Trade Value

The Expert Sports' house number for what a player is worth in a trade, derived only from his rank.

Trade value is the single number The Expert Sports puts on every ranked player so that players — and whole trade packages — can be compared on one scale. It is computed from rank alone, with the house model printed on every calculator page:

trade value = round(1000 × 0.987^{(rank − 1)}, 2)

The #1 player on a list is worth 1000.00. Each rank below him multiplies the value by 0.987 — a steady decay of about 1.3% per rank — so the #5 player is worth 949.01, the #15 player 832.61, the #50 player 526.67 and the #100 player 273.78. The curve is deliberately smooth: it rewards top-end talent (the gap between #1 and #10 is worth more than the gap between #91 and #100) without letting one superstar swamp every package math.

The same curve is applied to each list separately — a player's redraft trade value comes from his redraft rank, his dynasty trade value from his dynasty rank. When this site scores a trade, the verdict band is ±5%: if the two sides' totals land within 5% of the larger total, the deal reads as fair. Future draft picks are valued on the same curve at stated expected slots: an early 1st-round pick is priced as the #5 player (949.01), a mid 1st as #15 (832.61), a late 1st as #25 (730.49) and a 2nd-round pick as #40 (600.30). Trade values are model numbers, not market prices — they exist so every calculator on this site argues from the same printed rule.

More house terms: trade value · value over replacement · dynasty vs redraft · UPM · all house terms