What In The World Will A Trade Deadline Look Like In 2020?

[Matt Braun]

The metaphorical ball of “starting the season” has been in motion for quite some time now. From literally Trevor Plouffe breaking rumors to the newest war between the players and the owners, the gears of North American baseball are slowly turning. There are numerous implications and details that will need to be ironed out before the season can officially begin. One of those questions; how will the trade deadline work in a short season?The trade deadline has been the backbone of in-season improvements for teams for years now. Every season the trade deadline forces teams to admit their problems and fix them with additions or surrender the rest of the season. You, the reader and baseball fan who wasn’t born yesterday, already knew this, so how will it be different this season?

 

The timing of the old trade deadline was essentially perfect. It sits at just over 100 games into the season which provides each franchise with ample time to diagnose where their team is and scout which players they want to target. The competitors can get a feel for which player will best help them going forward and the bottom-feeders can target the prospects they want. A shortened season throws all of this out of the window.

 

If Plouffe is correct, then the start of the season and the old trade deadline would both exist in the same month. This would be an incredibly small sample size that doesn’t give enough time to evaluate talent. Want an example? The ERA leader in MLB last season before May was Zach Davies. Yeah, for real. Cody Bellinger was hitting .431 before May. Small samples can get funky.

 

Or even consider the Twins last season. Michael Pineda had an ERA of 6.21 going into May and Marwin González had an OBP of .244. Both players eventually turned it around and had fine seasons but if the trade deadline was early, then the Twins might have traded for replacements for those players.

 

That sample size would just be far too small to be fair for anyone. Instead, they could push the deadline back a month so that it would be on the last day of August. Doing this allows for slightly more breathing room and the opportunity for a fairer evaluation. There were still some ridiculous numbers last year over a similar sample size like how Jorge Polanco was 10th in baseball in slugging % going into June. But there were also some numbers that remained fairly accurate such as the Twins’ team wRC+ going into June being 120 and their end-of-season wRC+ being 116.

 

It isn’t unrealistic to have MLB cancel the trade deadline altogether. Along with the sample size problems, forcing a player to move to an entirely different city while the pandemic remains to exist seems like an unwise decision. It would make the season less dramatic but MLB appears to be taking a “we take what we can get” method to having baseball in 2020. If that includes eliminating the trade deadline for a season, then so be it. It will just be another factor that makes this year unlike any other MLB season.

 

The long and short of it is that we’re going to see some weird stuff this season. If that includes a trade deadline that would barely be after 1/3 of the season in any other year, then that will have to be the reality. If that includes there being no trade deadline, then that will have to be the reality as well. The trade deadline is just a small part of what makes the baseball season great so it may be subdued, delayed, or abandoned for the betterment of major league baseball and its participants.

 

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[howieramone2]

Falvey is always in the market. You can never tell when a mythical ace will be available.

[Doctor Gast]

We have to see why there is a trade deadline & if the reason is valid we need to prorate it, if not abolish it. But thinking better of it we do need some deadline to protect us from a team last minute buying of a championship

[mikelink45]

Just remove the deadline - trade anytime.

[Tom Froemming]

I hadn't thought about this, but I think it should be early. Whenever the transaction freeze is over, I agree that there needs to be an open time frame for trades and then a deadline, but I don't want to see that coming too close to the start of the ... whatever it is we'll potentially be getting.

[Twodogs]

I'd say September 1st then about 55 or so out of the 80 proposed games of the season will have happened, around 2/3rds of the season. Or no trades at all? I mean one side of the deadline is looking for prospects, they probably won't even be playing any of those games, so it will be hard to do a lot of trading when the prospects probably won't even be playing. No trades could possibly play into the Twins hands as the wealthy teams will be stuck with what they have and the Twins, however not great, have a lot of decent depth on their pitching roster. Obviously they have the hitters, plus depth in the field also.

[DocBauer]

Logic would dictate little action in a short season, especially since trading teams would be uncertain what they are getting back in terms of prospects with no milb season, as been projected. With expanded rosters...some sort of 40+ total roster for reserves, call ups, etc, working out and possibly scrimmaging, teams just won't know exactly what they are trading for.

 

 

Agreed you need about 2/3 of the season to be played before you hit a deadline. Everyone needs to see what they have and where they are trending. September 1st could be a target date. Could a contending team, especially a team with deep pockets who figure they could over-sign next year, over pay to make a move to push them over the top? Would a team with injuries or covid cases also potentially over pay? Or would they fold up tents? Just so much we can only speculate at this point.

[Trov]

I think if there is a deadline, it needs to be at least a month prior to end of season.  If you allowed trades and playoff rosters to be set super late, I could see teams like dodgers and Yankees just trading for high priced talent right before playoffs, add little salary to luxury tax, and just throw in "cash" in the trade to the team.  If they have to take longer cost that goes to luxury tax they would be less likely to do this.  

 

I really do not expect much in terms of trades, except for players teams know they cannot resign.  If they have at least 1 year of team control I doubt they get moved and things will happen in off-season.  With the short season some teams that start off hot, like Detroit last year will be in it, where teams that started off slow, like Nationals, eventual champs, would be out of it.  If they have expiring contracts they would be willing to sell off, but I doubt any team will assume the short season is a sign of what the next year brings.  

 

I wonder, how this short season will help Berrios, someone who had faded in September over his career, is it the long season, or the weather? 

[Joey P]

If there is no deadline, the Twins Quantity over Quality will really pay off. Especially with our great bullpen.