Whither the baseball trade deadline

Whither the trade deadline

In case you missed it, the baseball trade deadline just passed. You couldn’t have missed it if you paid any attention to the sports pages, as the number of transactions dizzied the mind.  If nothing else, the trade deadline always reminds me of the folly of betting on a World Series winner in April; even if you pick the team with the best pre-August record, trades made at the end of July can fundamentally revamp the power distribution in baseball.

The biggest transaction was all-star pitcher Yu Darvish going from the Rangers to the Dodgers, who had the best record in baseball before they acquired to best pitcher on the trading block.  The move represents so wisdom on behalf of the Rangers, who despite having a record below .500 are not that far out of the second wild card spot.  That second wild card spot tempts a lot of teams with poor records into think that if they can just put together a good month, they can make the post-season and then it is anybody’s ball game.  But the fact is that if you have a losing record on August 1^st, your team just isn’t that good.  

The trade signals that the Dodgers are in win-now mode.  The Dodgers haven’t been to a World Series since 1988, which isn’t exactly Cub-like in its futility but it is getting there.  Great starting pitching is essential for post-season success, and in prior years the Dodger formula was Clayton Kershaw and pray for three days of rain.  Picking up another ace, especially with Kershaw’s back issues, means the Dodgers mean business.

A team that doesn’t mean business is the Oakland A’s, who traded ace Sonny Gray to a little team I like to call the Yankees.  A few years ago, the A’s traded Josh Donaldson to the Blue Jays and the next season he won the MVP award and led the Jays to the post-season.  Let’s face it, with the A’s 23 games out of first place and having one of the worst records in MLB, the only way an A’s player will reach the post-season is through a trade to a contender.  They traded Grey for prospects, and once those prospects show any signs of talent they’ll be traded off for more prospects, and so on and so on ad infinitem.

The trade deadline is like the inverse of the draft, where the rich get richer and the poor get prospects.  I don’t know the history, but I would guess that it was never intended to be such a big deal.  It was probably decided that it would be really unfair for a team headed for the World Series (before all these layers of playoffs) to pick up a bunch of superstars the week before the series started, like Mr. Burns hiring nine ringers for his softball team in the classic Simpsons episode Homer at the Bat.  But you couldn’t ban making trades, so any late season trades just wouldn’t be able to play in the post season, and the line was drawn at about the 2/3 point in the season.

This wasn’t a big deal before free agency, because you didn’t just acquire a player for the season but forever.  But once the players achieved free agency, the trade deadline became a key date when teams with aspirations could load up on stars with expiring contracts peddled by non-contenders who didn’t want to “lose the player and get nothing in return.”  I’ve said before, I despise that phrase because it presumes that teams are entitled to own players forever, and they aren’t.  You get the star for as long as you have him signed for, no more.  If the player plays out his contract then goes, you didn’t “get nothing in return” as you got his services until the end of the contract.

And besides, you never get equal value.  If Yu Darvish’s contract expires in two months and you trade him, you don’t get Yu Darvish in return but a couple of guys who may be close to as good in a few years, maybe.  Which would get your fans to come to the ballpark, watching Yu Darvish in his last five starts before he leaves or calling up some guy from AAA take a shot against major league hitters?  Of course, if the team is too anxious to make the deal, maybe you can get more value than you should.

The bottom line is, no team ever won the World Series in April.  Or on July 31^st.