2020 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel

[Ralph Dawg]

When considering this trade and draft period it is important to firstly understand our restrictions:

1. We are (fortunately) committed to drafting Campbell and Gulden. Best case scenario is that they get bid on at picks 10 and 30. This would cost us ~ 1600pts with the discount.

2. Assuming we use pick 3 in the draft and don’t trade it for later picks, we have 1259pts available to match those bids leaving a deficit of 341pts.

As you can see, even in a good scenario where our academy lads are bid later than expected, we still don’t have enough points.

The good news:
* We get 3 high quality kids in a draft that is full of unknowns.

* The points deficit comes off our 2nd round pick in 2021 rather than our 1st. Even better, if we don’t hold a 2nd round pick for 2021 it would come off our 3rd and 4th round picks.

The bad news:
* The 2021 draft is supposed to be a good one so trading out of this draft or losing points value could hurt.

Conclusion:
We don’t have much currency in terms of draft picks to pick up players people are suggesting. 2nd round 2021 is likely the best we can do.

If you are hypothesising a trade, understand that you’ve got to give something to get something and we don’t have much to give.

Your point about where we sit with the points for matching bids on Campbell and Gulden is spot on. I haven't looked too far forward for the 2021 draft but if its a good one as you say, then to go into deficit would be unfortunate. I wonder if there will be a shock trade or 2 coming up?

[Thunder Shaker]

You really do get upset by different opinions.

To quote Wikipedia
"The 16th place finish was also the lowest in club history".

Your opinions are just as valid as anyone else's.

However, a straight comparison of the 16th-place finish to finishes in past seasons is misleading. The last time we finished low on the ladder in consecutive years, there were three fewer sides in the competition, and Fitzroy and the Brisbane Bears were still playing in the AFL. No way is this 16th (out of 18) season worse than the 15th (out of 15th) season of 1993 (1 win and 21 losses, including one loss by 162 points to the second-bottom side, another by 124 points to North Melbourne, and several other floggings by over 80 points). Sydney has not had a loss by 100 points or more since 1998.

We won 5 games this year, but there were only 17 games total. That's a win percentage of 29.4%. That's equivalent to winning about 6.5 games in a 22-game season (29.5%), which places this year somewhere between 1994 (4 wins/22=18.2%, 15/15) and 1995 (8 wins/22=36.4%, 12/16).

So the "lowest finish", while technically true, is not comparing like with like.

[Syd76]

Your point about where we sit with the points for matching bids on Campbell and Gulden is spot on. I haven't looked too far forward for the 2021 draft but if its a good one as you say, then to go into deficit would be unfortunate. I wonder if there will be a shock trade or 2 coming up?

Good analysis by AB.

The 2021 draft is meant to be nearly as good at the 2018 draft at the top end - but 1 or two of the guns are already tied up due to the F/S and NGA's. It will all come down to where Campbell will be bid on as well as Gulden. The talk is that Campbell will go in the 5-10 range, and Gulden in the early 20's from speaking with a recruiter who I know well who works for a club other than the Swans.

[Melbourne_Blood]

Consecutive low ladder finishes sucks. However, we’ve been up for a long, long time. I appreciate our club made the call to go to the draft when they did. Compare us with Hawthorn. Yeah I’d take us thanks. Honestly I reckon we’re closer to a flag than the cats. Can’t see them winning it this year, and there’s talk they will go after Higgins! Milking the last of there ageing champs. Good on them but it will be a long fall down for them when they decide it’s time to rebuild.


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[Blood Fever]

Consecutive low ladder finishes sucks. However, we’ve been up for a long, long time. I appreciate our club made the call to go to the draft when they did. Compare us with Hawthorn. Yeah I’d take us thanks. Honestly I reckon we’re closer to a flag than the cats. Can’t see them winning it this year, and there’s talk they will go after Higgins! Milking the last of there ageing champs. Good on them but it will be a long fall down for them when they decide it’s time to rebuild.


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Hope you're right about Cats sliding. Scott is probably obsessed about winning a flag more in his own right after inheriting Bomber Thompson's team. Since then, they have made the finals a lot but have a poor record once they're there.

