Winners and Losers of a Weird MLB Trade Deadline

Despite seeming overpays for league-average players, no top 100 prospects were dealt.

Yusei Kikuchi was dealt to the Astros for a package of young talent that Astros fans do not want to talk about. (Photo by Julian Avram/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Hi friends-

Thanks to everyone who joined our trade deadline chat yesterday! I saw a lot of new names and faces and I’m excited to bathe in your wit and joy (and anxiety) down the stretch run of this season. Be sure to join us in the Substack chat app for more fun each Friday and Sunday until the playoffs begin (at which point, we will switch to daily chats)!

OK. Whew. Yesterday was…..a LOT.

If it felt like there were more trades this year than usual, that’s because there were. In the week leading up to the 2023 deadline, teams executed 47 trades. This year, we saw 59 trades over the same time period.

I don’t think it’s instructive to look back on deadline transactions before 2023 because MLB’s playoff re-alignment changed everything about the sport, including the number of sellers on July 30th.

Executing big trades is harder than it’s ever been, which is probably why we saw so many baby moves on the margins. Two years ago, teams that were seven games under .500 at the trade deadline nailed FIRE SALE signs to their front doors and dealt everything they didn’t want to commit to long-term. But since we all just witnessed an 84-win team make the World Series last year, GMs of mediocre teams everywhere are desperate to snatch wild cards to save their jobs, even if it’s unquestionably the worse path for their team to take in the long run. After all, why should these GMs care about how their team looks in five years if they’ll be long-fired by then?

So we had a lot of sizzle yesterday…..without a lot of steak. Unlike in previous summers when Juan Soto, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Trea Turner, Manny Machado, and other superstars were moved, no A+ list players swapped teams.

As a result, no players from Baseball America’s Top 100 prospect list were traded. This is the first time that’s happened since Baseball America began updating its Top 100 list every July ten years ago. As a comparison, 11 top 100 prospects were moved at the 2016 trade deadline. (Side note: that was also the year the Dodgers traded Yordan Alvarez to Houston for Josh Fields. Alvarez was not a top 100 guy, but wound up being the best prospect moved).

I’m not sure that teams have become more reluctant to part with marquee prospects for top tier talent. It just seems clear that teams did not feel many difference-makers were available (another casualty of the expanded playoffs).

The best player rumored to be on the market was Garrett Crochet, who might have sunk his own life boat off the White Sox when his agent told everyone that he wanted a contract extension to pitch in the playoffs and also did not want to work out of the bullpen.

Crochet—who has battled through injuries— has thrown just 187.1 total innings in the big leagues. I’m not sure he’s in a position to dictate his usage to teams, but it’s understandable he would want to protect his arm from falling off before he signs his first fat contract. However, I also understand the reluctance of playoff teams to trade away half their farm system for this guy hoping he was just bluffing.

In any event, Crochet was not traded. Neither was the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal (who would have commanded even more than Crochet, but who was also never really available), or the Giants’ Blake Snell (I guess San Francisco is going for it even though they traded Jorge Soler to the Braves for a bag of balls? Confusing!).

Anyway, Jack Flaherty wound up being the best starting pitcher who was dealt, and he landed with his hometown Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers desperately needed a frontline starter and they got one in Flaherty, for a surprisingly light prospect haul compared to what the Astros gave up for Yusei Kikuchi. For this move, the Dodgers probably won the trade deadline.

Astros fans are… not happy.

Tigers’ beat writer Evan Petzhold of the Detroit Free Press threw red ants on that anger when he tweeted “The Tigers got Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney for Jack Flaherty. The Blue Jays got Jake Bloss, Joey Loperfido and Will Wagner for Yusei Kikuchi. What if I told you the Tigers could've accepted the Kikuchi return but Scott Harris passed in search of a better return?”

The anger out of the Bronx, however, made the ire from Houston look quaint.