Extend the Trade Deadline? I hope the Atlanta Braves vote No

There have been a lot of voices suggesting a move of the trade deadline out to August 15th or 31st.  Here’s one dissenting opinion.

If you think your club needs a trade in order to ‘make a run’ toward the playoffs, then a later deadline does you no favors whatsoever.

This season, the MLB non-waiver trade deadline have been moved to August 1st at 4pm Eastern time.  The change was made because July 31 falls on a Sunday and the preponderance of Sunday afternoon games would pose an inconvenience to teams that might be both trading and playing in those final hours.

While several teams are playing on Monday, August 1st, none of them are doing so within 3 hours of that 4pm cutoff, so that works a lot better… though those of us looking for #HugWatch tweets will miss out.  So be it.

Changes Have Been Floated… and Made

Last year, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred suggested moving the deadline to some point later in the year.  Dave Cameron of Fangraphs.com, writing for Fox Sports, opined the same 2 years ago.  Many others have jumped on board this bandwagon.

Cameron also added some history.  The notion of a deadline for trades apparently dates back to 1917 in the NL… though once the AL adopted the practice in 1920, the leagues didn’t initially agree, with the senior league opting for August 20th while the AL went with July 1.

In 1921, the league actually came together on a Grand Unified Date of August 1st… until that was moved back to June 15th in 1922.  That remained firm until 1986 – the year in which we got the current deadline of July 31.

The reasons most often posited for going to a date like August 15th are simple:  more playoff teams and more teams being “in the race” longer.  Thus it would allow clubs to make changes to their rosters for longer periods of time and allow buy/sell decisions to be made later in the year.

I happen to think that this is bunk and a bad argument all around.

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