There Will Be Trades, but No Blockbusters

There was a time this season when the last two weeks of July, the period leading up to the trading deadline, looked like Armageddon. It looked like open season on the high-profile players who will be free agents this November or next. It looked like the game’s biggest names could be switching teams in a fast and furious frenzy.

Weren’t the Chicago Cubs about to trade Sammy Sosa? Weren’t the Detroit Tigers about to peddle Juan Gonzalez? Wasn’t that going to be the start of something big?

Things change.

It looks now as if the deals last week that sent Denny Neagle from the Cincinnati Reds to the New York Yankees and Andy Ashby from the Philadelphia Phillies to the Atlanta Braves may be as good as it gets.

Oh, we’ll hear lots of talk and oodles of rumors between now and July 31. Make no mistake, we’ll see some deals. There are, after all, lots of teams still looking for the edge that will put them over the top in the playoff race. But the trades we’ll see in the next week and a half are more likely to involve second-tier players instead of such stars as Sosa, Gonzalez, Mike Mussina, Alex Rodriguez or Tino Martinez.

Why?

“Because it’s getting harder and harder to get young prospects for anybody,” Colorado Rockies General Manager Dan O’Dowd says. “There are only a few clubs in the game who have the depth to give the young talent up. That’s why Cincinnati and Philadelphia acted as quickly as they did.”

The Yankees and Braves are two of those clubs with young, available talent. The Reds and Phillies pulled the triggers on their trades with those teams 212 weeks before the deadline so they could snag the vobtainable prospects before somebody else did. Not only did Neagle and Ashby, plus the Minnesota Twins’ Brad Radke (who signed an extension with Minnesota), go off the market early, those earlier trades used up a considerable chunk of what the “have-not” teams want in return for their stars. A slowdown in big deals was inevitable.

If something truly significant happens before the deadline, look for it to come out of Oakland or Seattle. They’re both looking for a bat. The A’s may be among the rare teams with attractive minor leaguers to deal, and the Seattle Mariners are knee-deep in pitching. But generally, moving a “name” isn’t going to be easy at this point.

The Reds, for instance, might be interested in trading Barry Larkin, who will be a free agent at the end of the season. But the number of teams eager to take on a 36-year-old shortstop in search of a three-year contract worth $28 million is tiny. The New York Mets might be curious, but they couldn’t match the Yankees’ package of prospects in their attempt to get Neagle, and it isn’t likely they’ll be able to offer anything Cincinnati wants for Larkin, either. Larkin intrigues the Mariners, but only if he would agree to play third base. He won’t.

The Cleveland Indians pretty much know they won’t be able to re-sign Manny Ramirez, so they’ll listen to offers now. But the team probably doesn’t exist that has the prospects to make a fair trade for him and the willingness or wherewithal to a) lose him to free agency at the end of the season, or b) sign him to an expensive extension. The Rockies are probably interested, but not to the point of pillaging their minor-league system when they figure to have a shot at signing him as a free agent four months from now.

(A good guess from one G.M.: Cleveland lets Ramirez go through free agency in November and then makes a strong off-season push to sign Gonzalez away from Detroit. The presence of the Alomar brothers, who also are native Puerto Ricans, may help entice Igor to Jacobs Field.)

The Texas Rangers are fielding offers for closer John Wetteland, but most of the teams who are calling fall into the “looky-loo” category. Still, Wetteland is a slightly better bet to be traded than some of the other “names.” One possibility is Atlanta, which still has a few prospects to burn and has yet to see the consistency it wants from John Rocker. (Bobby Cox yanked Rocker after a four-pitch walk to the first hitter he faced last Thursday in Baltimore.)

Houston’s hands are tied when it comes to Moises Alou, who says he wants to stay where he is and can veto any deal that comes up. That’s unfortunate for the Astros, in that it’s becoming more apparent that Alou is best-equipped to be a DH these days. Also, Alou is one of Jeff Bagwell’s favorites, and Houston will need to do everything it can to keep Bagwell happy if it hopes to re-sign him after 2001.

Who’s left? Not Sosa. Looks like he’ll play out the string with the Cubs. Probably not Jose Canseco, who gains at least a one-year reprieve in Tampa Bay from the delay in moving the Devil Rays into the National League. And probably not Curt Schilling, as long as the Phillies play as well in the last two weeks of July as they did in June.

Come the July 31 trading deadline, players will change teams. But the players who do probably will be the David Seguis of the world, the Bobby Higginsons, the Wil Corderos, the Darren Olivers, the Dmitri Youngs, the Sterling Hitchcocks.