With the departure of Lachie Neale comes a spot for a mature midfielder on the Fremantle list, and perhaps the move of Dylan Shiel required Essendon to shed a little salary. The move of Travis Colyer to the Dockers might satisfy both clubs needs, at a relatively low cost.
Travis Colyer’s most complete senior year was 2017, on his return from the Bombers’ doping suspension. This season was Colyer’s the only year he played more than 12 games. Even in 2017 he was only barely above replacement level – going, per game, at -0.11 marginal PAV (where -0.12 is roughly the 23rd best player on an average list).
So he’s a depth acquisition, but could plausibly play some senior footy, which is reflected in his projection:
A player like Colyer, with concrete but marginal prospects for adding value to a side, is probably worth a pretty token late pick which also has a speculative shot at adding value to a side.
The Fremantle 2019 fourth round pick could slide backwards if they climb the latter, but it’s not as if they paid a premium.
Verdict: Fair 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.