So, you’ve seen the title and are thinking to yourself, “Don’t be ridiculous, Matt.” Oh, I’ll be ridiculous if I want to be.
Welcome to a multi-post series on Major League Baseball’s 2023 Trade Deadline, the most complicated and exciting of its kind across the American professional sporting landscape. Yes, that’s my opinion, but it’s a true one! This series is designed to give you, the reader, a comprehensive look at what this year’s Deadline has to offer, but without the hypothesis of trades that could be made. Again, I’m well-aware of the title of this post, but this is not to be an imagination fever dream exercise justifying a one-for-one trade featuring two of baseball’s most recognizable, marketable, and rarest talents. Instead, this no-way-this-happens trade will serve as a blueprint for understanding baseball’s midseason transactional physics, entering what will end up being one of the quieter trading periods of recent memory.
Major League Baseball’s Trade Deadline is built on value of both present and future varieties. Most July 31 (or in 2023’s case, August 1) trades include one team planning for the distant future, with the other planning for the immediate present. The team that’s planning for the future is the “seller”, a struggling team looking to tear down part of its current roster for a better future, while the team in “win-now” mode is the “buyer”, who’s willing to sacrifice a part of their future for potential immediate success. I think what gets lost in the hype of trade talk is that central idea of “value”, which can come from the monetary compensation being exchanged, the players’ talents, the change in championship probability post-trade, and replacements of the lost trade pieces. The bottom line is that the ideal outcome of a Deadline deal is that the present and future value attained by the seller is equal to that of the buyer.
Allow me to demonstrate this duality of baseball trades by way of an outlandish exchange between the Padres and Angels featuring both teams’ best players: Juan Soto for Shohei Ohtani, straight up. Soto was traded to the Padres from the Nationals during last year’s Deadline in what I consider to be one of the craziest trades I’ve ever seen, as Soto is of a dying breed of sluggers who walk exorbitantly more than they strike out. He was traded with two-and-a-half years of control left of arbitration because extension talks between his camp and the Nationals fell through as Washington was beginning to slide in the standings, so they decided to cut their losses. Ohtani, meanwhile, is on pace to out-pace his 2021 MVP numbers on both the hitting and pitching sides of the ball and could be worth over $50 million a season when he reaches free agency at the end of the 2023 season, assuming Anaheim can’t or won’t re-sign him. Because Ohtani would have two months left on his exclusive contract if he got traded at the 2023 Deadline, the rumor mill has been swirling much more in the context of the Japanese phenom rather than the Dominican powerhouse in Soto, even though it would make sense to see Soto, who has 1.5 years left of exclusivity with the Padres, traded, given the Padres historical underperformance in 2023.
That’s the tipping point for the Padres to trade Soto. Their 37-45 record as of yesterday morning has them sitting in fourth place in the NL West and nine games back of an NL Wild Card spot. The Angels, on the other hand, are at 44-40, two games back of an AL WC spot and a climbable six games out of the top spot in the AL West. Any trade between these two teams, assuming they keep up their seasons the way they have, would have the Angels as the buyers and the Padres as the sellers, but the players in a Soto-for-Ohtani trade (which would be Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani, if you’re keeping up) would mess up those connotations and throw off the motivations behind the trade in the first place. If the Angels get Soto for Ohtani, they would lose their best player in a time when they’re gunning for a playoff spot, making the trade a lateral move at best. Getting Ohtani in any situation at the Deadline for the Padres, let alone for their best player, would be a “win-now” move when they should be trying to move Soto in favor of the team’s future.
In a world where AJ Preller and Perry Minasian are drunk in a bar and do a soaked-napkin-written-in-ballpoint-ink type of deal with Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani, then maybe the trade goes through. But because of the science behind the Major League Baseball Trade Deadline, a one-for-one deal in this case would only muddy the desired outcome for either team. In other words, while this trade makes sense, it doesn’t make sense. Does that make sense?
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