How to Identify Active Managers for Trading

One question I seem to field a lot from readers is how to know who to target in trade offers in terms of opposing managers. It’s tough because most fantasy sports sites only allow players to send out a max number of trade offers. No sense wasting those offers on a guy who looks at his team once a week, doesn’t make any moves, and generally doesn’t contribute much to the action. There are some key ways that we can determine who are the people to target and who are the people to stay away from. My experience in this subject is somewhat limited to the Yahoo system however I’m sure the same information can be found through any other site including ESPN or CBS sports.


First and foremost, the most likely person to trade with you is going to be the guy (or guys) who do a lot of ADD/DROPS. In Yahoo, there is a column on the main page of your league that is titled ‘Moves’. Under it, you will see the amount of times a manager has added or dropped a player from his roster this season. There’s two important pieces of information conveyed in this number. First off, you know the guy is active. He’s checking his team often and has no problem making adjustments as needed. This guy is likely to see your offer pretty quickly, and is surely OK with making any moves he deems relevant. To give you a frame of reference, to this point in the season, I have made 36 ‘moves’. That’s a lot so don’t be dismayed, but you would classify me as a guy whose willing to deal. Next to me the ‘active’ managers in my league have 22, 16, 11, and 10 moves made. These are the first guys I am going after in a deal. Conversely, the guy with zero moves and the guy with one move, are the managers who fall in love with their players and their draft and I’ll not waste a minute offering them anything.

The second piece of information that ‘moves’ tells you, by the way, is that a manager is not satisfied with his team. This doesn’t mean he has a bad team, it just means he’s smart enough to ride trends or swap in looking for the right guy. Again, guys with high moves are exactly the type of guy you want to make a deal with.

The other way to tell who is good to trade with, and who is active in a league, is by checking when they last did something in the league. In yahoo, just above the standings, is a hyperlink for ‘Managers’. Here you will see when each manager last did something in your league. If you look at mine, it’s likely that the timestamp will be relatively close to right now. I’m always on my page, reading up on players, checking stat lines, etc. Alternatively, you’ll see some guys that haven’t been active for a day, two days, five days etc. Take my advice on this one gents, the guy who looks every five days never even notices your offers. Move on.

By targeting the right managers for offers, you’ll increase your odds of actually making a move in a reasonable amount of time. For those inactive, the best way to try and trade with them is through direct email. Good luck!