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No aces to deal: Where are the starting pitchers at this trade deadline?
- Updated: July 27, 2016
9:09 AM ET
Call the cops. Call the FBI. Call the CIA. Tell them somebody kidnapped all the aces, because if you’re trying to trade for one at this year’s trade deadline, hey, good luck.
Over and over, we hear the same grumbling from one club official after another. If this isn’t the worst deadline starting-pitching market ever, it’s definitely in the argument.
“If you’re a team that desperately needs a starter,” one NL executive said this week, “it’s a tough year to try to find one who can make a difference.”
“Oh, there are names out there,” another NL exec said. “I mean, you can call the White Sox about Chris Sale and they wouldn’t hang up. You can call the Rays about Chris Archer. They wouldn’t hang up. I just don’t feel like they’re really as available as the kind of pitchers who were available in the past. Those guys in the past, they were getting moved. I don’t see that this year.”
If Sale and Archer don’t get traded this week, and with Drew Pomeranz already off the board, it’s likely that, if you check the major-league ERA leaders, NOBODY in the top 40 (among qualifying starters) will get dealt between now and the deadline. And the only qualifying starters with ERAs under 4.00 who are showing up in any legitimate rumors at the moment are Jeremy Hellickson (3.65), Ervin Santana (3.93) and Matt Shoemaker (3.99).
Now compare that with the big-name starters who filled up the transactions column at previous deadlines:
2015 – David Price, Cole Hamels, Johnny Cueto, Mike Leake, Scott Kazmir 2014 – Price, Jon Lester, Jake Peavy, John Lackey, Jeff Samardzija 2013 – Peavy, Matt Garza, Ian Kennedy 2012 – Zack Greinke, Ryan Dempster, Francisco Liriano 2011 – Ubaldo Jimenez, Doug Fister 2010 – Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, Dan Haren 2009 – Lee, Peavy 2008 – CC Sabathia, Rich Harden
Heard of those guys? Great. Now let’s put all those names in better perspective. Over the last eight deadlines, there were nine trades that involved former Cy Young Award winners. And the only year in that span that didn’t include a deal involving at least one former Cy Young was 2011.
But even 2011 featured the trade of Jimenez, a top-three Cy Young finisher the year before who was “still a big-name guy at the time,” one exec said. So to find the last deadline as bereft of impact starters as this one, you’d have to journey all the way back to 2007, when Kyle Lohse, Matt Morris and Joel Pineiro were the only veteran starters who changed zip codes.
With a trade market lacking impact arms on the market, mid-tier starting pitchers like Ervin Santana could be moved before Monday’s deadline. Hannah Foslien/Getty Images
At least this year there is more depth …
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