How the 2013 Free Agent Class Is Impacting the 2012 MLB Trade Deadline

It's trade deadline season in Major League Baseball. In the past, this is the time of year in which we got to see such madness as small-market teams raiding big-market teams of their star players and other big-market teams selling the farm to acquire missing puzzle pieces.

But MLB is in uncharted territory right now, and has been ever since November. This year's deadline season will not be like the deadline seasons of yesteryear.

The big difference this year is that MLB is operating under a new collective bargaining agreement that was finalized in November, a summary of which can be found over at MLB.com.

The new CBA brought a lot of changes. Some big, some small. Both the big changes and the small changes are going to have an impact on what happens in the next two weeks.

The big change, obviously, is the extra wild card berth in each league. The idea was to make it so that more teams would be in contention for a playoff spot, a reality that would help generate more storylines and, of course, more revenue.

As you've no doubt already noticed, adding the second wild card has had the desired effect. At the moment I'm writing this, three teams are tied for the second wild card spot in the American League and four more teams are within 2.5 games off the pace. In the National League, there are five teams within six games of the second wild card spot.

In theory, this means that there are more teams looking to buy at the deadline than there usually are. And because there are a lot more buyers than there are sellers, that means the sellers can wage bidding wars for their top trade chips and walk away from the deadline filthy rich in prospects, cash and all the other things that make baseball teams happy.

Fun for the whole family, really.

But again, this is in theory. The reality of the situation is different, and that has everything to do with one of the more overlooked changes made by the new CBA.

In the past, there were "Type A" and "Type B" free agents, and any team that failed to re-sign such players was compensated with draft picks.

The new CBA eliminated this system. Now, pending free agents can be offered one-year contracts with a salary equal to the average salary of the 125 highest-paid players from the prior season. Think of these as being similar to qualifying offers for restricted free agents in the NBA (h/t to MLBTradeRumors.com for making that association first).

If a free agent turns down a qualifying offer and signs with a new team, that new team has to surrender a draft pick. That pick, however, does not go to the player's old team.

To boot, players are only subject to qualifying offers if they've been with one club all season. Players who get traded to new teams cannot be offered qualifying offers by their new teams.

In other words, teams that trade for rental players at the trade deadline this year won't be getting draft picks if the rental players go on to sign elsewhere as free agents.

This means that a contender could trade for a rental player, miss the playoffs and lose the rental player to free agency with absolutely nothing to show for it. They will have traded precious prospects for nothing.

Seeing as how most of the players who get dealt every year are rental players, this obviously makes things complicated.

The notion that all contenders are going to be buyers is flawed, especially when it comes to teams that are contending for a wild card spot. ESPN's Buster Olney explained why in just 140 characters:

"

By the way: A lot of teams in a holding pattern, and partly because some don't view one-and-maybe-done wildcard berth as a real incentive.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) July 18, 2012"

Things would probably be different if the two wild card teams in each league had to play a three- or five-game series to decide who gets to move on to the Division Series, but that's not the case. The wild card teams will play just one game to decide who gets to move on.

So teams that are looking to acquire rental players have tough calls to make because they basically need to take a leap of faith and assume that acquiring a rental player or two will lead them not just to the postseason, but deep into the postseason. 

Meanwhile, teams that have rental players to offer can't demand an arm and a leg for their rentals because the demand for them is not as high as it would have been under the old CBA. Things are further complicated by the fact that teams that have rental players know they're merely going to get compensatory draft picks if they lose their rentals to free agency.

Take Cole Hamels, for example. He's been rumored to be on the trade block for weeks, and the latest word from Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com is that the Philadelphia Phillies will consider trading their star lefty if they can't sign him to an extension some time in the next week. The extension they have in mind is worth $130 million over six years.

According to Heyman, the Texas Rangers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels headline the list of possible suitors for Hamels.

Of those three, the Rangers have to be considered the best suitor for the Phillies because of how deep their farm system goes and because they have incentive to deal for Hamels. They're going to make the playoffs, but their starting rotation lacks an ace. They're going to need one of those if they want to win the World Series, and they most certainly want to win the World Series after losing the last two.

