Which American League teams could make the most impact at the MLB trade deadline?
Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman is joined by Zack Meisel of The Athletic to take an early look at the MLB trade deadline and which American League teams could be the ones making the most noise. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
I think you can safely say Seattle playing great.
They just won their eighth in a row last night.
That's a team we've seen be active at the deadline.
I expect that again.
Another team that has a top-heavy farm system, but has the pieces to make a move.
We know Dipoto's gonna be trying to do that.
Yankees, same thing.
Their farm system, not as good, but we know they're gonna go.
I expect them to certainly make a bullpen move, maybe patch up something else if they have some other injuries.
I think Toronto, a team we talked extensively about on Monday, almost no matter where they're at, they're going to try to add because I just think that as weird as the season has been, all the injuries, they're below 500, they've lost three in a row, that organizational is just not in a position to go backwards, I think, for any reason, frankly.
So I think if they're-- as long as they're floating in the middle and they don't lose the next, you know, 30 games in a row, I think they are gonna be buyers.
Other than that, who are the other AL teams you're watching that could kind of move in either direction dramatically that you would expect?
Yeah, I, I think we focus so much on buyers and sellers, but I think it's, it's maybe more appropriate to think of it in terms of who's good, who thinks they're good, who thinks they could be good, and who's given up, right?
Like, that's, that's the state of the American League.
Yeah.
I have no idea what to make of the Texas Rangers.
Yeah.
And- Yep they could have some interesting veteran pieces available if, if they go the other direction.
They're playing better lately.
you know, a team like the White Sox, like how, how do they assess where they're at?
Do they feel like there is legitimacy to their winning record?
And how aggressive do you wanna be in the infancy of what you hope is a sustained run?
I, I don't know the answer to that.
And they might, they might not know the answer because I don't know that they expected to be in this position.
Totally.
the Central itself, like, are the Twins gonna finish what they started last trade deadline?
Yes.
I think so.
Or do they think because the Central is weak that they're in this?
I, I would be surprised if Now again, their playoff odds are still at 25%, and because of how terrible Detroit and Kansas City have been, and if we assume the White Sox are in regress, then yeah, I guess you could factor them in.
And if the rest of the AL doesn't get its, you know, stuff together, I guess they could make noi- I still think that they end up trading Joe Ryan, trading Ryan Jeffers if he gets health- if he gets healthy.
And then I think the last team we just have to acknowledge here is Tampa, which is every year they're bizarre, and we've seen them do buying and selling at the same time when they've been good, buying and selling at the same time when they've been bad.
I'm so excited to see what they do because with their farm system also pretty stacked, they could just go in so many different directions.
There are holes on that roster that they could fill.
If they think they can actually compete to win the AL East, which they're still ahead of the Yankees right now, what, what does aggressive look like there?
Because they've just shown all kinds of strange sequences.
They could- And by the way, I think Cleveland- literally anything's on the table, right?
could fit into that bucket as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
and then, then the Tigers are- Well, but what about the Tigers?
Of course, the main char- Yeah.
Yeah, the Ti- the Tigers are the ultimate main character here for all the wrong reasons, and we're gonna have a million Scubal conversations when it gets, you know, when it gets to that point.
And yeah, I know he said again yesterday after he threw his simulated, you know, BP like, "Hey, if, if I s- we start winning, we won't be talking about this."
That's fine.
You're in such a hole that you can't Ken Rosenthal just wr- wrote a piece about this at "The Athletic" recently, like, you literally can't afford it anymore .
Like bad weeks, you just can't.
You're, you're, you know, 16 games under is so far down that even if he comes back and is pitching well, that is gonna be the, the biggest question that we're talking about, so.
