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August 1, 2012

Transaction Analysis

Trade Deadline Non-Transaction Analysis

by Colin Wyers

We’ve been inundating you with transaction analysis for the past several days—which makes sense, as transactions have been the biggest generator of excitement over that stretch of time. But now that the trade deadline is over, we have a convenient opportunity to analyze the deals that didn’t happen.

Our general criteria for inclusion:

• It had to be a player who wasn’t traded. If a player was traded, that typically explains why he wasn’t included in a different deal (unless that player is Ryan Dempster, of course).
• It had to be a player with credible trade rumors attached to his name. Or at least kind of credible. Or at least printed somewhere on MLB Trade Rumors. Anyway, the point is that we’re not trying to second-guess why a player wasn’t on the trading block, we’re just looking at players whom we think were on the block.

One more thing before we proceed: this is all based on rumors and speculation. We don’t know for sure which players were really up on the block, except for the ones actually traded. And we don’t know what players were offered in return. We’re not trying to second-guess the general managers involved, but to construct a plausible explanation (or explanations) as to why these players didn’t move at the deadline, given what we believe we know from media reporting.

Alright, let’s proceed!