the baseball trade deadline and reality

I hate this time of year, and I mean the baseball trading deadline.  The reason I hate it is that talking heads on ESPN and n local stations all start talking about how this team or that team is “in the hunt” for a playoff berth, and therefore they should be trading away prospects for that elusive “final piece” that will get them to the post-season and ultimately the World Series.  I hate this because for most teams it is nonsense.

It is nonsense when you look at a team like the San Francisco Giants, currently two games above .500 thanks to a hot streak of going 11-2 during the month of July.  Suddenly, ideas about trading Madison Bumgardner for prospects seems sacrilegious because now the World Series is within reach.

First of all, flip the script and say the Giants started the season 11-2 and are now losing games that make them two games over .500.  Now the glass is half empty, their record is plummeting, and it is time to trade assets.  The record is the same, just the timing of the winning streak has changed.  Streaks are flukey things, and over the course of a 162 game season decisions should not be made because of a hot month that just happens to occur before the trade deadline.  Besides, the hot streak is now over and the reality of the team's prospects are normalizing.

Secondly, approximately 100 games into a season is a pretty good sample size (better than 13 games), and if you are around .500 after 100 games you have to ask yourself, as Dirty Harry said, “Do I feel lucky?”  If you are at .500 after 100 games but your ace starter has been out for two months, or last year’s MVP is coming off an injury, then your second half may look better than your first half.  But otherwise, if you are at .500 after 100 games, then you are likely to finish around .500 after 162.  It doesn’t matter if you are only two games out of the wild card after 100 games; the team (or teams) that is ahead of you are probably better, and are likely to win more games than you. 

The basic argument is, “We’re only two games out of the wild card, but if we trade prospects for a starter, we can make the wild card and then. if we get lucky, we can win the World Series.”  For the record, “If we get lucky” is NOT a plan that will succeed very often.  This advice is as self-evident as the line from Animal House, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” (By the way, Dean Wormer is the bad guy in that film, but this is sound advice, plus he managed to get a hot number like Mrs. Wormer to marry him, so maybe he had some hidden depths to him).

Five Thirty Eight identifies the Giants as a team that should be selling at the trade deadline.  They have a less than 1% chance of making it to the World Series based in existing talent, and they are low on prospects.  The reason they are low on prospects, again according to Five Thirty Eight, is that they tried to extend their dynasty past its sell-by date.  After falling to the Cubs in the 2016 postseason, they essentially believed in the numerology that they would make the post-season in even numbered years and traded for or signed aging veterans to make another run in 2018.  This depleted their prospects and drained their bank account, so they were unable to acquire good players, leading to an historically bad season in 2018.

The recent hot streak in July should be seen as luck, not skill.  Bumgardner should be traded to a team looking for a post-season stud and willing to pay.  Of course the last time a team acquired a Giant post-season hero for playoff glory was when the Red Sox got Pablo “Kung Fu Panda” Sandoval as a free agent based on his post-season numbers, not his regular season performance.  Sandoval showed up overweight, got injured, and never became a post-season legend to succeed David Ortiz.

So, all of you baseball teams only a few games out of the wild card hunt, learn a lesson; don’t think a .500 record can be turned into a World Series run by acquiring one or two pieces at the trade deadline.  Trades at the trade deadline that helped teams win a World Series usually made a great team even better, they didn’t make a mediocre team great.