Harrison Wigg was drafted at pick 35 and has been on the Crows’ list for 3 years. He seems to have been a pretty decent midfielder in the SANFL, but his complete lack of exposure gives us nothing to work with in terms of a future projection.
For the purposes of evaluating a trade, we’ve given him a notional “list value” of 10.3 PAV, ie, equal to our value for pick 90. Logically, the choice is either having Wigg on the list or having a late draft pick, so his market value must be somewhere around this minimum value for a pick.
If we value Wigg at 0, the trade is still notionally favouring Gold Coast simply because picks 54 and 71 both have a marginal chance of producing useful value which is more than half what pick 39 is expected to produce. That’s not really a trade clubs would do under normal circumstances, but the expected yield of a pick is what it is even though a fourth rounder doesn’t always get used.
Adding any sort of value for Wigg to our assessment, as we’ve done, tilts the trade more in favour of the Suns. It’s all upside for them, the Crows have merely improved their current 3rd selection in the draft by 15 spots in a part of the draft where that probably doesn’t improve their chances much. The Suns retain some pick value while getting a player who might do more than nothing.
Verdict: token trade, all the upside is Gold Coast’s side
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.