Using Waiver Claim Priority in Trade Negotiations

          When your low waiver priority prevents you from being able to add some of the top free agents, you don’t have to just give up on trying to acquire those players. You can treat the teams with the highest waiver priorities as an extension of the waiver pool.

          You yourself may not have a high enough claim to acquire the top available free agents each week, but you can still negotiate with someone who does. It’s as simple as approaching one of the teams with the top claims and saying to them, “If you pick up that guy for me, I’ll trade you this guy for him.”

          Being proactive in this way gives you a chance at acquiring free agent targets that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise claim. If you wait for the claims to go through first, and then try to find a trade partner, you run the risk of the free agent that you are targeting ending up on a team that isn’t a trade fit. It’s a better bet to manipulate which players the top teams claim by agreeing to a deal beforehand.

          There is significant risk in this strategy, however, so you need to be calculated when applying it. You need to be sure that the deal you’re offering is going to be accepted, otherwise you’re just telling another team which free agent you want for no reason. You also need to be fairly certain that the team you’re approaching has a high chance at claiming the agreed upon to-be-traded player. If you approach the team with the second highest waiver priority and strike an agreement, but then the team with the highest waiver priority claims the player you had agreed to trade for, now another team has information about you (like which positions on your team you feel weak at and which players you like) while you’re left without the player you were targeting. Not to mention, it’s a “soft” agreement, considering you’re agreeing to trade for a player who isn’t even yet on their team – so there’s always the potential that you could just end up selling them on the value of the available free agent to the point where they claim that player and decide to keep them for themselves, so you also need to be confident that the player you are offering is more valuable to them than the player you want them to pick up and trade to you.

          This especially works if you have a handcuff RB that you can push on the team with the starter. If you value a free agent more than the handcuff, and the team with the starter has a high waiver priority, it’s worth exploring whether or not they are willing to pick up your free agent target and trade them to you for the handcuff. By negotiating the deal before the claims go through, you can possibly acquire a player that you would have otherwise had no chance at claiming.

          An example would be if you had the 10^th out of 12^th waiver priority. Let’s say you’re willing to drop Malcolm Brown for Gardner Minshew, but you feel as if you have no chance at claiming Minshew with such a low waiver priority. You could just give up on acquiring Minshew. Or, you could always approach the team with a top claim – let’s say, the team with Todd Gurley and no need for a QB – and tell them that if they pick up Minshew for you, you’ll trade them Malcolm Brown for him. They might say yes. By using waivers in your trade negotiations, you can give yourself a chance at the top claims each week, regardless of your own personal waiver priority.