GuyWhoLikesSport’s guide to TRADE VALUE – Part 1

GuyWhoLikesSport’s guide to TRADE VALUE – Part 1

GuyWhoLikesSport

CHECK OUT PART II HERE 

Trade week is well underway (Narrator: it goes for 9 days).

As it gets warmed up, it’s worth asking who is the most valuable trade asset in the league.

Not the best young player, not the most versatile.

Simply who, if put on the trade table, would demand the biggest haul?

The idea of the rankings is that if player number 16 was offered for player number 9, the team offered player number 9 says yes.

This idea is just flagrant stealing from the legend Bill Simmons but applied to the AFL.

To judge trade value, a few things have to be taken into account.

Firstly, positions matter. Unequivocally, the most valuable position in footy is the key forward.

There simply are not many people on the planet who can run, jump, kick etc. at the level required to be a star key forward at AFL level so the good key forwards get a bump.

Also valuable are those game-breaking type midfielders that win you finals.

In short, it’s hard to score in modern footy so players that give you an avenue to goal through their own individual brilliance (s/o Ned Zelic, hope you’re well) will inevitably be a more valuable trade commodity.

On the less valuable end of the scale are ruckmen, as I have written previously.

Secondly, consider age and contract given the fairly obvious theory that the younger the player is, the more valuable he will be on the trade market.

More interesting is the contract, with the new CBA coming in, players have got a significant bump in the percentage of league earnings over the lifetime of the new CBA, getting 38% of league revenue.

This is good news for players, and good news for clubs who locked up their stars before the new CBA came into effect.

Some players will, of course, have their earnings tied in some way to a percentage of a club’s cap but there is no way for us to know that as interested observers.

So, for the purposes of this exercise, a long-term deal signed before the new CBA came into effect (all of them bar Naughton) is a good thing.

I also want to note that, with player contracts not being public, I am guessing, based on reports that I have found, what the salaries are for players.

Third and finally, this column takes place in a land far, far away.

A land where players can get traded without consent and clubs have some bargaining power if a player says they’re upset and want out. It happens in a world where trades happen based on value and nothing else.

It’s the same galaxy where Oppenheimer was as good as it should have been and people actually watch Armchair Experts.

Anyway, onto the list.

The world

21. Harris Andrews (26. 2 years left, money unclear)

20. Jacob Weitering (25. 2 years left, money unclear)
19. Sam Taylor (24. 2 years left, money unclear)

The most valuable defenders are the ones that you can build a system around.

Take these players out of any of their teams and it would be like Misson: Impossible without Tom Cruise on the Bourne series without Matt Damon, they tried that once and it was an abomination.

Doesn’t even count.

That’s the value of these defenders.

It’s not their 1 on 1 defensive skill, because that doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s their ability to be the foundation of a successful defense.

Taylor is the highest because he’s the youngest and probably the best player right now, ranking first in intercepts per game, and 9th in contested marks per game while ensuring GWS is at least relatively miserly given the way that they play.

Take him out though and it’s a disaster back there.

The other two are almost impossible to split. Both are stars who had a good finals series.

Weitering gets the nod because he’s a year younger and he’s also the best at playing with concussion, which is a huge plus come finals time!

Fallen angels of the key forward mafia

18. Ben King (23. 1 year left, $750,000 left)

17. Aaron Naughton (23. 9 years left, money unclear)

16. Harry McKay (25. 7 years left, money unclear)

I feel kind of like DC movies having to promote The Flash after all of the controversy around Ezra Miller kidnapping that child.

It’s icky but I’ve got no choice, to quote Hyman Roth, this is the business I’ve chosen.

Based on the parameters I set, these are young key forwards.

Two of the three are locked up long-ter and none of the three played well in season 2023, thus the ickiness.

Naughton and McKay kicked basically two goals a game each and King was less than that at 1.4 in, admittedly, the worse side.

But even based on that, look at how long-term the contract was for Naughton even after a mediocre year.

EIGHT years! He’s locked up through 2032 when he will be 32.

This is not a massive key forward, he’s so heavily reliant on his ability to run and jump.

Yet they still did a long-term deal presumably because they were scared that some other club who is crying out for a key forward needed one (cough Sydney cough).

That’s the power of the key forward in trade value terms. They’re like MDMA. They make you do stupid things.

“We would require a child in return.”

15. Noah Anderson (22. 4 years left, money unclear)
14. Shai Bolton (24. 5 years left, money unclear)

13. Connor Rozee (24. 1 year left, money unclear)
12. Zak Butters (23. 1 year left, money unclear)
11. Sam Walsh (23. 3 years left, $2.5 million left)
10. Tom Green (22. 4 years left, money unclear)

These names are probably the future of the Elliot Ness category, especially players like Butters, Rozee, Bolton and Anderson.

They all hit the scoreboard and are forward half-animals while still being extremely effective as midfielders as well.

Green and Walsh are probably the two best players on the list right now, but they are capped by the fact that they are not as effective forward of centre as the 4 players below them.

Green especially is possibly an Ollie Wines type where his body is already so AFL ready despite being so young, so his ceiling is capped unless he can play a little further forward.

The other wrinkle here is that Butters and Rozee are out of contract at the end of 2024 which depresses their trade value somewhat as you’d inevitably have to have the dreaded two bites at the apple: capital traded; and cap space spent.

The rest are locked up for the medium-long term.

This tier, in some order, is probably the future of this list.

 

CHECK OUT PART II HERE