The Angels are in pretty much the same boat. They spent the offseason constructing a championship-caliber team, but they could use another ace pitcher to pair with Jered Weaver. It's either that or hope that Dan Haren recaptures his old form once he comes off the disabled list.

The Angels, however, do not have a strong farm system. Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus ranked theirs as the No. 23 farm system in baseball before the start of the season, and that was when Mike Trout was still technically a prospect. 

To get Hamels, the Angels would basically have to empty a farm system that is already very weak, and that would be a big risk to undertake seeing as how this is a championship or bust season and there's no guarantee they'll be able to re-sign Hamels. Their payroll is already bloated.

The Dodgers face a similar dilemma. They have good young pitching prospects, and they'd have to dangle several of those in order to convince the Phillies to give up Hamels. They would be sacrificing a good chunk of the organization's depth, and the organization doesn't have much depth to spare.

What makes the Dodgers different from the Rangers and the Angels is that they're simply trying to make the postseason. They're looking up at the San Francisco Giants in the NL West and are a couple games off the pace in the NL wild card chase. If they make a deal for Hamels, they'll be doing so with hopes that he's the missing link in their quest to make the postseason.

Or the Dodgers can go out and acquire a much cheaper option who could end up being just as good, hence the reason they're viewed as the favorite to land Chicago Cubs righty Ryan Dempster, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today.

Dempster is also a rental player, but he won't cost the Dodgers nearly as many prospects as Hamels. And if they do acquire him, there won't be any pressure to re-sign him like there would be with Hamels.

Instead, the Dodgers can just head into the offseason with plans to sign Hamels as a free agent, as many expect them to do.

You can easily take all this and apply it to other high-profile, would-be rental acquisitions. The Zack Greinke situation is just as complicated, as is the Shane Victorino situation and the Carlos Quentin situation. These are players who are going to come at a cost, and one can already tell that buyers are hesitant to pay big prices for rentals like them.

The 2013 free agent market isn't just complicating the trade market for rental players, though. Naturally, the big picture is even more complicated. 

Justin Upton, for example, is not a rental player. He's under club control through 2015, yet the word from Nightengale (see above link) is that the Arizona Diamondbacks are committed to dealing Upton either in the next couple of weeks or during the offseason.

According to Olney, however, much of the interest in Upton is coming from non-contenders. There aren't many of those around MLB, but this means that teams such as the San Diego Padres, Colorado Rockies, Chicago Cubs, Seattle Mariners and Minnesota Twins could (I can't stress that enough) be more interested in Upton than the Boston Red Soxes and New York Yankees of the world.

If so, this makes perfect sense. It's going to take a major package of prospects to pry Upton from the Diamondbacks this season, and this isn't a good season in which to give up a major package of prospects for Upton. He's underachieved all season, so acquiring him wouldn't necessarily mean acquiring a huge upgrade. As strange as it feels to say this, contenders have better options than Upton on the trade market.

Hence the reason contenders who do have an interest in Upton are better off waiting until the offseason to make their move. And if they can't get Upton, they can always turn their attention to soon-to-be-free-agent outfielders such as Victorino, Quentin, Josh Hamilton, Melky Cabrera, Nick Swisher, Delmon Young, B.J. Upton and so on. The outfield market is going to be very deep this offseason.

The word of the day, as you can tell, is "complicated." The trade deadline always brings with it plenty of headaches for MLB executives, but things are even worse this year. General managers are trying to fix their teams while tiptoeing around the new CBA and weighing whether or not the wild card race is worth the effort.

Things will run a lot smoother next year and the year after that and so on, as executives around the league will have a better idea of how to approach the deadline after having adjusted to the new CBA this year. There will be fewer headaches in the future. 

Fewer, but there will still be a lot. In shaking things up this past offseason, MLB effectively turned the trade deadline into a gauntlet run.

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