[Thunder Shaker]

When considering this trade and draft period it is important to firstly understand our restrictions:

1. We are (fortunately) committed to drafting Campbell and Gulden. Best case scenario is that they get bid on at picks 10 and 30. This would cost us ~ 1600pts with the discount.

2. Assuming we use pick 3 in the draft and don’t trade it for later picks, we have 1259pts available to match those bids leaving a deficit of 341pts.

As you can see, even in a good scenario where our academy lads are bid later than expected, we still don’t have enough points.

This is why I have been saying that we need to pick up the equivalent of a second-round pick from somewhere, to avoid that dreaded draft deficit. In my estimation, we need a few hundred points.

Possible ways this could be done:
* Trading a player or two for draft picks. This frees up space on the list and gives us more draft points.
* Splitting pick 3 for two picks late in the first round. This gimps our draft hand a bit this year, but allows us to draft the Academy players while protecting our 2021 draft picks.

[111431]

Consecutive low ladder finishes sucks. However, we’ve been up for a long, long time. I appreciate our club made the call to go to the draft when they did. Compare us with Hawthorn. Yeah I’d take us thanks. Honestly I reckon we’re closer to a flag than the cats. Can’t see them winning it this year, and there’s talk they will go after Higgins! Milking the last of there ageing champs. Good on them but it will be a long fall down for them when they decide it’s time to rebuild.


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Don’t forget the cats have plenty of high picks arising from the Tim Kelly deal

[Thunder Shaker]

Consecutive low ladder finishes sucks. However, we’ve been up for a long, long time. I appreciate our club made the call to go to the draft when they did. Compare us with Hawthorn. Yeah I’d take us thanks. Honestly I reckon we’re closer to a flag than the cats. Can’t see them winning it this year, and there’s talk they will go after Higgins! Milking the last of there ageing champs. Good on them but it will be a long fall down for them when they decide it’s time to rebuild.

Geelong are the only club that has not finished in the bottom 25% of the ladder for over 40 years. The last time they did so, South Melbourne still played out of the Lake Oval, there were always six games at the same time on Saturday afternoons and North Melbourne had not yet won a premiership (they would win their first flag a few weeks later).

We would all like to see the Cats spend time near the bottom, but they currently hold three first-round draft picks. I suspect their rebuild has already started.

[Bay View]

Hello RWO. I thought moving on Gary, Dan and the like was to free up space for some trading last year or this year. I reckon there’s got to be room for someone high profile in 2021.

[cherub]

Darcy Fort out of contract at Geelong mentioned as a possible solution to our ruck hole.

We are said to be interested in Connor Blakely, but he appears to want to stay at Freo (he’s from Bunbury).

Blakely is a really bad kick. Worse than our midfielders. And he's a bit on the slow side. Had a few non-team oriented social issues. (Lying and going surfing instead of training. Might have been a maturity thing).

[Markwebbos]

Hope you're right about Cats sliding. Scott is probably obsessed about winning a flag more in his own right after inheriting Bomber Thompson's team. Since then, they have made the finals a lot but have a poor record once they're there.

Would you rather regularly make top 4 but never make the GF, or be a Swans supporter

[Ludwig]

When considering this trade and draft period it is important to firstly understand our restrictions:

1. We are (fortunately) committed to drafting Campbell and Gulden. Best case scenario is that they get bid on at picks 10 and 30. This would cost us ~ 1600pts with the discount.

2. Assuming we use pick 3 in the draft and don’t trade it for later picks, we have 1259pts available to match those bids leaving a deficit of 341pts.

As you can see, even in a good scenario where our academy lads are bid later than expected, we still don’t have enough points.

The good news:
* We get 3 high quality kids in a draft that is full of unknowns.

* The points deficit comes off our 2nd round pick in 2021 rather than our 1st. Even better, if we don’t hold a 2nd round pick for 2021 it would come off our 3rd and 4th round picks.

The bad news:
* The 2021 draft is supposed to be a good one so trading out of this draft or losing points value could hurt.

