The most active trade deadline in DTBL history saw five deals completed in the final two weeks before the August 15 deadline.\u00a0 From what I heard, many other deals were discussed as well.\u00a0 Some of the deals were made by the top three teams who are in an extremely tight race for the league championship.\u00a0 Others were made by teams looking to the future.<\/p>\n
The activity began a little more than a week prior to the deadline.\u00a0 On August 9, the three time defending champion Darkhorses completed a pair of trades.\u00a0 First, they acquired catcher Ryan Doumit from the Kings for starting pitcher Ervin Santana.\u00a0 The Darkhorses ran into a bit of a problem right before the deadline as both of their regular catchers suffered injuries (Russell Martin and Geovany Soto).\u00a0 Martin’s injury was especially problematic because he will miss the remainder of the season.\u00a0 Doumit took Martin’s spot in the Darkhorses lineup.\u00a0 The Darkhorses released Martin who was a key member of their three championships.\u00a0 Doumit has been mostly disappointing following a third round selection by the Kings.\u00a0 He was recently replaced in the Pirates and Kings lineups by Chris Snyder.\u00a0 He is getting time at other positions though, so he does have some fantasy value.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Santana gives the Kings a little more depth to a starting rotation that has been mostly disappointing this season.\u00a0 For now, Santana is on their bench, but the Kings had little to lose in this deal since Doumit was no longer part of their plans.<\/p>\n
The Darkhorses second deal on the 9th was a minor one.\u00a0 They acquired second baseman Alberto Callaspo and a 10th round pick in exchange for a 9th round pick to the Mavericks.\u00a0 The Mavericks had little use for Callaspo once Brian Roberts returned from the disabled list. so they were happy to move up a round for next year’s draft.\u00a0 Callaspo does have value for the Darkhorses though.\u00a0 Injuries to Martin Prado and Rafael Furcal have left the Darkhorses a little short handed in the middle infield.\u00a0 In fact, all of the deals made by the Darkhorses were primarily to shore up spots vacated by injuries.\u00a0 So far, they are still hanging on at the top of the standings, but their lead is tenuous at best.<\/p>\n
Three more deals were completed in the final weekend before the deadline.\u00a0 The first was a pretty significant trade between two teams still in the championship hunt.\u00a0 The Jackalope made their first trade in years, acquiring second baseman Kelly Johnson from the Kings for starting pitcher Max Scherzer.\u00a0 The Jackalope have had the best pitching staff in the league all year, but their offense has kept them out of first place.\u00a0 Johnson has had a very good year for the Kings, but was expendable due to a log jam in their middle infield.\u00a0 Johnson should give the Jackalope an immediate power boost.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Scherzer may have been the most talented pitcher sitting on a DTBL bench for most of the season.\u00a0 He was stuck behind the Jackalope’s five superstar aces.\u00a0 The Kings have had their eye on him for quite a while.\u00a0 He provides them with a power arm.\u00a0 Until earlier this week, the Kings were buried in last place in strike outs.\u00a0 The Kings have a lot of ground to make up, so this trade may not be enough.\u00a0 However, Scherzer will probably be part of their future plans.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest trade was between two teams near the bottom of the standings.\u00a0 The Mavericks traded DTBL home run leader Adam Dunn and a fourth round pick to the Cougars for a first round pick in next year’s draft.\u00a0 So the Mavericks will have two of the first four or five picks in the draft again next year.\u00a0 Hopefully for their sake, those picks will pan out a little better than they did this year.\u00a0 On the other hand, the Cougars know exactly what they are getting in Dunn.\u00a0 One of the most consistent power hitters in the league, Dunn will give the Cougars a huge power boost.\u00a0 He clearly would have been a top five pick in the draft if he had been eligible next year, so trading the pick made sense for the Cougars.<\/p>\n
Finally, the Mavericks weren’t done with their fire sale.\u00a0 The last trade before the deadline saw the Mavs deal veteran catcher Jorge Posada to the Darkhorses for relief pitcher Daniel Bard.\u00a0 Posada fills the other injury hole in the Darkhorses catching duo.\u00a0 Bard is a likely closer of the future, although if the Red Sox don’t make a decision soon on him vs. Papelbon, the Mavericks will have a difficult decision to make when roster cut time comes.\u00a0 This deal also leaves the Mavericks very shorthanded for the remainder of this season.\u00a0 They are out of free agent signings, so they will have to go with one catcher the rest of the way.\u00a0 On top of that, they had to activate Magglio Ordonez to fill Dunn’s spot.\u00a0 Ordonez probably won’t return until late September.\u00a0 So the Mavericks are playing two men short at the moment.\u00a0 Clearly, the Mavericks don’t have any particular desire to move up the standings.<\/p>\n
So what do these deals mean as far as this year’s pennant race is concerned?\u00a0 The Darkhorses made a bunch of moves to cover up for injuries.\u00a0 They weren’t necessarily big improvement type deals, but filled needs.\u00a0 They are obviously still the team to beat, although they did lose their first place spot for one day earlier this week.\u00a0 The Jackalope held first place for that one day.\u00a0 It was their first taste of the top of the standings since early in the season.\u00a0 Johnson should give the Jackalope offense a boost, but will it be enough?\u00a0 The Jackalope pitching is so strong that they should be right in the running until the end.\u00a0 As of today, they are just two points out.\u00a0 The third team in serious contention is the Naturals.\u00a0 Although they did not make any deadline deals, they still have as good a shot as anybody.\u00a0 They continue to dominate the batting categories, but have some pitching issues.\u00a0 Essentially, they are the exact opposite of the Jackalope.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the Darkhorses remain strong in batting and pitching.\u00a0 The Kings bolstered their starting pitching, but 11 1\/2 points will be difficult to make up in a month and a half.\u00a0 The moves they made were not just about this season though.\u00a0 They hope to keep their strong offense in tact, while improving the starting pitching.<\/p>\n
The other six teams have very little hope of making a run this year, but the Cougars and Mavericks both made moves with an eye to the future.\u00a0 The Mavericks have suffered through a miserable year full of injuries and disappointments.\u00a0 With the picks they have acquired, they hope for better results next year.\u00a0 The Cougars gave up their first round pick for ’11, but picked up a first round caliber player in Dunn.<\/p>\n
With three teams within four points of first place, the next month and a half should be very entertaining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The most active trade deadline in DTBL history saw five deals completed in the final two weeks before the August 15 deadline.\u00a0 From what I heard, many other deals were discussed as well.\u00a0 Some of the deals were made by the top three teams who are in an extremely tight race for the league championship.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11,6,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cougars","category-darkhorses","category-jackalope","category-kings","category-mavericks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}