MLB trade deadline: Summarizing 6 trades that didn’t happen

The big headline at Tuesday’s MLB trade deadline concerned who was dealt … namely Juan Soto.

But almost interesting was the significant list of expected trades that didn’t happen at the MLB trade deadline.

It’s a lengthy list, including several available All-Stars. In most cases, it’s not immediately clear why trades for these players were not completed. The most likely reason is also the simplest: the trading team valued them more than any of the potential acquiring teams.

Only a few days ago, if any one player was most likely to be moved, it was Chicago Cubs catcher Willson Contreras. No less an authority than MLB writer Mark Feinsand said as much in a July 30 piece in which he identified Contreras as the single most likely player to be traded. “The impending free agent seems a lock to be moved,” he wrote.

Yet when the deadline passed and the Cubs took the field to play the Cardinals 90 minutes later in St. Louis, Contreras was right where he’s been for several seasons … in the lineup in a Cubs uniform.

Cubs President Jed Hoyer apparently decided that his team was better off playing out the string to Contreras’ free agency at season’s end in the hope of re-signing him. The alternative is making a qualifying offer, which would compensate the Cubs with a draft pick if Contreras signs elsewhere for 2023.

The same was true for Cubs left fielder Ian Happ, another member of Feinsand’s “most likely to be traded…” list. He started in left field for the Cubs Tuesday night.

The Giants were widely believed to be looking at trades for several front-liners, among them All-Stars Joc Pederson and Carlos Rodon. Indeed, Rodon’s most recent start, Sunday night on ESPN against the Cubs, was widely advertised as an audition.

The Giants, a sub-.500 team on the fringes of Wild Card contention, made several trades at the deadline, including sending Darin Ruf to the Mets. But neither Pederson nor Rodon appealed to contenders enough to entice them to make an offer attractive enough to the Giants to get them.

In numerous major league cities — Washington being the big obvious exception — the theme held: Fans sweated out the deadline, assuming a favorite player would be lost, when in the end no trades happened.

• J.D. Martinez, whose trade stock rose over the past several days as Boston’s fortunes sagged, attracted no takers and remains with the Red Sox.
• Outfielder Bryan Reynolds and closer David Bednar, both listed on some “likely to be traded” lists this past weekend, are still Pittsburgh Pirates.
• The Miami Marlins kept Pablo Lopez, 7-6 with a 3.41 ERA in 21 starts and arbitration-eligible at season’s end.
• The Texas Rangers, who are out of the American League postseason race nevertheless resisted the urge to trade their pitching ace, Martin Perez, who is 9-2 with a 2.52 ERA and who will be a free agent at season’s end.
• The Oakland Athletics traded several prominent players, among them pitchers Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino. But they turned down Milwaukee’s offer for center fielder Ramon Laureano, a veteran the pennant-contending Brewers could have badly used.

The 2022 trade deadline will justly be remembered for the Soto deal. But it should also be remembered for the numerous deals that did not happen.