Some Trades that Didn’t Happen

This trade deadline we saw a few big name starting pitchers move teams such as Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer but we also saw several teams who were “supposed” to trade their star pitchers decide to hold onto their players for a variety of different reasons. 

I wanted to run through the biggest trades that didn’t happen. 

Eduardo Rodriguez 

The Tigers not trading Eduardo Rodriguez was by far the most surprising part of the trade deadline. He has an opt out at the end of this season which after the year that he has had he will almost certainly be opting out to become a free agent and with where the Tigers are at in their rebuild I doubt they will be in the market to sign E-Rod to a big money contract. 

They did try to trade him and I am sure at some point we will get the details of what the Dodgers were offering but it didn’t matter because the Dodgers were on E-Rod’s 10 team no trade list and he vetoed the trade. Rodriguez stated that he didn’t want to be traded to the Dodgers for family reasons but there are also some reports that he and his agent were trying to extract some more money out of the Dodgers before waiving his no trade clause. While a no trade clause does not make it impossible to to trade a player it does seem like poor planning on the Tigers part to be negotiating with a team that Rodriguez had already specified that he would not like to be traded to. With a 10 team no trade clause that means that there were 20 other teams that the Tigers could have traded Rodriguez without having to worry about a no trade clause. 

The White Sox and the Cardinals both traded starting pitchers on expiring contracts and got back multiple good prospects. Rodriguez was having a significantly better season than both Giolito and Flaherty so even if the pool of teams the Tigers could negotiate with was limited by E-Rod’s 10 team no trade clause I think that it is reasonable to assume they could have at the very least (and I do mean very least) gotten a package similar to what the Cardinals got for Jack Flaherty which may be a little disappointing based on how good Rodirguez has been but would be better for the Tigers than letting Rodriguez walk.

The only reason the decision to not trade Rodriguez makes sense is if the Tigers feel like he might re-sign with them which to me seems unlikely but he did turn down a trade to LA in favor of staying in Detroit on one of the worst teams in the league so he might just be the kind of guy who makes decisions that don’t make a ton of sense. 

From an Orioles perspective it would have been great to be able to add Rodriguez to the rotation and the Orioles certainly have the farm system to pull it off. I would have been fine being outbid by the Dodgers but it does sting a little that either the Orioles didn’t make an attempt to trade for Rodriguez or what they offered was so meager that the Tigers would rather just lose Rodriguez for basically nothing. I console myself by telling myself that the Orioles were probably on Rodriguez’s no trade list and that at least he didn’t get traded to the Rays or the Astros or some other team that the Orioles might have to face in a playoff series. 

Dylan Cease 

The White Sox choosing not to trade Dylan Cease was not quite as surprising as the Tigers not trading Rodriguez but it was still pretty surprising. The White Sox’s once promising core that peaked in 2021 winning 93 games appears to be rapidly on the decline and the White Sox front office is looking at another rebuild (or retool or whatever the cool GM’s are calling it now) They traded away Giolito, Lopez, Lynn and Kelly and got back some very good prospects despite the fact that none of the guys were having great seasons. Dylan Cease with 2 years left of arbitration and coming off of a season where he finished 2nd in Cy Young voting would have brought in more than any of those guys perhaps more than the four of them combined but the White Sox did not end up trading him. 

Several different teams were interested in Cease including the Baltimore Orioles. The White Sox, knowing that the combination of Cease having years of control left on his deal and the fact that he just had his best season were demanding a high price. There were rumors that the Sox were asking for Jackson Holliday in exchange for Cease which the Orioles flatly refused to do. We don’t know the details of the negotiation beyond what Elias has shared about teams asking for prospects that the Orioles did not want to trade. If that means that they refused to trade Jackson Holliday for Dylan Cease I think that is very reasonable, if it means they didn’t want to trade one of Joey Ortiz, Coby Mayo or Connor Norby I’d be a little disappointed. 

