Garrett Crochet's Demands and the 'What If' Stories of the 2024 MLB Trade Deadline
The 2024 MLB trade deadline came and went on Tuesday and, honestly, it was a little sad to see it go.
And that was much more so when the subsequent feeling hit that it could have been better.
Sure, plenty of moves went down, and some were indeed quite big. The Los Angeles Dodgers getting Jack Flaherty at the buzzer was huge, and the early returns from Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Randy Arozarena already suggest the trades centered on them will go in the books as big winners.
But what about the deals that weren't made?
These are hard to discuss as if they should have been certainties, yet it's possible in some cases to look back and wonder how things might have gone differently. "What ifs," basically.
So, let's look back on eight storylines that might have gone somewhere but didn't.
What If the Mets Never Found Their Footing?
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The New York Mets have been hot for a while now. Heck, it's been so long that you might not even remember how cold they were at the outset of 2024.
They lost five in a row right out of the gate and only kind of recovered over the next two months. Come June 2, they were 24-35 and saddled with a 7.9 percent chance of making the playoffs.
And the Pete Alonso rumors? They were everywhere, and rightfully so given they were going nowhere and he was staring down free agency.
The potential landing spots for the 29-year-old were many, with teams such as the New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners standing out as particularly good fits for him. The former was especially fun to speculate about, for obvious reasons.
Yet whatever timeline that might have led to an Alonso blockbuster ultimately diverged from ours. What we got instead is a Mets team that went into deadline day on a Grimace-ordained 32-15 run and in possession of a wild-card spot.
Bully for them, of course, but a bummer for any team that may have been eyeing the four-time All-Star as a slugging savior.
Now we wait until the offseason to fire up a new round of speculation around where Alonso will sign his massive free-agent contract.
What If Things Hadn't Gone so Wrong (and Right) for the Cubs?
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The Chicago Cubs were another team that looked like a fit for Alonso on paper earlier in the summer, but that notion came with a caveat.
First, they needed to put themselves in a position to be buyers.
The Cubs began 2024 pointed in that direction, but it's amazing what can change when a team starts at 37-44. All sorts of North Siders became fodder for trade speculation, including erstwhile Rookie of the Year and MVP Cody Bellinger.
So, even after Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer punted the ball to 2025, are we living in a world where the team is not just intact but also in possession of shiny new players like Nate Pearson and Isaac Paredes?
Well, Bellinger breaking his finger on a hit-by-pitch on July 10 might as well have killed whatever trade market there was for him. And who knows if his teammates are responsible for steering Hoyer away from a total teardown, a la one that might have seen Justin Steele leave town?
I'm not saying that the Cubs' 12-9 record in the run-up to the deadline absolutely did such a thing. I'm merely saying that I can't help but wonder.
What If Things Hadn't Gone so Wrong (and Right) for the A's?
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Speaking of ill-timed finger injuries, well, there's just no such thing as a good time for one, is there?
In the scheme of things, though, Mason Miller couldn't have picked a worse time to break his left pinkie. Before it happened, he was the most desirable closer on the trade market. There just aren't many guys out there throwing 104 mph, you know.
But after it happened? Not so much. Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that the calls on the 25-year-old stopped coming in, which notably meant no more contact with the Los Angeles Dodgers or Baltimore Orioles.
None of this necessarily barred the A's from cashing in other prized assets, such as Brent Rooker and JJ Bleday. But what may have been is the team's sudden surge in the last weeks before the deadline, in which the A's put together a genuinely entertaining 14-8 run.
Whatever the case, Miller, Rooker and Bleday remain members in good standing in Oakland. Teams that needed power for their bullpen and/or lineup are worse off for it.
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What If the Diamondbacks Hadn't Stopped Sliding?
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Let's go back to a point in time when the National League champions looked screwed.
It wasn't that long ago, really. Losses in five out of six between June 22 and June 28 pushed the Arizona Diamondbacks down to 39-43 and 11.5 games out of first place in the NL West. After beginning at 46.8 percent, their chances of making the playoffs stood at 17.6 percent.
All the more frustrating was how good the vibes should have been. The D-backs otherwise had the usual trappings of a team on the rise, including a dramatically increased payroll and the biggest year-to-year attendance increase of any team.
It nonetheless wasn't hard to imagine them breaking up the band with the express purpose of trying again in 2025. And if they did, they figured to offer a well-rounded first baseman (Christian Walker), a destroyer of right-handed pitching (Joc Pederson), a top-notch closer (Paul Sewald) and maybe even a proven playoff starter (Jordan Montgomery).
