The looming deadline

The MLB trade deadline is Monday, August 3rd, at 6:00 p.m. ET. This deadline matters to teams that have a good chance to make the post-season as they can improve their rosters before the stretch run. This deadline matters to bad teams because they have a chance to “salvage” their shitty seasons by picking up some fresh talent for future seasons. As a bonus, some crappy teams will dump some salary and thus be better positioned to make more lousy payroll decisions at a later date. Teams in the middle—the ones that can’t decide if they are legit contenders or not—generally make no one happy as they try to play it both ways.

In short, like most things in sports, the hype exceeds the reality by orders of magnitude.

We’ve all seen good teams get better by taking advantage of a poor team’s “fire sale” and we’ve seen teams (like the 2025 Giants) make big moves and get nothing out of them. I like to use the phrase “it’s a crapshoot” a little too often but in this case the MLB trade deadline truly is a crapshoot.

So what dice should the Giants roll this summer? The season is lost, obviously. The big contracts (Devers, Adames, Chapman) aren’t going anywhere. That is unless the Yankees or Dodgers suddenly need a 1B/DH, SS, or 3B right now. A season-ending injury to Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Max Muncy, or their NYY equivalents (Paul Goldschmidt, Jazz Chisolm, Ryan McMahon) would move the needle a little. Other than that, don’t expect big changes to the SFG 40-man.

The word all season has been that Luis Arraez is the obvious trade candidate as he’s on a one-year deal and he’s hitting like a batting champion again (and playing well in the field). What’s he worth? An AA pitcher, perhaps? The Giants could use an ML-ready starter but that would take more than just one player. So they’ll trade Arraez for a kid who might help the club in two years. Or they could get a decent relief pitcher, something they could use, but that’s not much. Bye Luis, hope you enjoyed your time in SF.

There’s Robbie Ray as well. He’s a free agent at the end of the season. A pennant-chasing team can always use another starter. What can you get for Ray? Again, not a whole lot.

This year’s trade deadline will pass for the Giants without a bang. It’ll be a whimper. Maybe we’ll see a couple of guys go and a couple of fresh faces emerge. In the very best case, one of those new faces will actually make a positive contribution to the club in 2027.

The Giants travel to Seattle for three on the weekend and then to KC for three until an off-day on the 23rd.

It looks like Roupp-Webb-Ray to face the Mariners.

Go Giants!

–M.C.