and patience.  At some point, his mind will convert your compliments to negs in much the same way that one’s body converts carbohydrates to sugar.  He starts hating this albatross of a player – looking for some way to divest himself from this choice for the sake of his ego.  And whom is first in line to receive the 80 cents on the dollar trade offer?  The AlphaTrader, that’s who!

4) The Subliminator – This is something I came up with last year during my annual think tank (participants this year include Grey Albright, Alex Anthopolous, Rudy Gamble, Deepak Chopra, aspiring pickup artist SpikeOwnin’, a renowned hypnotherapist, and Boston Rob).  It is similar to the Garden of Eden gambit in that we are subtly increasing the attractiveness of a player we want to trade.  But the Subliminator gambit works by providing non-sequitur content that can be associated with said player.  For example, if I want to trade BJ Upton, I might forward a link to a Kate Upton photo gallery with a “Now THAT’S a five-tool player” note.  Before you know it, your trading partner forgets that Upton lost his power stroke three years ago.  This could work both ways in that I might associate Jay Bruce with Bruce Springsteen if I’m looking to increase his value or Jay Leno if I’m looking to decrease his value (if he’s my trade target).

That’s all for now.  Keep AlphaTrading!