MLB's How-to Guide for Determining If You're a Buyer or Seller

July is a chaotic time in Major League Baseball. Between actual trades taking place and rumors being spread, no one has any idea what is going on. Even some teams are in a gray area where they don't know whether to buy or sell. 

We see it all the time, where a team no one expected to contend is much closer in the division and/or wild card race than they were supposed to be. The front office wants to show the fanbase they are going for it, so they pull the trigger on a deal that mortgages their future for the potential of today. 

On the flip side, sometimes there are teams that hang around in a race only to start selling their assets because they know that things just aren't going to work this year and they want to make plans that will help them compete at a championship level sooner than later. 

We can look at the standings today to see who the true have's (St. Louis, Boston, Tampa Bay, Detroit, etc.) and have not's (Houston, Miami, Chicago Cubs and White Sox, Minnesota, etc.) are. But it is that middle ground with at least 10-12 teams wondering what to do before July 31. 

While we have all heard the talk about what those teams might be looking to do, our goal is to help show why their decision should be much easier than they are making it. 

Here are the real things that a team and front office should—and in all likelihood, will—look at before deciding to buy or sell. 

Don't look at games back, look at your record

To use this year as an example, a team like the Phillies, whose general manager continues to insist that they will be buyers (or at least not sellers) at the deadline, is making a mistake because the rest of the National League East has proven to be mediocre. 

Washington looked like the class of the division coming into the year, but injuries to players like Bryce Harper, Ryan Zimmerman, Danny Espinosa coupled with poor performances from Denard Span, Kurt Suzuki and Adam LaRoche have taken a toll on the offense. 

Atlanta leads the division by six games right now, but the Braves have been a .500 team since a 12-1 start. 

Because the division is so mediocre, the Phillies are able to convince themselves that they might be able to get back in the playoff race. The problem is they are just a .500 team themselves right now and are more likely than the Braves or Nationals to start breaking down the longer the season goes on because their roster is filled with older players. 

On top of that, the Phillies don't have a lot of talent coming up through the pipeline who can offset potential losses or disappointments. Left-handed starter Jesse Biddle is their best prospect, but he is not quite ready for the big leagues and projects as a solid-average starter instead of an impact arm. 

Plus, they are loaded with expiring contracts and no real reason to overpay to keep them heading into next season when they will probably we worse off. Chase Utley is a beloved figure in that city and having a strong season now that he is healthy, but given his age (34) and injury hist+ory, would you want to invest a multi-year contract to keep him?

Michael Young continues to be the subject of trade rumors, which the Phillies should count as a blessing since he's clearly no longer the Michael Young of old. 

On top of that, they still have bad contracts (Ryan Howard and Jonathan Papelbon) that aren't going anywhere anytime soon. They will get some relief when they decline Roy Halladay's option, but they need to start blowing the whole thing up and starting over again. 

Even dangling a player like Cliff Lee, who remains one of the best pitchers in the game and has two guaranteed years left on his contract, would be a step in the right direction. But they can't see that because Ruben Amaro, Jr. just happens to notice that the division standings say they are close enough to get back in the race. 

We picked on the Phillies a lot, but it is not like they are the only team to think that way. Cleveland did it two years ago when it acquired Ubaldo Jimenez for Drew Pomeranz and Alex White after having a surprising start to the season. Neither of those prospects have panned out yet, but Jimenez hasn't exactly been good for the Indians. 

The point being that the worst thing a team can do when deciding whether to go after the brass ring or look for next year is paying attention to what your record says you are. 

What is the state of your franchise?

Again, this is a lesson that can be applied to the Phillies, who have a number of players who would likely fetch a nice return if they were to be dealt and replenish a depleted system. 

But we can also look at a team like Pittsburgh, both with what has happened the previous two years and what is going on right now. In 2011-12, the Pirates found a way to get enough pitching to compete for the first half of the season. 

If you were to ask general manager Neal Huntington in an honest moment, he would have told you that the Pirates being over .500 on July 31 in 2011 and 2012 was not what they were expecting. 

You could see that in the way they approached the deadline both years. They didn't cave into the pressure from the fans and media to trade away their valuable assets in the minors to go for a winning season. 

