TKV * 1 2 3 [= 6]<br />KGB * 1 2 4 [= 7]<br />EBL * 2 2 3 [= 7]<br /><br />SUC * 1 2 3 [= 6]<br />DMR * 1 1 3 [= 5]<br />DMC * 2 3 3 [= 8]<br /><br />SPE * 1 1 3 [= 5]<br />SXP * 1 2 2 [= 5]<br />BSK * 1 3 3 [= 7]<br /><br />BBC * 1 1 3 [= 5]<br />FLS * 1 2 2 [= 5]<br />KNF * 2 3 4 [= 9]<br /><br />[size=1]* = captain<br />1 = 1st round pick<br />2 = 2nd round pick<br />3 = 3rd round pick<br />4 = FA<br />&#91;] = Total[/size]<br /><br />This is the landscape going into week 5. There are two post-draft free agents on squads (Dawson and Souler for KGB and KNF respectively). Only two teams have a lineup that resembles their draft picks. Other teams have opted to trade up or down for chemistry, player wishes, scheduling conflicts or what have you. 8 out of 12 IDL teams have made inter-team trades, 11/12 have made roster changes from trading or FA. <br /><br />The reason I&#039;m bringing this up is that people are having heart attacks over trades like Mantis/dewww(madv) or Saber/Noob or Gyros/Collision. Perceived skill level isn&#039;t gospel, it&#039;s just a vague guideline. I&#039;ll use Saber and Noob as examples. Saber went #4 overall ahead of mikehail, Gilgamesh, Blair, Turska, Gyross Rust and Xen. Noob went 19th overall. That means there were 14 players picked between those guys. A draft reference might be the gap between Stallion and Junior. This gap reference IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF SKILL, because of the way skill drop offs happen in our draft and the idiocy of some captain&#039;s draft picks. Noob for Sabertooth wasn&#039;t an unfair trade (skillwise). Mantis for dewww/MadV wasn&#039;t an unfair trade and Gyross for Collision wasn&#039;t unfair. Captains have a right to trade down in the draft on draft day, why is it so crazy that mid-season, after playing games and seeing chemistry they not also want to trade for players who have shown they&#039;re worth more than their draft position indicates. It&#039;s not.<br /><br />Okay back to the numbers. As a generic way to assess the differences now and what happened on draft night the total number (in brackets) represents the teams collective draft position. This means the lower the number the higher the draft picks. Right as the draft ended each team was at a 6. 6 is the norm for IDL.<br /><br />Now mostly the teams with higher numbers blow. But you&#039;ll find that there are some teams with higher numbers that are better. For instance Humanbones has a .500 record and yet his draft (by this measure) was better than ralphis or rus&#039;s drafts )5 and 6). On top of that SXP is tied with KGB record wise and they have an even larger disparity (5 and 7). <br /><br />Extrapolating useful information from this isn&#039;t too tough. Trading up in the draft if your team isn&#039;t working is a good idea. If you&#039;re doing well don&#039;t mess with a good thing. You don&#039;t need numbers to figure that out. However I took something different from this. I see the teams that have a good captain and picked late not needing to make changes, hence the static 6es. The good captains that picked earlier needed to balance their teams out so they opted to trade up (See DMR, SPE, BBC, SXP). The bad captains that couldn&#039;t get it together scrambled to plug sinking ships with trades (See DMC, BSK, KNF). If you look at the data you&#039;ll find that this tiering is a reflection of the captains themselves. Rus and Ralph are good captains in good spots with good, reliable players. LB, Mass Prime and Bones are all good captains in less good spots with semi-reliable players. And Naut and Clim are bad captains in bad spots. <br /><br />Captains like Strangle and Hatred are good captains who made extremely bad decisions. Strangle dropping nosturi to avoid forfeit was horrid. Hatred drafting Mantis was dumb. Then taking Mobius over Noob, Collision and Deww was dumb. They&#039;re both good players who made mistakes that cost them. <br /><br />What I&#039;m trying to say is that trading is circumstantial. Lay off captains trying to fix their teams or make a new start. It&#039;s just one season and you&#039;re making people not want to captain by ripping them for every decision.