Such musings are long gone now, though.
That will happen when a team rips off a 17-8 run and raises its playoff chances above where they began.
What If the Rangers Hadn't Stopped Sliding?
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Let's now go back to a point in time when the World Series champions likewise looked screwed.
The Texas Rangers were nine games under .500 on July 4, at which point their playoff chances stood at 5.0 percent. It was only a couple of days later that Nightengale reported rival GMs expected the team to sell some key wares, including Max Scherzer.
Yet it wasn't long before the three-time Cy Young Award winner put the kibosh on that, invoking the ancient rite of "I Have This No-Trade Clause for a Reason, Darn It."
A couple of weeks later, you might squint and perceive the Rangers' trade of Michael Lorenzen as proof that this team isn't all-in. He had been one of their best pitchers, after all.
What that actually was, though, was the Rangers preemptively clearing space for pitchers who stand to come off the IL in August, such as Jacob deGrom.
This seemed like part of the Rangers' plan for 2024 as far back as January, and it's already in motion in the win column with 13 wins in 20 games leading up to the deadline.
What If the Blue Jays Had Continued Sliding?
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In case anyone needs a reminder, speculation about the Toronto Blue Jays holding a fire sale began to build in May.
It specifically concerned Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, and it came through a rival executive who spilled the beans.
"I don't think they're opposed to it," the exec told Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. "They've talked to teams about it. The asks were ridiculous, but I think they're going to try to retool a lot, and using those guys to get pieces may be the way to do it."
Toronto GM Ross Atkins was quick with a deflection, but that didn't quell the speculation.
How could it? The Blue Jays were bad when that report came out, and they only got worse as they fell further and further. They were 10 games under .500 as recently as July 5, at which point a full-on rebuild looked like a good idea.
But then fate intervened, taking Bichette off the table via a bad calf strain and otherwise propelling the team back toward respectability with an 11-8 run between July 6-29. To his credit, nobody has been aiding the push as much as Guerrero.
Maybe it was never really that big, but whatever chance there was of the Blue Jays completely blowing it up might have died with these events. They went into deadline day determined to hold Guerrero, Bichette and all their non-rentals.
What If the Stars Had Aligned for a Tarik Skubal Trade?
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Were the Detroit Tigers ever really likely to trade Tarik Skubal?
It's doubtful. Though it wasn't uncommon for his name to pop up in trade rumors, the framing tended to be that he was the summer's unattainable Holy Grail.
"While the Detroit Tigers could get a king's ransom for Tarik Skubal, they're not inclined to move him," wrote ESPN's Jeff Passan on July 26.
And yet—and yet—the Tigers weren't hanging up on interested parties. Per Nightengale, these notably included the Dodgers and Orioles.
This indicates the Tigers were at least willing to ponder whether their future would be better off not with Skubal, but rather a haul of prospects the likes of which only he could command in a trade. He's the AL Cy Young Award favorite and MLB's best pitcher for the last calendar year, and he's only 27 and not ticketed for free agency until after 2026.
Skubal didn't ultimately go anywhere, almost certainly because nobody made a good enough offer. Tigers POBO Scott Harris said it himself: "We never came close to trading Skubal."
Harris also spoke of wanting to make contention "happen as fast as we can," which makes you wonder if Skubal and company helped their own cause. After falling to a season-high nine games under .500 on July 4, the Tigers clawed their way back to within four games of the break-even mark by deadline day.
What If Garrett Crochet Hadn't Made Those Demands?
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Skubal may not have been especially likely to go anywhere, but another ace lefty in the AL Central seemed as good as gone at times.
Even as far back as June 30, Nightengale reported the Chicago White Sox "intend to trade" Garrett Crochet after failing to come to terms on a contract extension. Given the circumstances, the moment felt seismic.
Crochet had just turned 25 on June 21, and he was days away from being named an All-Star for the first time. He earned it, as on the final day of June, he pitched seven two-run innings with 11 strikeouts to push his ERA to 3.02 and his strikeout total to 141 over 101.1 innings.
But then this happened:
This took everyone by surprise, including White Sox GM Chris Getz and seemingly all the GMs he was negotiating with.
One GM asked Passan, "Why would I want to get a guy who doesn't want to pitch in the playoffs?"
Because he was also on a highly publicized innings limit, this alone might not have killed Crochet's market. But as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic told Foul Territory, certain teams "bailed" on Crochet even before the market closed, with him still on the South Side.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
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