Deadline Queries
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How busy is this year’s MLB trade deadline expected to be and why?
All right, hello and welcome to At The Letters for Thursday, July 30th, 2026. Ben Nicholson-Smith here with you on this episode of ATL, produced by Christian Ciannitti, and I am joined, as per usual, by Arden Swelling. Arden, how's it going today?
Hey bud, I'm good. I am fighting that sort of annual urge at this point in deadline week where things haven't really picked up and things haven't happened where you go, oh geez, is this going to be a slow deadline? Is there really not going to be that much that happens? I feel like this happens every year and then in the final 24, 36 hours, there's just a ton of trades. I think front offices really just want to wait until they have as much information information as possible. And unfortunately, for those of us that follow these things that often lasts well into the weekend, as it were, heading towards Monday's deadline.
That's right. And I expect this year to be the same. When you look at last year, in the 31 hours preceding the trade deadline, there were 50 trades. There have been a ton of trades in the last few years. It's gone up. It's always been busy. Back when I used to work at MLB Trade Rumors, it was definitely busy then, and it's only gotten busier since. That is more than one trade per hour. obviously across the league for that day plus ahead of the deadline. And I would expect the same this year. I would expect that it's going to be very busy. And when you look at the Blue Jays and their track record, every single one of the last 10 years under Ross Atkins, they have made three or more trades in that 10-day window going into the deadline.
So, so far this year, we're at zero. I fully expect that they will get to three or more.
Yeah, I guess last year we had Josh Naylor who went sort of early. It was like a week out. And then Ryan McMahon went kind of early and Gregory Soto. So we had like a bit more action last year. But I feel like we always say, well, if you jump the market and you grab this starting pitcher now, you get an extra start out of them. Or if you grab that outfielder now, you get another 25 plate appearances out of them. It sounds great in theory, but very rarely does it seem to happen in practice.
Yeah. And I think the reason for that is sellers control the pace. And if you're a selling team here on Thursday, July 30th, let's say you have a pretty good offer. Well, it might get better in the course of the next couple of days. There might be someone who gets a little bit more desperate or they don't get their top target. And so you might have a B plus offer and you're those sellers who control the pace of things typically are comfortable waiting. So I expect that'll be the case this year and the Blue Jays operating as one of those sellers have a chance to control the pace. Now, if they see an offer that's pretty good on one of their players, they have historically been willing to move one player, you know, a few days before the deadline.
So I won't be surprised if we see something go down on Saturday, for example, but fully expect that Monday deadline day will be where we see multiple trades happen for the Jays.
Well, and there's so many teams this year operating on multiple tracks and the Blue Jays have been one of those teams that we're operating on, you know, is just kind of exploring the market as both buyers and sellers. I mean, the Orioles, it sounds like, are one of those teams. I feel like in the NL, if you're the Diamondbacks or the Padres, like you are right in the mix for a wildcard spot, but like you have no hope in your division. So you got to really make a decision there about just like hanging around in the wildcard race and how realistic that is because you're just not going to be catching the Dodgers in the NL West. So there's just like a lot of different like I just think that there will be a lot more teams on Sunday into Monday who make a really firm decision of, OK, we're going as sellers.
These players are available. We're going to move them. We're motivated. Send us your offers.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How busy is this year’s MLB trade deadline expected to be and why?
0:07–24:01
2
Which Blue Jays players are most likely to be traded and how are they categorized?
24:01–35:25
3
How did Shane Bieber’s recent start affect his trade value?
35:25–1:03:37
4
Will Max Scherzer and Kevin Gausman start before the deadline and how does that influence trades?
1:03:37–1:05:29