My premise is that if I am going to make a trade it is purely to try and improve my team, its the other managers job to do the same for his team. So, I always start my negotiations by low balling the other person. I want to give up as little as possible and get back as much as possible. Isn't that the whole point of negotiating? Start low and meet somewhere in the middle. If I can get one over on someone because they aren't paying attention, don't know what they are doing or are just dumb then too bad for them and congrats to me.
Now I get that getting a low ball trade offer from me may turn the other manager off and they may flat out ignore it, but what if they don't? What if they come back with a counter offer and we start to negotiate. Isn't that how it is suppose to go? You never take the first offer. You barter back and forth until you come to an agreement or move on. Why should a trade have to be fair? Why can't I benefit more than someone else if they let me?
Brent's point is that trades will go through more often if it is fair and benefits both sides. I don't need trades to go through often, I need trades that benefit my team to go through. His other point is that managers will just start to ignore my trade offers. Who cares. At some point they will want or need something from me and then they won't ignore my offers.
I also adamantly believe that in a trade the side that has the greater need should be giving up more. If you are in dire need of home runs and I can fix that for you, but don't need anything from you then you better be giving me something more valuable then what I am giving up. If you have 60% of the need you better give me 60% of the value in the trade. Again, Brent disagrees.
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