Liquidity: How Trade-able is Your Team?

One economic concept we have yet to bring up is that of liquidity. An asset is considered liquid if it can be easily turned into cash (therefore, a checking account is more liquid than a savings account, because it's easier to withdraw money from an ATM than to go into a bank and get money from a savings account). In fantasy baseball, I would call players "liquid" if you can easily turn them into other players. What determines how easy it is to trade another player?

First is name recognition. Along with this is expectations. If a player has good name recognition, because of a long career, or high expectations, because they are widely written about among the fantasy community, they will be easier to trade. One great example of this would be Nick Markakis - last year, Brandon Funston (Yahoo! fantasy analyst) wrote about Markakis all year, and he was much easier to trade because of it. On the other hand, Alex Rios sticks out in my mind as a player who gets very little recognition and is actually harder to trade because of it.

Injury risk is another major factor. Age is a big part of this. I own Chipper Jones and David Wright in a ten-team league. Jones has been filling my utility spot, but unfortunately, he's not very liquid. The other players in the league know he's old (unlikely to have a career year) and an injury risk (already has a strained quad), so they're not willing to pick him up. Wright would be much more trade-able, but right now I'm not ready to pursue that option.

Finally, I would say position also affects liquidity. Catchers are very liquid, because if you don't own Russell Martin or Victor Martinez you could get a very tangible upgrade. Same with second base if you don't own Utley. However, I wouldn't consider first base very liquid at all. Someone who has David Ortiz is probably less likely to trade for Mark Teixeira because they just don't stand to gain all that much. Pitcher is probably the most liquid position - because everyone starts so many so regularly, every owner is looking to pick up more pitching.

Those are my main factors considering liquidity. I would use this analysis to target players that aren't liquid and see if the owner wants to play ball (the owner of Chipper Jones may be so surprised to get an offer for him that you can get him for cheap, for example). Do you think I missed any important factors concerning liquidity?