MLB Trade Rumors: What's Holding Up the Deadline Trade Market This Season?

The July 31 non-waiver trade deadline draws ever closer, yet so little has changed across the MLB landscape. Carlos Beltran is still with the New York Mets, Heath Bell with the San Diego Padres and the list goes on.

The biggest trades to date? How about the Reds sending Jonny Gomes to the Washington Nationals? Or the Giants acquiring Jeff Keppinger from the Houston Astros?

Not exactly blockbuster deals, to say the least.

Meanwhile, Beltran is still producing for the middling Mets, Bell is still closing for the paltry Padres and everyone else in the world of baseball is going about their business as usual.

With one caveat: the dam of player movement could still blow at any moment.

So what's the hold up? What's keeping buyers from buying and sellers from selling with August just around the corner?

Too Many Buyers, Not Enough Sellers

In a word, parity. 15 teams currently sit within four games of a playoff berth. Only eight will survive to play into October.

Furthermore, there exists a "muddled middle" of clubs who are out of contention but aren't exactly in full fire sale mode yet, with an eye toward retooling for contention next season.

As of now, that group includes nine teams: the Rays, Jays, Rockies, Twins, Royals, Mariners, Nationals, Cubs and Marlins.

That leaves only six teams—the Mets, Dodgers, Padres, Astros, Orioles and A's—on the precipice of extreme makeovers. Only half of those teams may move players of real consequence before week's end: Beltran from New York, Bell from San Diego and Hunter Pence from Houston.

This all amounts to a skewing of the market toward the sellers, since there are so fewer of them than there are buyers. As such, buyers are facing higher barriers to add big league players .

The nearer the deadline draws, however, the more leverage buyers will have in their negotiations, as sellers won't want to lose their stars for nothing or hope for a waiver-wire deal.

Youth Wins the Day

Even so, it's not as though the asking prices for the biggest names on the block are all that much more exorbitant than they would've been in the past. In fact, they may be a bit more reasonable than in year's past, with the Mets likely to cede Beltran's bat to whichever team is willing to sacrifice but one blue-chip prospect.

Most teams wouldn't have flinched at that four or five years ago, but nowadays that sort of demand draws a shudder from even the biggest spenders. 

Why the shift? Again, parity.

Some teams are still amenable to trading prospects, but even contenders with bloated payrolls like the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies have taken a more measured approach to deadline deals of late. The Yanks and Sox have both been clear about their desire to lay low this time around.

Yes, each one of those three teams has thrown around cash in recent years, but they've done most of that work in the offseason.

Meanwhile, everyone, smaller market teams in particular, has taken a particular interest in the way teams like the Rangers and Giants have built themselves into legitimate baseball powerhouses by promoting from within.

San Francisco, in particular, got its boost to the 2010 World Series from within when the club promoted eventual NL Rookie of the Year Buster Posey to the bigs.

The Juice? Not Really Worth the Squeeze

And considering how well stocked the top teams are already, what motivation is there for them to sacrifice future success to win now when their ball clubs as currently constituted are already good enough to make deep postseason runs?

Simply put, there just aren't many players out there that buyers really should sell their souls for at this point.

As good as Beltran has been this year, he's 34, his knees are shot and (most importantly) he'd only be a two-month rental.

Sure, he was amazing with the Astros in 2004, but that was seven years, $100-plus million and multiple surgeries ago. The chances of Beltran replicating that performance are slim to none.

Bell, a free agent at season's end, has drawn interest mostly from teams with established closers. He's has expressed a willingness to move to a set-up role, but would still require too great a commitment in talent and dollars for most teams to swallow.

Some popular names, like Pence and Ubaldo Jimenez, are worth trading for but are more likely to move in the offseason. Others, like Aramis Ramirez and Jose Reyes, won't move at the deadline either because they don't want to or their teams don't want them to.

So for those baseball fans sitting on the edges of their seats, waiting for the other shoe to drop, Beltran will probably go somewhere, as will Bell.

But outside of that, the biggest names to watch for? Josh Willingham? Mike Adams? Edwin Jackson?

Not exactly game-changers, but such is the nature of the 2011 trade deadline.