This year’s trade deadline provided a sustained, entertaining chaos the likes of which Major League Baseball has never seen. In June and July, there were 43 trades—the most since at least 1997—involving 21 All-Stars—the most since at least 1999—and every team with the exception of Arizona made at least one move.
It’s too early to declare winners and losers with any confidence; nobody will know for months or even years whether the Royals will regret surrendering a rotation’s worth of pitching prospects for a pair of rentals.
Anyway, it’s common to discuss these things in binary terms—teams are buyers or sellers, winners or losers—but the market has become much more nuanced in the various approaches teams take to making deals.
So instead of a winners vs. losers breakdown that you can find on dozens of other websites, let’s take a look at the spectrum of strategies the most active teams took leading up to this year’s deadline. We’ll focus on one team per strategy for the sake of brevity.
Traditional buyers—Royals, Blue Jays, Astros, Mets
These teams made the sort of trades that come to mind when you think of contending teams buying at the deadline—sacrificing possible pieces of the future for production in the present.
A common theme among this year’s buyers is that they’ve all been far closer to the bottom of the standings than the top in recent years. Toronto hasn’t made the playoffs since 1993, Houston since 2005, and New York since 2006, yet besides Cole Hamels to Texas, all the top players traded at the deadline went to the four teams listed in this category.
Kansas City experienced a taste of the playoffs last year and wants another October feast, and it filled its two greatest needs with the best option for each: Johnny Cueto as an ace and Ben Zobrist as a versatile player who can fill in capably in a corner outfield slot or at second base.
Shoring up the roster cost Kansas City its top two pitching prospects, among other minor leaguers, but if the Royals can win just one more game in this year’s playoffs than they did last year, it will undoubtedly be worth the (non-David) price.
Buying, not renting—Rangers, Dodgers, Nationals, Blue Jays (with Troy Tulowitzki)
While Cueto and Zobrist likely will don Kansas City uniforms for just a few months before leaving in free agency—the same goes for David Price in Toronto, Yoenis Cespedes in New York, and Scott Kazmir in Houston—Hamels will play for his new team through at least 2018, with a vesting option for 2019.
For the Rangers, that kind of trade made perfect sense. At three games below .500 at the deadline, they’re probably not going to make a playoff run this year, but their rotation next season could prove formidable with Hamels and Yu Darvish and Derek Holland returning from injury.
Offloading Matt Harrison’s bloated contract in the trade makes Hamels’s hefty salary more manageable for Texas, effectively turning a $67.5 million commitment (not counting the option) into a $37.5 million bargain for one of the game’s most consistent pitchers.
Plugging the gaps—Pirates, Angels, Cardinals, Giants, Orioles
Recent World Series champions have benefited not from big-name deadline acquisitions but from under-the-radar transactions—not from CC Sabathia throwing shutouts or “Mannywood” electrifying Hollywood but from Marco Scutaro catching fire for two months or Orlando Cabrera stabilizing a shaky Red Sox defense.
The Pirates have been making these shrewd deals for a few seasons now, and this year was no different. Aramis Ramirez and Mike Morse should add some much-needed righty power to an injury-ravaged and left-handed-heavy infield; Joakim Soria will combine with incumbent closer Mark Melancon to lock down the end of games; and J.A. Happ, acquired moments before the deadline, will provide insurance for a rotation that just lost A.J. Burnett to the disabled list.
Of course, the whole point of this category is that this far out from the playoffs, we can’t predict which traded player will have the largest impact for the World Series winner, so when the Pirates lose to Madison Bumgarner in the wild-card game again, let’s ignore that I highlighted Pittsburgh here.
Traditional sellers—Phillies, Brewers, Reds, Athletics
Even with Cueto and Price commanding plenty of attention from teams in need of an October ace, the Phillies, in part because of Hamels’s contractual control beyond this year, picked up the best combination of prospect quality and quantity. Since the Phillies were willing to take on Harrison’s contract as part of the deal, they were able to get some real prospects in return (I’ll get to the Marlins’ inverse of this strategy later).
