Fans can expect a flurry of trades in the days and hours before the MLB trade deadline passes at 6 p.m. ET Tuesday. But how exactly do teams go about making these trades?
Below is an insider’s look at the work that goes into all the trades that happen — and don’t — in the 24 hours leading up to the trade deadline, through the lens of a fictitious team from the perspective of a former MLB general manager.
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6 p.m. ET: It’s 24 hours before the trade deadline, and my team needs a starting pitcher, a high-leverage bullpen arm and another bat. As GM, I want to make a trade to improve my team and to show the players in the clubhouse that I believe in them. Trades also energize fans and let ownership know you’re working hard to get better.
6:15 p.m.: I’d like to trade for a controllable, top-of-the-rotation pitcher such as Garrett Crochet, but the price is too steep. Jack Flaherty is likely also too expensive, so I text Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall about Frankie Montas and Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins about Yusei Kikuchi. I also reach out to Rockies GM Bill Schmidt about Cal Quantrill and Austin Gomber, both solid options who would be an upgrade and offer 1.5 years of club control. Finally, I text Jed Hoyer of the Chicago Cubs — not to ask about starting pitcher Kyle Hendricks but just to see what he’s looking to do ahead of tomorrow’s deadline. I know the Cubs are focused on 2025 and would move Hendricks for the right price.
6:30 p.m.: I reach out to multiple GMs about relief pitching options. I’m targeting rentals from known sellers such as the Rockies (Jalen Beeks), Angels (Carlos Estévez, Luis García, Matt Moore, Hunter Strickland), Marlins (Tanner Scott is likely too pricey) and, if they decide to sell, Blue Jays (Yimi García, Trevor Richards). There could also be some interesting multi-year options available, including A.J. Puk (Marlins), Michael Kopech (White Sox), Mark Leiter Jr. (Cubs) and Kyle Finnegan (Nationals), but they’ll be more costly.
6:45 p.m.: When it comes to available bats, I’m prioritizing pending free agents. Players who might be available because their teams are sellers include Tommy Pham ( White Sox), Austin Slater (Reds), Charlie Blackmon (Rockies), Kevin Pillar (Angels), Josh Bell (Marlins) and Amed Rosario (Rays). If we want more impact, we’re looking at players such as Luis Robert Jr. (White Sox), Taylor Ward (Angels), Jazz Chisholm Jr. (Marlins) and Randy Arozarena (Tampa Bay Rays), who offer multiple years of club control.
I reach out to these teams to gauge where they are with these players. The Rays have always been willing to listen to trade offers on any player and might also consider moving Brandon Lowe or Isaac Paredes. Toronto won’t discuss Vlad Guerrero Jr. or Bo Bichette, both of whom could yield a sizable haul if they were made available.
7 p.m.: Game time. Whether at home or on the road, I sit with my inner circle of front-office staff and top scouts. It’s a bit surreal, watching MLB games play out in real time, gaining pitch-by-pitch and play-by-play updates on my team’s needs and strategy heading into the deadline. This time of the season, performances are exaggerated, compared to games played in April and May. We have other MLB games on in the background — if we’re at home, this includes minor-league games — and scoreboard watching is a real thing, even in July.
8:30 p.m.: Time to update ownership and senior leadership about potential moves heading into tomorrow’s deadline. All financial commitments must be approved by ownership and signed off by the CFO ahead of time. All potential moves must be communicated to the team’s CEO or president so they can prepare accordingly. The general counsel will be asked to scrutinize the contracts of potential acquisitions to make sure there are no surprises. All these leaders understand the need for discretion.
9:15 p.m.: Each GM has about three or four fellow GMs with whom they can compare notes about who they’re hearing is available on the trade market. I check in with my counterparts to see what they’ve learned about starting pitching, relief and bats. It’s tricky because many of these GMs are looking to add the same things, but when it’s a seller’s market, like it is this year, this often ends with us complaining: Can you believe what they asked for in that deal?
10 p.m.: After every game, regardless of the deadline, we need to assess any postgame moves. Managers typically speak to the media immediately after the game, so once that’s done, we recap and assess the status of the team for tomorrow’s game. Are any players injured? Do we need to send somebody down or bring somebody up to fill an immediate need? How does that impact our 26-man and 40-man roster situations? How does it impact our trade deadline plans?
10:30 p.m.: On trade deadline eve, I call a meeting with the coaching staff to share updates on what we’re thinking about at the deadline. We list all the possibilities that have been discussed and gather opinions from everyone in the room. This feedback is crucial because some of these coaches have been in the same clubhouses as players we’re discussing, and they have insight on how these potential acquisitions and their personalities would fit with our club and our culture. These meetings can go long — when the Braves traded Bud Norris to the Dodgers in 2016, we met until 4 a.m.
