Being on the fringes of a great team is a hard place to be for a player. Lachie Fogarty, a young, former pick 22 for the Cats, managed six games this year only to miss selection for the finals.
Fogarty and Brad Close were two of the players to cover for the absence of Ablett this year, playing as smaller mid/forwards in the Cats’ open system. Fogarty probably projects more as a midfield type going forward, but it is unlikely that a role would open up for him at the Cats in the short term.
At worst, Fogarty provides competition for best 22 spots at Carlton in those roles, at a very minimal cost. Essentially, Fogarty has been traded for about the value of pick 40. As Carlton appear to increasingly go “all-in” on their current crop of players, Fogarty is more useful in the short term than a speculative pick around this range.
The real question is whether the change of environment and opportunity will be enough to kickstart Fogarty’s career. During his short time at Geelong, he certainly showed flashes of talent, but the trick will be to turn it into consistent runs of games.
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. Readers can explore these values with tools such as 5-year player value projection charts and a Salary Prediction tool as well as the HPN Trade Calculator to evaluate potential trades.
Elsewhere, read much more about the method and theory behind PAV. Expressing the value of players and picks in terms of expected future PAV provides a common currency for comparing them in trades and other movements. Players are projected using PAPLEY, a method to derive expected future PAVs.