In third baseman Maikel Franco and Double-A shortstop J.P. Crawford, a formerly barren farm system has produced a pair of prospective stars for the first time since the halcyon days of Hamels, Ryan Howard, and Chase Utley. Adding the haul of top Rangers’ minor leaguers gives Philadelphia hope for an infusion of youth in the near future.
It’s a long road back to contention for the Phillies, but they took the first positive steps last week.
Retooling, not selling—Tigers
Let’s calm down with talk about how the Tigers’ championship window has closed. Sure, the formidable pitching staff of Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Anibal Sanchez, Doug Fister, and Rick Porcello has been whittled down to an inconsistent Verlander and an ineffective Sanchez, and the Tigers’ streak of four straight division titles will come to an end this year.
But the core of the team’s lineup remains strong with Miguel Cabrera showing no signs of slowing down, J.D. Martinez evolving into a fearsome slugger, and Ian Kinsler and Jose Iglesias providing production up the middle.
The pitching has been the problem this year, but the Tigers did well in exchanging Price and Cespedes for promising minor-league arms, including Daniel Norris, the highest-rated prospect traded at this year’s deadline. And unlike the Phillies, the Tigers’ acquisitions could step in to the big-league rotation next season, giving Detroit cheap, young pitchers to build around for years to come.
Plus, this winter’s free-agent market will feature aces galore, and you know owner Mike Ilitch isn’t afraid to spend big for a shot at a title.
Pointlessly inactive—Padres, White Sox
The Padres were expected to reside in the retooling category after their winter shopping spree unraveled in a maelstrom of Matt Kemp strikeouts, defensive incompetence, and eight separate losing streaks of at least three games in the first half alone.
But thanks to an easy schedule, the Padres have pieced together an 8-4 record since the All-Star break, convincing general manager A.J. Preller that the team has a shot at the postseason this year—never mind its 7.5-game deficit for just the second wild card and the three other teams it needs to hurdle to reach that spot.
Despite garnering interest from a number of teams for an even greater number of players, the Padres didn’t make a single sale in July.
Justin Upton is a free agent after this season, and based on the Tigers’ return for Cespedes, a comparable player, the Padres could have turned two meaningless months of their left fielder into several young players more valuable than the compensation pick they’ll receive when Upton departs.
San Diego’s other impending free agents won’t even fetch compensation picks, and trading a horde of Padres’ pitchers could have yielded strong packages in return. But Preller hit the big red “no deal” button, even adding a major-league reliever for the ostensible stretch run.
Unfortunately for the Padres, a stretch run for the pennant still looks several years away.
Hopelessly futile—Mariners
At least the Padres had pieces to sell off and could have conversations about adding for the future. The Mariners, stuck 11 games below .500, could have dangled only a homer-happy Hisashi Iwakuma in front of potential buyers. However, Iwakuma was but a one of the gaggle of good arms available, and Seattle’s owners decided not to sell their only piece that might have returned a semi-useful prospect.
At this point, the Mariners are rudderless, their front office’s route toward contention routinely sent askew by a combination of the worst player development system in baseball and a succession of free-agent signings so ill-advised that even Chone Figgins’s all-time laugher of a contract isn’t the worst deal they’ve handed out in recent years.
The Mariners have the worst long-term outlook of any American League team; they haven’t made the playoffs since winning 116 games in 2001, the longest drought outside Toronto, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be returning any time soon.
The Marlins would also be in this category, but I think they deserve a special designation all to themselves…
Actively cheating their fans—Marlins
And finally we come to the Marlins. Oh, the Marlins. It isn’t just that they traded Mat Latos for a prospect haul unlikely to include a single future major-leaguer. No, the Marlins’ woes run much worse, as owner Jeffrey Loria’s cheap tactics once again infiltrated the front office and pushed the team into making the most baffling deal of the deadline.
To get out of paying Michael Morse the remainder of his salary this year and next, the Marlins traded away a high pick in next year’s draft. Every other bad team save the Padres was trying to collect good young players at the deadline; the Marlins willingly surrendered a prime opportunity to find one for themselves. Enjoy the savings, Mr. Loria!