12:30 a.m.: While driving home, I listen to our minor-league game reports. Once home, I watch the West Coast games that are still being played. After that, I watch MLB Quick Pitch to see the highlights from each game. As all this is going on, I’m texting with other GMs about possibilities. Text is the preferred means of communication among GMs. There is value in speaking on the phone — you can tell a lot from the inflection of somebody’s voice or the patterns in their speech, and the closer you get to a deal, the more likely you are to do so over the phone — but in the early stages, and this late at night, texting gets the job done.
3 a.m.: San Diego Padres president A.J. Preller texts with a wild, five-team trade idea. I also spoke with Preller at 3 a.m. on Opening Day 2015, when I was driving from spring training in Orlando back to Atlanta. Later that morning, the Braves traded Craig Kimbrel and B.J. Upton to the Padres for Matt Wisler and 2015 competitive balance draft pick No. 41, which became Austin Riley.
4 a.m.: My last activity of the night is to create a summary of the potential deals we’re discussing, ranked and color-coded by likelihood and priority.
5 a.m.: I finally go to sleep.
9 a.m.: I’m back in the office, and it’s crunch time. We’ve done all the hard work and prioritized our needs based on our evaluations. All 30 teams have an internal database of information on players. These include not only proprietary algorithms and analytics but also countless files on each player. A player’s page is built as soon as he appears on the scouting radar. For draft-eligible players, that’s usually once they hit high school or the showcase circuit; for international amateur players, it could be as early as the Little League World Series. Jurickson Profar, a first-time All-Star in 2024, was rated the No. 1 prospect in baseball by mlb.com in 2013 and first made a name for himself in the Little League World Series at 11 years old.
9:30 a.m.: Internal discussions heat up. It’s important to have representation from the front office, analytics group, team health staff (medical and mental skills) and top scouts. Our top scout thinks we should move a certain controllable bat to the top of our priority list because of intangibles that make the hitter a fit with our club.
10 a.m.: The debate continues, and we go to our database. Not only is this an evolving amalgamation of data — including Statcast information such as swing speed and path, barrel percentage, exit velocity, etc. — but it also merges with internal intel gathered over several years to chart the progression (or regression) of each player. In assessing a player’s value, teams factor in performance relative to age and projections based on raw tools as graded by scouts, as well as character and makeup anecdotes. Some teams have even hired private investigators to tail potential acquisitions and their families in hopes of making sure there are no surprises once a team acquires a player.
11 a.m.: It’s time to provide an update to ownership. We’re working on multiple fronts, and a couple of possibilities are getting close, but nothing is nearing the finish line — yet.
11:30 a.m.: I get a text from the GM of a team with a good rental starting pitcher for whom we’ve already made two offers, both of which were rejected. The text informs me that they’re about to trade that pitcher to another team … unless we’re willing to part with our top prospect. I survey the room, and we agree to pass.
12:30 p.m.: That trade has been completed and announced, which is frustrating news for our ballclub. I check back on other starters we’re interested in, but the prices are still too high.
1 p.m.: I reach out to the GMs for my top three bat targets. Prices are still way too high. I also check in on a bunch of rental relievers, with no success.
1:30 p.m.: I get a call from another GM saying they are “down the road” on a deal for the best rental reliever on the market. However, they’d “strongly consider” making a trade with us if we’re willing to send them two of our prospects. They want one player from among the consensus top-10 prospects in our farm system and one player who is considered a “lottery ticket,” someone with massive upside and massive risk. I tell the GM that if they can hold up their other deal — which might not even be real — I’ll get back to them within 30 minutes.
1:45 p.m.: Our group heads to the manager’s office to meet with the coaching staff and provide the latest updates. The first thing we bring up is the call about the reliever. Our coaching staff is excited about the possibility of improving the bullpen, and they sign off on the trade.
1:55 p.m.: I tell ownership that we’re in agreement on names for the reliever. The move fits in our budget and will create some energy around the club. They approve the deal.
2 p.m.: I call the GM back and tell them we have a deal. The other GM thanks me, and we agree to exchange medicals. It’s standard practice to exchange medical information on all players involved in trades, and any medical staff can fail just about any pitcher because throwing a baseball is not a natural activity, and all pitchers have some degree of arm debilitation. In fact, the question of medicals almost canceled the Braves’ trade of Shelby Miller and Gabe Speier to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Dansby Swanson, Ender Inciarte and Aaron Blair in December 2015.
2:15 p.m.: Media relations is informed that a trade is likely, and they begin preparing a press release. On deadline day, media relations will prepare press releases for multiple trade possibilities so they’re ready for whatever happens. We also reach out to the MLB offices to let them know a trade is on the horizon and enter the trade into the MLB system portal. The other team must approve the trade in the portal for it to be official.
2:30 p.m.: Medicals have cleared on both sides, but there’s a problem: Another team has jumped in and made a better offer. I call the GM, who tells me that if we’re willing to send them a slightly higher rated top-10 prospect, they’ll complete our deal right now.
