Trade madness paves way for winners
You probably already know this, but the World Series resumes tonight.
I won’t watch.
Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers and Yu Darvish of the Texas Rangers are key pieces in this Fall Classic.
No, wait!
Verlander and glamor fiancée Kate Upton are now with the Astros, while Darvish slings ’em up there for the Dodgers.
In fact, Verlander has a chance to close out the Series tonight against the Dodgers’ Rich Hill, in what would be a truly rich ending to this episode of musical clubhouses.
The Tigers and Rangers, meanwhile, will be watching on TV.
If this change of allegiances seems absurd, well, it’s actually dumber than that. It’s the silliest rule in all of sports.
With a July 31 trade deadline and more than a hundred games gone in the season, Major League Baseball allows contending teams to acquire — often via rental — big-name stars in exchange for minor league prospects as clubs out of pennant contention try to stock up for the future.
TO SAY I hate this type of foolishness would be a wild understatement.
Around mid-July, teams are forced to decide whether they should be buyers (yes, we have a chance to reach the playoffs) or sellers (Lord have mercy, we need help at seven positions).
This insane shifting of personnel has been made even nuttier with the addition of two wild-card teams in each league, a change made solely for television.
So now 10 teams have a shot at winning the World Series each October, which means there generally are a lot of buyers — the 10 lucky ones and another four or five who THOUGHT they could make it to the postseason but threw up on their shoes down the stretch.
At least the Astros are paying for the privilege of obtaining Justin and Kate.
Verlander is 34 and owed $56 million over the next two years — plus a $22 million vested option for 2020, so even though Detroit is paying $8 million of that salary for this year and 2018, Houston is on the hook for about $70 million.
Verlander has been outstanding down the stretch this season, but he’s had injury woes for most of two-plus seasons, so the Astros essentially paid a shoebox full of cash — and gutted their farm system — for a stud to grab the city’s first World Series title tonight.
Not in 2019.
THE TRUTH is that most big-league sports have these arbitrary, mid-season trading deadlines. The NFL’s ends tonight, in fact.
Baseball, though, is just plain ridiculous.
Last year, the Cubs needed a closer to complete their pennant-chasing roster, so they gave up the obligatory prospects to the Yankees for flame-throwing Aroldis Chapman — even knowing that Chapman would be a free agent at the end of year.
The Cubs won their Series as Chapman was decent but shaky, and then the Yankees re-signed the big lefty as soon as the season ended.
Maybe it was all agreed beforehand.
Embarrassing.
I say all this despite the club I covered on treks around America for 11 years, the Kansas City Royals, benefitting from late-July deals to help them win the World Series in 2015.
Quite honestly, I wish the Royals had done it without late-season rentals Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist — and I think they would have.
But we can’t blame the clubs, either buyers or sellers, for this July 31 trade madness. You try to win under the rules you’re given.
No, the fault lies with the various leagues with allowing such nonsense.
Teams should play out each season with the athletes under contract on Opening Day.
Period.
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Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. He can be reached at: [email protected].