Jake Lever is one of the brightest young defenders in the AFL, and even if Melbourne isn’t in desperate need of taller defenders, he is the sort of player you grab if available. The immediate fit in the Melbourne backline is unclear at first glance, but he may open Tom McDonald, Oscar McDonald or Sam Frost up for a permanent move up forward, or out of the team.

PAPLEY suggests that Lever is likely to become the most valuable defender in the competition over the next five years, ahead of Sam Docherty and Alex Rance across that period. Pick 4 seems the fairest pick for him. About the only knock on his game is his injury history. Again, for a player likely to become the best defender in the league, that’s a risk worth taking.

On paper the trade is fair, with Adelaide getting two good picks to replace a bloke worth pick 4, for them to attempt to find building blocks for the future. Melbourne get back a couple of shots at mid-to-late depth players in addition to Lever. Two (likely) mid-first round picks is a high price to pay for any player, and the Dees are really putting their eggs in one basket.

For Adelaide, Otten, Keath and Cheney are already waiting in the wings to replace at least some of Lever’s output – an embarrassment of riches for a club losing such a valuable player. The Crows will probably be right without Lever next year.

According to PAPLEY, Lever is projected to produce about 104 more PAVs in his career, but there’s a fair amount of variance in that figure due to his young age. As a comparison, here are the players with the most similar PAPLEY projections at the same age (we’ve excluded recent players as not to skew the sample):

Dustin Fletcher is the name that stands out here. It is worth noting that there are only a couple more success stories than flops for players this young, but the success stories are quite enticing if you are Melbourne.

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. Elsewhere, you can read much more about the method and theory behind PAV and also about PAPLEY, the projection method used to derive expected future PAVs. This method expresses both picks and players in terms of expected future value allowing them to be compared on this common basis.

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