Thanks to Matt Wieters’ home run in the 11th inning on Monday night, the Orioles are a .500 team again, continuing life in limbo with the trade deadline approaching on Friday.
The Orioles’ mediocre performance over the first half and change of the season would indicate a team that should be thinking about selling. Being only three games out of the second wild-card spot in the American League indicates a team that should be thinking about buying.
MLB TRADE RUMORS: Carlos Gonzalez | Justin Upton | David Price
Dan Duquette has said that he does not see Baltimore going into sell mode , and that he is focused on making the Orioles a better team this year . For a team with several pending free agents — Wieters, Wei-Yin Chen, Chris Davis, Tommy Hunter, Darren O’Day, Bud Norris and Steve Pearce — going for it this year, with only a glimmer of hope at getting into a one-game playoff to then try to embark on a run through the main bracket of the postseason, is a risky call.
This is a tricky scenario faced not only by the Orioles, but by the Blue Jays, Rangers, Rays, Tigers and White Sox — all teams at .500 or below, but within five games of a Twins team that feels ripe for the catching for the second wild card. With only five American League teams having winning records, the scenario is far murkier than it is in the National League, where there is a gap between the Mets at 51-48 and the Diamondbacks at 47-51 to delineate the buyers from the sellers.
Toronto’s trade for Troy Tulowitzki indicates the Blue Jays have chosen the approach of going full speed ahead to try to reach the playoffs for the first time since 1993, with time still remaining before Friday to add some much-needed pitching help. The best part of the Tulowitzki trade, though, is not that he increases the Blue Jays’ chances for this year, but what he brings to Toronto through the end of the decade, given that Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion will be free agents after next season (presuming that the Blue Jays pick up their options for 2016, which there is no reason to believe they won’t do).
The Orioles and the rest of the middling teams also should be looking for players under team control beyond this year, and hedge their bets somewhat by offloading rentals from the current roster to get in on that market. This would be especially important for an Orioles organization in need of help on the farm.
Dipping into a thin system to trade for Justin Upton, in pursuit of a longshot chance at a deep October run, would be foolhardy. Going after Matt Kemp, on the other hand, would be a move to try to give the Orioles’ outfield a shot in the arm for this year’s stretch run, while adding his bat to the lineup through 2019, in a ballpark friendly to right-handed power hitters.
If you’re in the position of the Orioles or their middle-of-the-pack cohorts, it should be clear that your team, as currently constituted, is not good enough. If that is the case, and you have a lot of pending free agents, the sensible thing to do is play both sides of the market — deal away some rentals, import some controllable talent, try to come out ahead on balance and see if a reconfigured roster can give it a go for a big push toward the playoffs.
These teams are the ones who are best suited to serve as the fulcrum in three-team deals, which makes the Tigers a team to watch for the rest of the week, given Dave Dombrowski’s history. In the current marketplace, it is very difficult to make the “old-fashioned baseball trades” that really would provide the most benefit to teams whose needs and surpluses match up with each other – it’s more about buy and sell.
But maybe that’s what Duquette meant. It’s possible to trade players away without being a seller. After all, the term commonly thrown around for players in the last year of their contracts is “rental,” and renting is not buying.
It won’t Hertz the Orioles to show some Enterprise and make trades that give Baltimore a chance to win now, and to win later, while staying on Budget.