I thought it would be pretty obvious, but here goes.
Clubs operate under a salary cap so players are paid according to their value to the club. If a player is paid 700k he is rated in the top 1% of the league. So he is worth a top 10 pick.
He most likely has 8 good years of Footy to go, and could instantly improve a team that has the capacity to do so. By that I mean if he goes to Carlton they are still rubbish. However, if he was to go to Footscray, Boyd was to get his shit together and Libba's knee comes good they've taken a young exciting team with dash and flair and then just added structure to front and back and have increased their clearances. Boom!
Not sure what the salary cap is there but Carlisle with their first pick and Kruezer as FA and doogies are close to premiership threat, IMHO.
Can't argue with your points about the Dogs. Carlisle and Kreuzer would be fantastic for them. They'd come at the perfect time too.
When it comes to your idea about player's value...
This part of your post;
'Clubs operate under a salary cap so players are paid according to their value to the club. If a player is paid 700k he is rated in the top 1% of the league', is fairly accurate (other than the percentage perhaps being an educated guess, but I'll allow you this)
. However the jump you make to this;
'So he is worth a top 10 pick', is what is clinically referred to as a
leap in logic. You are inferring that, because of the first half of the sentence, the second half of the sentence must be true. Or in reality, my opinion on A provides enough evidence that my opinion on B is true. But really all we still have is your opinion. You haven't identified or proven any causal relationship between salary and trade value, other than to say I believe this,
so therefore this must be true.
There is no
actual correlation between a player's salary and what draft pick they should return via trade, other than the one you are making up yourself. There is no formula that governs this. You may believe that a player earning 700k should be (or as you have put, "is") worth a top 10 pick, but this is just your belief. Reality is a player is worth whatever a club is willing to part with to secure him, and whatever a club is willing to pay him. It doesn't have to make sense in comparison to previous trades or in comparison to what others are earning. You can't accurately assign a draft pick value to a player. Too simplistic