NEWSLETTER
As we sit here today on June 5, I count 13 of the 15 American League teams that are within 6.5 games of a playoff spot. In the National League, it’s 14 of 15 teams, and the only one that is beyond that mark is the St. Louis Cardinals (7.0 games back of the Wild Card, 7.5 games back in the NL Central).
In other words, almost every single team in baseball can still tell themselves a story about how they will be in the race in a month from now, when trade season really starts to kick up. Yes, the Chicago Cubs are among those teams that can still tell themselves a story. (I tell it to myself every night: “If the Cubs can just win a few games in a row, and then can just play even ball for a couple weeks, and then can just win a few more in a row … “)
That means, as we sit here today, even the executives around the league have no clue what is going to happen next month in the run-up to the August 1 Trade Deadline.
In his latest lengthy and wide-ranging article, Jayson Stark talks about what we’ve learned over the first 60-ish games of the season, and the section on upcoming uncertainty really stood out to me. Nobody seems to know what it’s going to look like. From Stark’s piece:
“All I know,” said one NL exec, “is if today was the trade deadline, it would be a very confusing deadline. I don’t really know what a lot of these teams would do. But luckily, we’ve got two months to sort this thing out.”
Think about all the teams that have played so differently from what everyone expected. Will the Padres get their act together? Will the Phillies? The Cardinals? The Guardians?
Are the Angels going to contend? The Tigers? The Pirates? The Marlins?
Are the Diamondbacks really this good? The Orioles? The Rangers?
Get the picture? Then there’s the biggest question of all: Who are the sellers? And how many players will they even dangle who could alter a team or a wild-card race?
An executive of one likely buyer decided to go through every potential seller for us. He ticked off the easy ones: Royals, A’s, Nationals, Rockies. But is it possible that no team in the AL East is selling? It is. Is it conceivable that no AL West team sells except Oakland? It also is. And even if the Angels sell, would they auction off Ohtani? Almost no one expects that.
There are scenarios where the Marlins don’t sell, where the Reds don’t sell, where no NL West team except Colorado sells. What if the Phillies, Padres and Cardinals don’t get their acts together in the next month? It’s possible they’d still be hesitant to sell.
I think you can safely presume at this moment that the Royals and Nationals will be sellers. The Rockies are likely to do so, but they are always a bit weird (recall how many times in recent memory they did NOT trade away obvious trade pieces). Beyond that, it might take some big – or continued – swoons from here to make more obvious sellers. If that doesn’t happen, then you might instead have opportunistic sellers who try to have it both ways, either buying AND selling, or simply trying to sell from places of redundancy. It does not make for much of a buyer’s market.
All I know is that I hope the Cubs find a way to pull back closer over the next month. In this environment, if it stays this murky, it’s not hard for me to believe that the Cubs would see themselves more as one of those opportunistic sellers, trying to take advantage of a thin market. I can’t see the Cubs selling if they’re just a few games out – not after the last couple years, and not given how much it is WORTH it to them to be “competitive” deep into September – but if it’s still in this 5, 6-game range? With six or seven teams to have to pass to make the playoffs in one way or another? Yeah, I could see them selling again. Which would suck.
