Next years draft "apparently" is weak.
Cant see that happening.
Whether next years draft is weak or not is not really the point here. You need to dig a bit deeper. There aren't many top end talents this year expect Green for GWS. They will likely try and trade up to above where they think he will go, 3 is the safest spot so you'd think Melbourne who are open to splitting a pick.
Next year however there will be far more suiters for trading back down the order to gain more points as there are heaps of academy and f/s prospects. So having those picks doesn't mean we are banking later picks, we are banking later POINTS to trade back up the order.
There is a chance we could trade up for GWS's Pick 18 (if they give their 1st next year to Melbourne to trade up the order to 3 along with pick 12). If we trade our 3 picks in a row for pick 18 (and probably a later pick around 50 - maybe the pick they get for Patton) then we can get back up into the top 20.
I'd still take a Butler pick for 2020. We still have 2 4ths this year that I'm not sure we'll use so it will be interesting what pick games we play this year. If we could package those 2 up and get say a slightly better 4th next year then probably a good move.
Then we would take Pick 18, Pick 19 and whatever the Patton pick is, around Pick 50, and have 2 picks flowing into next year (another 3rd and another 4th).
Would be a good result if we did that.