I think that not trading Dylan Cease is a mistake on the part of the White Sox. He does have time left on his deal but after selling at this deadline I do not think that the White Sox will be playoff contenders before Dylan Cease becomes a free agent and even though I think he is a very good pitcher who would have been a great addition to the Orioles rotation I do not think he will ever have another season as good as 2022. As time goes on the amount of team control over Cease decreases and the further he gets away from his Cy Young caliber season the less the White Sox will be able to trade him for. Right now his ERA is over 4 and if that continues to be the case through next season the offers the White Sox get next year will be much more underwhelming than what they got this year. 

I know that it probably sounds like I am playing some pretty crazy mental gymnastics to be saying Dylan Cease would have been an awesome player for the Orioles to have traded for and he’s not that good and the White Sox should have traded him while his value was still inflated by his great 2022 season but I think that this was an opportunity for a win win trade where the White Sox get the sell high on a guy and bring in a some good prospects (just not Jackson Holiday) and the Orioles could afford to buy high with all of their top 100 infield prospects all currently in triple A with no path to playing time. Instead, either because the White Sox got greedy during negotiations or the Orioles cheaped out, neither team gets what they want. 

Marcus Stroman 

The Cubs, similar to the Angels, got on a hot streak playing several non playoff teams in the week and half leading up to the trade deadline and decided not to sell off their expiring players in favor of making a playoff push. The key difference between the Cubs and the Angels is the teams standing between and the playoffs. The Angels would have to beat out the Yankees, Red Sox and the Blue Jays while the Cubs are competing with the Marlins, Reds and Diamondbacks none of which have substantially more talent or pedigree than the Cubs. So I would say that it is a good bet by the Cubs to hold onto their pieces and make a playoff push. 

Another thing the Cubs have going for them is that it seems like the guys they would have sold do seem to want to play in Chicago so it’s not necessarily a trade them or they walk at the end of the year situation. 

It would have been cool for the Orioles to have traded for Stroman but I don’t think he was one of the names they had very high in their board and with his struggles over his past few outings and now that he’s headed for the IL I don’t think the Orioles are too broken up that the Cubs decided not to sell. 

Shane Bieber

Bieber got hurt just before the deadline and it seems like the kind of injury where there is some concern about whether he will be able to come back and produce this postseason. WIth his trade value thoroughly diminished the Guardians decided not to trade him. Which is too bad for them because they got a really good prospect from the Rays for Aaron Civale so I imagine they could have gotten even more for Bieber. 

Blake Snell

In my “Trade Time” blog I noted that I thought the Padres wouldn’t sell but they kept losing heading up to the deadline and for a moment I thought Snell could be on the move but the Padres doubled down and instead added Rich Hill and Ji-Man Choi. 

I think this is a fine dice roll as the Padres currently sit 3 games out of the Wild Card and the teams ahead of them are much less talented than them. The Padres have had a very strange season where despite getting good production from their stars and even a few non stars they haven’t racked up wins the way some of the advanced stats say they should be. I think they are talented enough that they could find their way into the wildcard and make something happen in the Postseason.

A quick word on the Jack Flaherty trade

I went back and read my “Trade Time” blog to see what I said about Jack Flaherty and I was happy to see that I predicted that the package for Flaherty would be centered around Cesar Prieto (It was posted a week before the trade deadline) so that was cool to get right.

But the point I want to make was that I felt like the price that the Orioles paid for Flaherty was pretty fair. When Giolito cost the Angels Edgar Quero who is ranked similar to Connor Norby and Lorenzen cost the Phillies a top 5 prospect in their org to trade Prieto who had no real path to ever play for Baltimore along with Rom who is probably a 6th inning reliver doesn’t hurt at all. Having to put Showalter in the deal is unfortunate because I think the Orioles were pretty high on his potential and they don’t have a lot of great arms in the system (by design) but that is the cost of doing business. The thing about building a great system with savvy draft choices, investing in player development and good moves on the margins is that when you trade some prospects away you can make more good moves and develop more players and the system will be fine.