First Year of Single Trade Deadline Has Passed

In part of Commissioner Manfred's ongoing crusade to fix things that aren't broken, this season saw a round of small changes implemented across MLB.  One of the more significant ones was removing the August 31st waiver trade deadline, which coincides with the time when rosters expand and is the last day a player can be in an organization to be eligible for a playoff roster.  For nearly 100 years, baseball has always had (2) trade deadlines - one for non-waiver trades, and one for waiver trades.  A non-waiver trade means that basically any player can be traded anywhere for any other player or amount of money with no strings attached, whether that was through a waiver claim or just an arranged trade.  That rule began on June 15, 1923 in response to Babe Ruth being sold to the Yankees and was changed to July 31st in 1986.  Up until this season, trades could still be made between August 1st and August 31st, but that player had to clear waivers first.  Basically if a player was placed on waivers, and nobody claimed him, that team then had the right to trade him to any team.  

One of the more recent famous examples of a waiver trade was the Justin Verlander trade to the Astros in 2017.  At age 34 at the time, many in the industry felt that Verlander was on the decline.  He was having an average season with a diminishing fastball for a Tigers team that was starting to rebuild, and had been plagued by injuries the prior few years.  Detroit placed him on waivers on August 31st, he was not claimed, and Houston decided to take a chance on him and arranged a trade for 3 prospects.  He not only found his fastball again but went 5-0 in the month of September and was an integral part of the Astros' World Series championship that year.  He has since parlayed that into a contract extension and is still the ace of the rotation.  This is exactly the kind of trade that MLB is trying to avoid by changing to one trade deadline and Justin Verlander is one of the major reasons, if not the sole reason, that this change has occurred.  Major League Baseball does not want teams essentially dumping salary in the last month of the season for the benefit of a team that has to pay little to nothing for only one month of a player.

With that being said, I'm not necessarily opposed to the one deadline, it certainly makes things cleaner and less confusing.  But the deadline needs to be much later, perhaps August 15 or 31.  There was some exciting flurry late in this year's deadline, and the Astros were at the center of it again with a trade for Zack Greinke.  But for a lot of teams, it was way too early to tell if they should be buyers or sellers.  You saw a lot of teams making moves around the edges, much like the Brewers.  They made trades that would also benefit them for future seasons without shelling out major prospects, just dipping a toe in the water to provide a minor upgrade but not hamper their 2020 season in case they fade this year.  For the most part these are the trades that were made.  There are certainly other reasons for this - two top heavy leagues and moving to 10 playoff teams are a factor - but one of the benefits to the two deadlines previously is it gave teams that extra month to figure out if they should go all in and trade for a few role players.  Something you're seeing now as a response to that is teams just straight up releasing players instead of placing on waivers to clear salary.  Hopefully this gets cleared up next year and will make the 2020 summer a bit more exciting.

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 8/15/19:

Brewers 63-58, -1.5, -1.5 WC; 3 @ Nationals, 3 @ Cardinals, 3 v. Diamondbacks

Twins 72-48, +0.5; 4 @ Rangers, 3 v. White Sox, 3 v. Tigers

2019 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 7

Peter - 19