2:32 p.m.: The prospect they asked for is one of our three best, a huge part of our team’s future. We tell the other team we cannot include the player. I really hope they’re bluffing.
2:35 p.m.: They weren’t bluffing. They officially announce that they’ve traded the reliever to another team, and we’re left wondering how this happened. Did they use our offer to drive up the price? We’ll never know. Like in poker, we don’t get to see their cards.
2:40 p.m.: I inform ownership, media relations and our coaching staff that the deal fell apart. People talk when they’re excited about things, so rumors had spread throughout the clubhouse that we were going to acquire the reliever. Our star player texts me to ask what happened. What a disaster.
3 p.m.: With three hours until the deadline, we double back on the trade market. We lost out on the best rental reliever, but there’s still time to improve our club. We canvas starting pitching, bats and relievers. I send 12 text messages in 10 minutes to get updates.
3:15 p.m.: Six of the texts are returned, but only two of them with real possibilities. One is the controllable bat our top scout was pushing for this morning. It would be a big-impact deal, but it would be very costly in terms of the prospects we’d have to give up. The other possibility is another rental reliever. Not as big of an impact, but it would be an upgrade for our club without decimating our young talent inventory.
3:20 p.m.: We discuss the reliever possibility first because it’s simpler. We can use the structure of the failed deal as the template for our trade proposal. We’re again willing to include two prospects, but this time we’re not including a top-10 consensus player from our farm system.
3:30 p.m.: I call the GM about the reliever, and we discuss what it would take to make a deal. This reliever has a higher salary than the first one we targeted, so I ask the GM if they’d be willing to include money in the trade. Any time money is included in a trade, it requires MLB approval.
We agree on the concept, if not the specifics. We don’t have a deal right now, but we agree to speak again at 5 p.m. and let the other know if we decide to go a different direction.
3:40 p.m.: We move on to the controllable bat. It would cost us three players from our farm system: an industry top-five consensus player, a top-10 consensus player and a lottery ticket. Our internal team rankings differ slightly from industry rankings because of proprietary data, so we feel fine about what we’d be giving up. While GMs love their prospects, history tells us that fewer than three of the top 10 players in any farm system will ever become impact MLB players.
4 p.m.: I call the GM about the bat. The three-player structure of the deal is fine, but if we don’t include our best prospect, they say they won’t make the trade. I tell the GM we need time to discuss. Buying time likely keeps the deal alive; we could pivot and make a different offer later, but they probably won’t trade this player if there’s a possibility they could get our top prospect.
4:30 p.m.: I call ownership and give an update. Team owners always get excited about big names, and they’re intrigued by the bat. They’re indifferent to the relief arm, deeming it inferior to our earlier trade that fell apart. Still, ownership approves both trades while knowing it’s possible that nothing will happen. I also update the team health staff members so they can check medical reports, and I inform media relations so they can prepare press releases.
4:45 p.m.: Coaches are at batting practice and doing pregame work, so we can’t have a formal meeting, but I find our manager and update him on the two possibilities. He’s supportive of both but wary of trading our top prospect because he has seen him on the back fields during spring training and believes the talent is special.
5 p.m.: I call the GM with the reliever again, and we talk names. We agree on the players involved and the amount of money ($1,000,000) being sent to us to offset the reliever’s salary. Even though I have all the approvals I need, to buy a little more time, I tell the GM that I need to get ownership approval.
5:15 p.m.: The GM with the bat texts to ask where we are in the trade process and whether we would include our top prospect. I tell them I’ll call them at 5:30 p.m.
5:30 p.m.: A.J. Preller texts me again, and the wild, five-team trade idea has some momentum. In this deal, we’d get a rental bat and give up only one consensus top-10 player. My team discusses it, but the other deals seem like better fits, and there’s a lot of risk whenever more than one team is involved in a trade. We decide to pass.
5:45 p.m.: I call the GM with the bat again and tell them that we can’t bring ourselves to trade our top prospect. I ask if they’d consider two of our other consensus top-five players. The GM declines and is upset with me because now it’s 15 minutes until the deadline, and their team was hoping to make this deal.
5:50 p.m.: I call the GM with the rental reliever and tell them we have a deal. Our front offices have cleared the $1,000,000 with MLB, and medicals have been approved. A couple of reporters have details of the completed trade before I’m even able to text ownership and our manager to let them know it’s official.
5:58 p.m.: The GM with the bat calls again and says they’ll throw in one of their consensus top-five players if we include our top prospect. It’s a creative suggestion, but we’re still unwilling to move our top prospect.
6 p.m.: The trade deadline passes.
6:30 p.m.: I hold a pregame media session with our broadcasters to discuss the trade deadline and our team’s new reliever. Like our fans, they were hoping we’d do more at the deadline. I tell them we were working hard, and we were close on many things, but it just didn’t happen.
If only trades were as easy as they look in “Moneyball.”
