One waiver trade deadline deal every MLB team should make

You may have thought the MLB Trade Deadline had already passed, but teams can still make moves. What waiver trade deadline deals should each Major League team make?

While there’s not nearly as much excitement surrounding the waiver trade deadline, Major League Baseball teams don’t stop their wheeling and dealing on July 31.

While everyone in the big leagues is eligible to be traded in the first four months of the season, August has its own special rules. For a player to be traded from any team’s 25-man or 40-man rosters, he must first be put on waivers and offered to the other 29 teams. If everyone passes, he can then be traded.

Because 29 other teams have the ability to claim a player (though the waived player can be pulled back and kept by his original team), most of the players traded in August are overpriced veterans and mid-level prospects. Teams are also more likely to include cash in a deal to offset salaries, or to add a “player to be named” that might turn out to be a 40-man roster player drafted in the most recent First-Year Player Draft.

Still, contending clubs are actively searching for the missing piece to their playoff puzzle, and rebuilding franchises are happy to dump salary when available. With that in mind, we took a stab at 30 waiver trade deadline deals every MLB team should make by the August 31 deadline.

No, we don’t expect all 30 trades to happen. In fact if they did, several teams would end up acquiring multiple pieces to fill just one open spot in their roster puzzle. However, with each speculative trade proposal taken individually, each team can make at least one move that makes sense to both their own organization and their trade partner.

Note: All salary information located within this piece has been taken from Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted. 

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