Conclusion:
We don’t have much currency in terms of draft picks to pick up players people are suggesting. 2nd round 2021 is likely the best we can do.

If you are hypothesising a trade, understand that you’ve got to give something to get something and we don’t have much to give.

This is why I have been saying that we need to pick up the equivalent of a second-round pick from somewhere, to avoid that dreaded draft deficit. In my estimation, we need a few hundred points.

Possible ways this could be done:
* Trading a player or two for draft picks. This frees up space on the list and gives us more draft points.
* Splitting pick 3 for two picks late in the first round. This gimps our draft hand a bit this year, but allows us to draft the Academy players while protecting our 2021 draft picks.

I agree that AB Swannie's was a good summary of our position going into the draft. I don't think Swannie showed a need to try to avoid Thunder's 'dreaded point deficit', but on the contrary showed it wasn't so critical.

The disposition of pick 3 is very much open for me. I would be more inclined to use the pick if I felt confident that Thilthorpe would be available at our pick. Maybe this will clarify as we get closet to the draft date. There's so much yet to play out before that comes.

Peter Ladhams has been raised by another Melbourne pundit as a possible trade target for the Swans. With Graham signing with Richmond, their list management remains tight and players like Chol and Coleman-Jones might be on offer. It depends on how far we can stretch our pick 3. A pick 3 is the rough equivalent of 2 pick 15s. How does a pick 15 stack up against a Peter Ladhams and a Mabior Chol? It sort of seems right that a late 1st rounder for each is about fair, or at least around the mark. I think I would prefer Ladhams and Chol to whomever we draft at pick 3.

I'm not too worried about the 2021 draft. I would like to keep our 1st rounder, but we could pile up yet more young prospects this year that almost makes the 2021 draft superfluous.

There os a lot of water to flow under the bridge before the draft picture clarifies. Maybe some will flow over the bridge. A lot of these early thoughts could easily fall by the wayside, but not hard done in speculating. There will be plenty of surprises in the coming weeks and lots of draft positions are likely to shift around.

I'm glad to see that most, but not all, have gotten off the big bodied midfielder bandwagon. I love Campbell as an inside /outside midfielder. Gulden not far behind.

[gloveski]

I’m not sold on Chol , when you see a guy fly for a mark pretty much on his own in the goal square and cop a falcon alarm bells ring for me .


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[Thunder Shaker]

I agree that AB Swannie's was a good summary of our position going into the draft. I don't think Swannie showed a need to try to avoid Thunder's 'dreaded point deficit', but on the contrary showed it wasn't so critical.

The disposition of pick 3 is very much open for me. I would be more inclined to use the pick if I felt confident that Thilthorpe would be available at our pick. Maybe this will clarify as we get closet to the draft date. There's so much yet to play out before that comes.

I agree that it was an excellent summary.

The only quibble I have is the assumption that we won't be matching bids on both players in the first round. It is possible, if the first round spreading out to 20 picks or more and Gulden ends up getting bid on at the end of the first round.

And yes, I consider the "dreaded deficit" as something to avoid, but the ways to avoid it are at our disposal. I trust the recruiters to find a solution to that problem. As long as we get to pick at pick 3 or 4, we get Campbell and Gulden, we solve the ruck problem somehow and we end up with no points deficit, I would be happy with that. It would require some astute trading, but I believe we can do it.

[AB Swannie]

If Gulden gets bid on at the end of the first round then that would cause some difficulties. Firstly, it would mean that we are a long way short in terms of points but more importantly, it severely damages our 1st round pick for 2021.

However, if, as expected, Gulden lasts until the second round, I personally am not as worried about the deficit. With our current crop of youngsters + Campbell + Gulden + one of Hollands/Phillips/McDonald (my preferences) + 2021 first round, we can afford to lose some currency from the 2nd round of 2021.

I also agree with Ludwig about “big bodied midfielders”. I think height is the most overrated metric for a midfielder. Power is important but is not directly correlated to height.

My perfect draft/trade period would be:

Draft: McDonald, Campbell, Gulden
Trade: Ladhams for 2021 2nd round, split pick 22 for more points.
Free Agent: Joe Daniher