Kevin Gausman is the subject of rampant trade rumors. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
BALTIMORE – On the night of July 24, 2017, right-hander Kevin Gausman and three relievers shut out the Tampa Bay Rays, and the next morning, six days until the 2017 trade deadline, the Baltimore Orioles awoke three games under .500 and 3 ½ games out of the second American League wild card. Seen as possible trade deadline sellers, the Orioles instead added a couple of modest pieces and held onto the others, a gamble of sorts on a future that most observers saw as tenuous at best.
Baseball’s non-waiver trade deadline has the power to both end eras and start new ones. With both the trades that are made and the ones that are not, it can shift the direction of a franchise, lifting it to glory or dooming it to years of mediocrity, or worse.
That the Orioles now reside at the epicenter of baseball’s robust trade market, exactly 12 months later – with another trade deadline bearing down on them and the long-awaited fire sale already well under way — is largely the result of the moves that were made and not made a year ago.
This is how the Orioles’ gamble on their future in July 2017 worked out: they crashed all the way to last place in the AL East by the end of 2017, going 7-20 in September to finish 75-87, and kept on falling. Here, in the last week of July 2018, they are on a 116-loss pace, at 29-73 and a staggering 41 ½ games out of first place entering Wednesday. There is no longer any pretense about the near-future for the Orioles: they have already traded away both their franchise cornerstone and the longtime anchor of their bullpen — sending shortstop Manny Machado to the Los Angeles Dodgers and closer Zach Britton to the New York Yankees — and could deal several more players by the July 31 deadline.
[Zach Britton traded to the Yankees as Orioles continue summer sell-off]
“For them to stay, we had to be competitive and we had to be winning, especially around this time,” Gausman, himself the subject of rampant trade rumors, said Tuesday at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. “And obviously, we’re not this year. If you feel like you can’t afford the player, you try to get something while you can.”
Because relievers become so valuable in October, and because most of baseball’s six divisions already have a clear favorite, if not a near-lock, the list of teams who coveted Britton was basically the list of every contender: the Astros, Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, Braves, Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Rockies. It was the Yankees’ package of three minor-league pitchers – highly-rated Class AA right-hander Dillon Tate, Class AAA reliever Cody Carroll and Class AAA lefty Josh Rogers – that won the day.
The Yankees got Britton – a two-time all-star whom they will add to what was already arguably the deepest bullpen in the game – and the Orioles got three pitchers who could be in the majors by next summer.
“I think the depth of [the Yankees’] farm system was attractive to us, and the fact that these pitchers are relatively close to the major leagues,” Orioles General Manager Dan Duquette told reporters late Tuesday.
But the Orioles are far from finished. Duquette repeatedly used the word “rebuild” to describe what their current undertaking – a major concession for a franchise that has long resisted such a move, even as others in the industry have embraced it.
“Once you start the rebuild – [and] with the Manny trade we basically said we’re setting off in a new direction – we’re going to rebuild our roster so we can be competitive with these super-teams in the American League East,” he said. “And we’re going to look at all the options.”
To that end, right-hander Brad Brach, Britton’s long-time set-up man and occasional fill-in closer, is widely expected to join his bullpen partner on the way out of Baltimore. In the midst of an awful season, Brach won’t bring back nearly the haul that Britton did, but there is also no point in the Orioles retaining him.
There is also a distinct possibility the Orioles could trade away veteran center fielder Adam Jones, the face of the franchise and soul of the clubhouse, with the Cleveland Indians a logical landing spot. Like Britton and Brach (as well as Machado), Jones is a free agent at the end of the season, making them the most expendable of the Orioles’ pieces. Jones, though, has full no-trade privileges and could veto any deal.
“I think everybody, when they think of Adam, they think of the Orioles,” Manager Buck Showalter said Tuesday of the possibility of losing him. “That’s a decision we’ll have to make … If somebody acquires him, they’ll like him on their team just like we do.”
If this has been the year of extreme delineation in baseball – with three teams (the Red Sox, Astros and Yankees) on pace for 105-plus wins entering Wednesday, and two more (the Mariners and Cubs) on pace for 95-plus, and at the other end, six teams (the Orioles, Royals, White Sox, Padres, Mets and Rangers) on pace for 95-plus losses – the trade deadline is where that delineation begins to have tangible consequences, with the top-feeders feasting on those at the bottom.
Fewer teams than at any time in recent memory occupy the uncomfortable middle ground of being in-between, using these next few days to decide whether to buy, sell or neither. But one of them happens to be the Washington Nationals, who entered Wednesday seven games out in the NL East, and have starting pitching and catching among their top needs. Things can change in the span of a week, as the Pittsburgh Pirates have shown; once thought to be firm sellers, they have reeled off 11 straight wins to pull to within six games of the NL Central lead.
Despite several contenders with clear needs, this summer’s starting pitching market may be the most tepid one in years. With the Mets apparently unwilling to deal aces Jacob DeGrom or Noah Syndergaard, Tampa Bay’s Chris Archer is perhaps the best starter available – and he’s controllable through 2021 at club-friendly salaries – but his 4.30 ERA and 1.378 WHIP are the highest of his career, and he recently spent a month and a half on the disabled list with an abdominal strain. Most of the other names floating around the rumor mill – Texas’s Cole Hamels, Toronto’s J.A. Happ, San Diego’s Tyson Ross, Cincinnati’s Matt Harvey – are similarly flawed, on the mend or otherwise risky.
[The Nationals may trade for a starter, but Cole Hamels probably isn’t the target]
There is, in other words, no Justin Verlander out there. Last summer, the Houston Astros passed up a chance to trade for the Detroit Tigers ace at the July 31 deadline, but revisited the talks in August – when traded players must first pass through waivers – and landed Verlander on Aug. 31. Without him, they probably would not have won the World Series.
The Yankees, in fact, appear to have concluded exactly that – there are no quick fixes out there for their ailing rotation – in trading for Britton. If it is impossible to improve your pitching at the front end of games, you may as well make the back end as strong as possible and shorten games from that direction. Outs are outs, and you still need 27 of them to win, no matter where they come from.
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