Huntington did make a few small moves, like acquiring Derrek Lee and Ryan Ludwick in 2011. Those moves didn't move the needle, but it also didn't force the Pirates to sell out their bright future on the hopes of today. 

Fast forward to 2013, even though I am still skeptical about them as a playoff team because their offense is still one of the worst in baseball and the pitching staff is getting much-better-than-expected performances, they are much better positioned to make a big move now than the previous two years. 

Their farm system has filled out very nicely with both high-end pitching and position players. Jameson Taillon has tremendous stuff, though the results still don't match yet. Nick Kingham and Tyler Glasnow aren't far behind Taillon on the pitching pecking order in that system. 

Gregory Polanco and Alen Hanson have tremendous tools and are putting them to good use as they move up the minor league ladder. Josh Bell has been healthy and hitting relatively well in West Virginia. 

If Huntington feels like this is the time for the Pirates to make a move in a very top-heavy National League Central, their farm system is a great area of strength that they can use to add talent to make themselves better down the stretch. If they can find a player with multiple years left on his contract, that makes it all the more appealing for the team. 

Your system is going to dictate what you are able to do, if you want to buy. Going back to two teams we already mentioned, Philadelphia and Cleveland probably wouldn't be able to add the top hitter or pitcher on the market because there system doesn't present enough that is appealing, particularly in the higher levels of the minors for teams to be interested. 

Know the competition around you

The old cliche goes that if you take care of your own business, everything else will fall into place. Ultimately, for all the talk about what another team's schedule might be or who they might get back from injuries, the only one responsible for you making the playoffs is yourself. 

But therein lies the problem, because a lot of teams don't want to see the forest for the trees. All they can tell is that they are a piece of the playoff puzzle with a chance to be one of the 10 that get invited to the dance. 

A baseball team can't exist in a bubble. It has to understand the reality of the situation. So yes, right now you may only be 2-3 games out of the division or wild card lead. But that doesn't begin to tell you the whole story about what to look for. 

The first thing a team has to do is assess how it got to this point. Is there a whiff of luck associated with the winning? For instance, last year's Orioles played way over their heads because the bullpen was so good all season. That hasn't continued in 2013, but the offense has gotten so much better that they have been able to offset the difference. 

Obviously, no front office is going to come out and say "I think we have gotten a bit lucky, so we aren't going to do anything." But in a private moment you would hear them say something to that effect. 

The next thing a team must look at is their upcoming schedule for the second half. How many games against "good teams" do you have left? Are they littered with the likes of Houston, Seattle and the White Sox, or do we play teams like Boston, Tampa Bay, Oakland and Detroit?

If the schedule doesn't look very promising, you can forgive a team, especially a fringe contender, if they don't want to mortgage their future for the hopes of catching lightning in a bottle. 

Then you also have to look around and see how many teams are in the race. The addition of the second wild card team has changed the amount of teams in a race for a playoff spot, which can have a dramatic effect on the trade deadline. 

Ultimately it is on a general manager and front office to decide the best course of action, but everything happening around a team can also tell you as much as analysis of your own team. 

If you have a chance to compete in the division, where you are probably facing one or, at most, two other teams, then going all-in would make sense. But if you are putting your eggs in the wild card basket, where there could be 8-10 teams fighting for one or two spots, there is a lot more volatility to that scenario. 

At the end of the day...

No two teams are exactly the same. Ownership for one team that is a borderline contender might push the front office to make a move as a type of good-faith gesture to the fan base in hopes of selling more tickets this season and next.

On the flip side, there are some owners who won't allow their front office to make a move that will add more salary. Some teams can find a trade partner who will eat the rest of a player's contract, but then the team acquiring that player is forced to give up a much better prospect. 

For instance, when the Dodgers acquired Casey Blake from the Indians in 2008, Cleveland paid the remainder of Blake's $6.1 million contract and Los Angeles sent back Carlos Santana, who has turned into one of the best offensive catchers in baseball. 

Whatever the reason for making or not making a move, a front office has to know that there is a lot more to being in a pennant race than just being close to the rest of the division/league in the win-loss column. 

It is that knowledge that will lead teams to either play fast and loose with their assets, or take a more conservative approach. Like so many things in life, it all depends on the timing. 

If you want to talk baseball, feel free to hit me up on Twitter with questions or comments. 

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