With the MLB trade deadline approaching, and presumably your league’s own tradeline trailing not far behind, it is a good time to look at what players are going to be on the move. Often, we can benefit from anticipating their likely landing spots as an acquiring team, or where we might be able to sell highest before there is a known location as a selling team. Let’s start with some prized bats that are extremely unlikely to be in their current uniforms in 2022, making them ripe for teams in postseason contention.
Trevor Story
This is nothing new… you know the, well, story, by now. The Rockies are an awful franchise with worse ownership. They cannot seem to field a competitive team and have not shown any interest in committing financially to their homegrown talent. Somehow even worse than that, in the one instance that a massive contract was given in the case of Nolan Arenado, they promptly traded him for a laughably underwhelming return. Whatever the Rockies do with Story at the deadline, it will almost certainly be a bad move.
About Story himself, though- he’s actually having somewhat of a down year by his standards. Not terrible, just not what we’ve come to expect. The K% and BB% numbers are right in line with career expectations, as is his hard hit % (somewhat down, 38% instead of the more typical low-40% range), but the power is way down, as is the BABIP (.180 and .290 respectively as compared to .249 and .340 for his career). And yes, he is of course much more productive at Coors (.291/.345/.477) as opposed to on the road (.180/.278/.353). But wherever he might go, the mental boost in having something to play for in August and September could greatly outweigh the lack of Coors inflated production, as he will have the new team benefits every day, not just during home games.
All of that makes Story a “buy now” if you are in acquisitions mode. The worst-case scenario (no trade) is that you still get him at Coors for as many games as the Rockies have left their this season and decide to actually play him in as opposed to developing their young swaths of Garret Hampson and Brendan Rodgers types. The best-case scenario is that he lands in a potent lineup in a still hitter friendly ballpark (the Brewers, Reds and White Sox are all in play here) and plays just about every day in the thick of a pennant race. I’ll be right back, going to go make some more offers for Trevor Story.
Kris Bryant
If Story is a top candidate for being the “buy low” poster boy this season, Bryant might be the best candidate for “selling high”. Like Story, Bryant has only ever been with a single team. Also, like Story, he is very likely to not be on the same team after this season. Unlike Story though, the list of contenders that have interest would land him in some particularly awful hitters parks and in lineups that are not quite as potent. The top two likely destinations for Bryant are the Giants and Mets, whom, while both teams that have been hitting above their weight all season, don’t have the most fearsome of lineups and play in cavernous pitcher’s parks.
If there is an argument to be made for Bryant though, he has actually been a better hitter away from Wrigley this season, although the obvious counter argument to that is that the parks in which many of his divisional away games occur (against the Reds and Brewers in particular) are extreme hitters parks.
The best reason to sell high on Bryant now though is that he’s actually having a pretty good year and is likely to be moved. If for whatever he reason he remains with the Cubs, it will be because they moved a number of other pieces, and the lineup will be even more watered down than it currently is. So, if the two most likely cases for Bryant are moving to a team with a less than intimidating lineup in a pitchers park or staying with a worse version of the Cubs… sheesh. You’d do a lot better to get out now while there is still some allure and name value to Bryant.
Jon Gray
There might not be a player in baseball that would benefit more from a change of scenery than Jon Gray. I don’t need to explain how leaving Coors is good for a pitcher, or how going literally anywhere else would give him a better chance at accruing more wins. It is probably worth mentioning that since he’s on a one-year deal, he would also likely not end up in Coors next season, so for those of you that are in dynasty leagues, his value next year is almost certainly going to be higher than his value next year.
It’s also worth mentioning that despite pitching at Coors half the time, he’s also been kind of good this year! The underlying numbers are sort of what they’ve always been (22% K rate, 9.5% BB rate) but they have had a much more positive result (3.68 ERA!) than we have typically seen from him. He’s been able to limit hard contact to the lowest rate of his career (31.1%) and that has translated to a BABIP of only .260, which is also the lowest of his career, and little short of a miracle for a Rockies pitcher. The point being, if Gray is able to continue his success in literally any other place and logically speaking for a contending team, his arrow is pointing way, way up for the rest of 2021 and even further for 2022 and beyond.
The key thing to remember with all of these players (and others that we expect to be traded) is that there is a certain amount of alpha in the unknown. When we project trade destinations, we are taking some risk on, to be sure, but doing so in a calculated manner will usually result in more positive outcomes than waiting until the trades happen. Once Trevor Story is on the Yankees or Jon Gray is on the Rays, their new value can now be calculated and is known by your trade partner. You’ll get far better value agreeing to terms before we know exactly where they will end up.
