Richmond and Geelong
Richmond traded their 2018 third round pick to get Geelong’s current one.
Pick 53 gives the Tigers a third pick in the 50’s to go with 15 and 17. They’d probably like to have their father/son prospect Patrick Naish slip past 17 and be matched using a couple of thse picks.
For Geelong, they already had several other higher picks and probably didn’t intend to use 53. An extra pick next year is more useful to them.
This trade might in hindsight slide around a bit – if the Tigers crash down the ladder the Cats get more value. But this is a very mundane mutual win.
Verdict: Fair, boring, trade
Brisbane and Richmond
Brisbane pay a small premium to move up the draft order.
Brisbane held picks 20 and 25 after other swaps and have given Richmond two cracks at round 2 in exchange for a higher pick at 15.
On paper Richmond come out ahead, but Brisbane have Connor Ballenden to come and will be motivated by taking more picks before having to match for him. For Richmond the value proposition is obvious, the picks they come out with have a better likely yield than pick 15 alone. This of course depends on where Naish is likely to go.
Verdict: reasonable trade
Port Adelaide and St Kilda
Port get more back, having basically swapped two late picks this year for a slightly worse pick next year, with roughly equivalent second rounders changing hands.
This one reads as though the Saints, with picks 4, 8 and 45 already in hand, weren’t going to take a fifth pick this draft, so have chosen to upgrade pick 59 for 34. The major price they pay is a second rounder – the Saints seem to be betting on a rise up the ladder, but if they don’t this could be costly for them.
For Port, they’re best understood in conjunction with the following trade.
Port and North Melbourne
This was a swap of four picks around the same position but in different years.
Port’s first pick in the draft this year is now pick 46. After trading their second rounder to St Kilda, they have instead chosen to give up a second rounder this year and will instead take up to five later shots at the draft between 46 and 63. The logic may be that if it’s a weak draft, later picks won’t be significantly lower value than earlier picks.
The two future picks they gave up were West Coast and St Kilda’s third rounders, in return they get North Melbourne’s which is probably going to be higher.
Port are following a theme established last year of vacating the 2017 draft. Last year they moved picks including a future first, in order to take an extra selection in the 2016 top 30.
This year they’ve continued the philosophy with these two trades, by trading further back in 2017 in exchange for two extra slots next year.
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.