Jarman Impey has played 20 games for Port in each of the last two seasons, but may not be more than an adequate AFL-level player. He is very fast, applies decent defensive pressure (he was a defender until after 2015), but is prone to errors and drifting out of games.
For Hawthorn he represents obvious utility in their speed-starved lineup, while Port dropped him late in the year and may not see him as part of their future preferred side.
Impey’s profile is that of a player selected every week but unlikely to to be a star. A “cog” player like this is projected to be worth, in future, about as much as a typical pick 15 (which can, after all, produce a complete bust).
Below is a list of players who, at age 22, we would have projected most similarly to Jarman Impey in future.
PAPLEY is a projection based on the most typical movements from here, but as you can see, younger players vary widely. This group is a bit of a mixed bag – some dropped off badly from here, more than half fell short of the mark, but a few got substantially better from here. A new role at a club who needs pressure and leg speed might be just the ticket for Impey to have a better career than he might have expected at Port.
The trade as done looks very close to fair, turning out impressively balanced on our reckoning:
Hawthorn of course didn’t have a pick above GWS’ second rounder, pick 33. They ponied up that pick, but then bridged the gap to fair value (about pick 15) by improving Port Adelaide’s late round positioning at the cost of their own.
Port essentially swapped one 4th round pick for two better ones. Those picks don’t individually have much expectation, but an extra pick in the range that usually gets used for a live selection is always handy. Port’s odds of getting something out of the late rounds of the next two drafts are increased by taking two bites at the cherry. The picks also represent slightly more value to use in other trades – including, perhaps a a 2-for-1 swap up the ladder with a club like Brisbane or GWS who need academy pick points.
Verdict: Extremely balanced trade
Note: This post is part of a series of posts using a valuation method called Player Approximate Value (PAV) to evaluate trades for fairness and balance. Elsewhere, you can read much more about the method and theory behind PAV and also about PAPLEY, the projection method used to derive expected future PAVs. This method expresses both picks and players in terms of expected future value allowing them to be compared on this common basis.