The Major League Baseball trading deadline is about six weeks away and remember that deadline is final this season. There are no more waiver deals after the July 31st trading deadline. This is going to put quite a few teams in the position of having to decide if they’re buyers and they want to add a player or two, to try to make a run or if they’re sellers and they’ll move a few of their guys for some prospects. The question is who, what and will they deal?
In the American League you have to think that teams like the New York Yankees, Minnesota Twins, Houston Astros, Tampa Bay Rays and even the Boston Red Sox think they’re playoff contenders. You’d have to guess that with maybe the exception of the Rays they’d all be looking to add for a playoff run.
The Yankees have already added as they acquired Edwin Encarnacion from the Seattle Mariners for minor league pitcher Juan Then four days ago.
There are some interesting teams just on the outside of the wild card race that could try to make a trade to get into one of those playoffs spots, but will they?
The Cleveland Indians, Oakland A’s, Los Angeles Angels and Chicago White Sox all find themselves within 3 games of the final American League wild card spot.
Over in the National League you have the Atlanta Braves, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers. Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies, St. Louis Cardinals and Arizona diamondbacks all in the playoff hunt.
Now the Braves and the Cubs have already added what they hope will be help to their pitching staffs. Atlanta signed Dallas Keuchel for the remainder of the season to a $13 million dollar contract. Chicago went longer on their deal to bring Craig Kimbrel into their bullpen as he revived a three year $43 million dollar deal with an option for a fourth year.
Keuchel is scheduled to make his first start for the Braves on Friday against the Washington Nationals. Kimbrel worked a perfect inning in Triple-A and threw just 8 pitches in the process. So it shouldn’t be too long before he’s closing games for the Cubs. Maybe even by this weekend.
You also have to wonder with so many teams still in contention for a playoff spot, are there enough teams who will be willing to deal or have anything to deal that could make a difference.
Also with so few teams being in a sellers mode the asking price for players might be much higher than it usually is. What could a team ask for if three, four or maybe even five teams are interested in one of their players?
In the American League I’d be surprised to see either the White Sox or Indians going out trying to make deadline deals to contend. I’m not sure if the White Sox will still be this close to a wild card spot by July 31st and they seem to be a year away. Cleveland has been interested in cutting payroll since the off season. So even if they look like they’re in the race for a wild card spot, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them trading away players instead of adding them.
The National League, however, is a convoluted mess. The only team that is double digit games out of the second wild card spot is the Miami Marlins and while some of the teams that find themselves 5 1/2 to 7 games out might be looking to sell for the shear fact that they’ll have a lot of teams to jump to contend.
Even with eliminating those teams there are still ten teams in the race for either their division or one of the two wild card spots.
While the Dodgers have moved out to a 10 game lead in the NL West the Brewers only lead the NL Central by 1/2 game and the Braves are up in the NL East by just 2 1/2 games. Those races are far from over.
I’d love for you to jump in and help me out here. Which team or teams do you see making moves to contend? Also, is there a certain player out their that you think a certain team should be targeting? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section.
The NBA draft is tomorrow night and barring a New York Knicks oddity; which could happen we should know who the Top 3 picks are. After those three picks though it’s anybody’s guess who’s going where.
We should see the New Orleans Pelicans take Zion Williamson at #1. Ja Morant should go to the Memphis Grizzlies with the 2nd pick and then all indications point to the Knicks taking R.J. Barrett with the 3rd pick. After these three, we’ll see.
The Pelicans are back on the board at #4 and the hot name right now seems to be Darius Garland, but there has been quite a few reports that New Orleans might deal this pick. The Atlanta Hawks actually offered the #8 and #10 picks to both the Knicks and the Pelicans to move up, but both deals where turned down. New Orleans is apparently looking for an All-Star quality young player instead of more picks if they decide to move that 4th pick. There has also been some talk that the Chicago Bulls and the Phoenix Suns are interested in moving up to that 4th pick. Maybe New Orleans can get a deal done with one of those teams.
Now I actual enjoy the NBA off season more than the regular season, but I have one big problem with the draft that the league needs to fix and it’s an easy fix to make.
Now we’ve known for a week plus that the New Orleans Pelicans will have the 4th pick in the draft that belonged to the Los Angeles Lakers. New Orleans received the pick as part of the trade that sent Anthony Davis to the Lakers. Now for some reason when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver steps to the podium to announce the 4th pick he’ll say that the Lakers selected who ever the player that’s picked. The problem here is obvious; the Lakers no longer have that 4th pick. This will happen again with the 10th pick as it originally belong to the Dallas Mavericks, but they traded this pick to the Atlanta Hawks at last years draft. There will be quite a few more times that this will happen and I’m not quite sure why the NBA can’t handle this like every other league handles this, but for some reason they don’t.
Sadly it’s probably too late to fix this for tomorrow night, but please NBA get on this and make it easier for us watching.
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