The non-waiver trade deadline is 4 p.m. ET on Monday, July 31, 2017 which is exactly 77 1/2 hours away from 10:30 a.m. today at the Commissioner’s office in New York City where they log in all trades. After that point, teams may still be able to trade players only through the complicated waiver process.
The issue so far is the belief by many teams is that they are still in the playoff hunt while many other teams are fooling themselves or maybe purposely fooling their fanbases like the Baltimore Orioles who are near last place in the AL East and 8th just in the Wild Card standings.
From MLB Trade Rumors: Duquette told reporters Saturday that they’re planning to approach the deadline as buyers. “Whatever we do [at the trade deadline], we are going to try to help the club,” he said (via Brittany Ghiroli of MLB.com, on Twitter). “I still like a lot of our core players. I don’t believe all the stuff that says we have half the club on the market, because we have a lot of baseball left to be played.” Specifically, the Orioles will attempt to upgrade a rotation that entered Saturday ranked in the majors’ bottom three in ERA (5.93) and fWAR (2.0). Duquette noted that “if we can get a little bit better starting pitching or add to the pitching we can make a run at this.”
Yes, fanbases are manipulated all the time by the rhetoric, and we will wait and see from all the rumors who has been playing a game of Liar’s Poker and who has been dealing from the top of the deck. The NL Wild Card picture is wild also with the Brewers, Pirates, Diamondbacks, Rockies and even the Cardinals near enough. So far the A’s and the White Sox have been early sellers and the Marlins and Braves, Phillies and Mets have all made some smaller trades. The Padres and Reds will make some big trades soon. The Padres are holding their hand close. The Tigers sold on JD Martinez and could sell some big names.
Some teams that haven’t been sellers for a while like the Rangers, Tigers, Angels and San Francisco Giants could all sell. The biggest names out there are Yu Darvish, Sonny Gray and Zach Britton. Tick tock.
If you hear the rumors out there the Nationals have been tied to so many of the big names like Sonny Gray and Zach Britton, and Ken Rosenthal put the Sonny Gray rumors to rest that Jon Morosi first put out there. Morosi keeps firing them off and now has the Nationals tied to the Cardinals and their closer Trevor Rosenthal and their best outfielder Tommy Pham. The Nationals really haven’t been linked to any position players and have been playing with back-ups since the injuries to Adam Eaton, Jayson Werth, and more recently to Michael Taylor. The only “given” is that Bryce Harper will be one of the three outfielders going forward. We also don’t know how the wrist injury to Trea Turner will affect him to where it could always be possible that Turner could be shifted back to the outfield.
Maybe the Nationals as we have discussed should also look for a catcher as this Fangraphs article suggests and we have suggested for a while with Tucker Barnhart or Tyler Flowers.
Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo has to be kicking the tires on many different players including one final piece for the Nationals bullpen that still needs a dominant closer.
If you throw Trevor Rosenthal’s name in the cap with AJ Ramos, Justin Wilson, Zach Britton, and Raisel Iglesias you have pluses and minuses with each. Coincidentally, the Nationals will be in Miami at the trade deadline to play AJ Ramos’ current team, the Marlins. Maybe add Tony Watson and Brad Hand to the list. There could be others, but many of those names will not be traded. There is a supply/demand going on and if you look at some of the trades like Pat Neshek and Lucas Duda that were just moved, the prospects coming back in trade were not top prospects.
Tick tock.
