Yesterday Bryce Harper was traded for Max Scherzer. Andrew and I both gave our two cents about the trade. While neither of us particularly loved the trade for various reasons. I believe we both came to the conclusion that they both felt the need to make the trade to move their post-draft depth and switch it into post-draft weaknesses.
For this post I want to ignore that context. Let’s look at Bryce Harper versus Max Scherzer. Last year in 2015, Bryce scored 1,407.4 fantasy points and Max scored 1,372.5 fantasy points. Just a bit over a point a week difference. You know as well as I know, that not all weeks are treated equal.
So I built these two graphs comparing the 22-fantasy week season, comparing how each player did in those seven days stretches. Sometimes Max gets two starts in a week, sometimes he does not. Clearly sometimes Bryce plays 7 days in a week, or less. It happens. But, from your top players on your team its safe to assume, when they are available you are going to go with them, so we can compare these two players who play different positions with some reasonable expectations.
This is similar to the charts I had a few weeks back, where I looked at Clayton Kershaw’s value because of his starts. These are a bit different as I stated. In 2015 each player recorded values in all 22 fantasy weeks. As you can see they’re quite similar.
Bryce was never awful, but they both had three weeks below average. Bryce was beyond outstanding five times to Max’s six. Really amazing.
They key to take from these two pictures. Is that basically two players were basically dead even. When you remove the context of the draft, of how the teams will have to proceed with back-fill going forward, among other tiny details. Things look pretty good. Both parties seem quite content that both won the deal, and perhaps… maybe they’re both ahead.