Current standings complicate trade deadline maneuvering

3:26 PM ET

Consider this Part II of my trade deadline preview, or where I play grumpy old man and suggest this deadline may end up being a little anticlimactic.

Yes, we’ll see the usual slate of middle relievers traded and we’ve seen a couple of interesting deals since last night, with Eduardo Nunez going to the Giants and Andrew Cashner and Colin Rea going to the Marlins. But those are likely low-impact moves as Nunez isn’t even guaranteed to start for the Giants once Matt Duffy returns from the disabled list and Cashner has actually been a below-replacement level pitcher the past two seasons. The most intriguing name in that trade is Josh Naylor, Miami’s first-round pick last season, who went to the Padres.

Jay Bruce has put up some big numbers, but his WAR is only 1.0. Rob Tringali/Getty Images

Part of the reason for my skepticism is that we have so many teams still in the playoff hunt, meaning we have many buyers and few sellers and the sellers don’t have enough good players to move.

In the American League, six teams are within 6.5 games of the second wild-card spot, so you have 11 teams who can legitimately claim to hold playoff hopes.

The sixth team is the Royals and they’re 49-52. I don’t expect them to make a run with that rotation, but they are the defending World Series champs and in 2014 they were 48-50 and still reached the postseason. That’s not exactly apples to apples because they were 48-50 on July 21 and 4.5 out of a wild-card spot. By July 30 they had climbed up to 54-52 and were 3.5 out. They didn’t actually make any big moves; they got hot in August and September and others teams faded.

Point is: The …

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