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This is a week of big decisions for almost every general manager in baseball. Heading into Tuesday’s trade deadline, front offices need to figure out exactly where their teams stand in the playoff race and how much risk they’re willing to take in the name of success this year versus selling talent and reloading for the future. These kinds of problems can end up having ripple effects on franchises for years (or even decades) to come — no pressure!
This year’s deadline is even more interesting than most. For one thing, there’s the giant elephant in the room: Washington’s willingness to trade 23-year-old right-hander Juan Soto, a player who would shake up the World Series odds and get a huge return from both prospects. and MLB-ready talent. Then add another facet: the change in MLB’s playoff format for this season, which adds two additional postseason berths and offers a first-round bye to each league’s top two seeds. Both of these factors will fundamentally change the calculus around each team’s willingness to stand or continue to do so.
While we can’t tell you where Soto is headed, we can offer our annual assessment of which teams should be buying and selling at the deadline and to what extent. For this, we use what is known as the Doyle Number, which represents the amount of future six-year wins above replacement that a team would have to be willing to part with in order to improve their talent by 1 WAR this season. (This ratio — named by former Detroit Tigers shortstop Doyle Alexander in honor of a fateful 1987 trade in which he was prominently involved — is based on a combination of factors such as a team’s Elo rating, playoff chances and the chance of winning the World Series.)
In general, the top contenders have high Doyle numbers — meaning they have to go all-in to win now — while the non-contenders are closer to zero, meaning no amount of WAR this season would be worth to be added to his future expense. Teams on the fence between buying and selling have Doyles around 1.00, so they may be better served with either tactic depending on the offers available to them. According to Doyle, here are the top buyers — and sellers — of the 2022 trade market:
How the Doyle Number metric sees the 2022 trade deadline
Postseason Odds (per FiveThirtyEight Prediction Model) and Doyle Numbers* for 2022 MLB Buyers and Sellers
TEAM PO% WS% DOYLE TEAM PO% WS% DOYLE Dodgers >99% 26% 2.13 Red Sox 22% 1% 0.31 Yankees >99 21 2.04 Giants 22 1 0.22 Astros >99 13 010 1, 84 Mars 01 1.84 3 <1 0.06 Mets 99 8 1.66 D-backs 1 <1 0.01 Blue Jays 89 5 1.30 Rangers 1 <1 0.01 Brewers 83 3 1.02 Rockies <1 <1 0.01 Padres 83 2 01.101 Cubs. <1 0.00 Twins 60 2 0.71 Reds <1 <1 0.00 Mariners 68 1 0.67 Tigers <1 <1 0.00 Phillies 54 2 0.57 Royals <1 <1 0.00 Cardinals 56 1 0.45 Sothle 56 1 0.45 <4 0.00 White. 1 <1 0.00 Guardians 35 1 0.32 Nationals <1 <1 0.00
The Doyle number represents how many future talent wins a team would have to trade now for an additional talent win in 2022.
PO% refers to a team’s chances of making the playoffs. WS% refers to the odds of winning the World Series. Playoff and World Series odds are July 27.
SOURCES: FANGRAPHS, ESPN
Sure, the World Series favorite Dodgers and Yankees have the highest Doyle numbers. In fact, both are over 2.00, meaning they’d have to be willing to part with twice as much future WAR to improve this year. But there are fewer clear-cut buyers than in the past, as only seven teams have a Doyle value above 1.00, compared to nine teams that fit that ranking last season. Meanwhile, seven other clubs are sandwiched between a Doyle of 0.40 and 0.90, indicating a plethora of teams for whom the best deadline tactic isn’t entirely obvious.
A small field of would-be buyers is not unusual. For example, 2019 also saw just seven teams with a Doyle number over 1.00. But in this case, the new postseason format serves as a limiting factor. With more teams in the playoffs, the value of a marginal playoff campaign increases… but the value of everything else decreases. Here’s one component of the Doyle formula—the odds of making the division series as a function of regular season wins—and how we modified it to account for the new format:
The result is subtle, but the new format suggests that teams that are good — with at least 90 wins, say — but not great are less likely to make the playoffs. This in turn lowers those teams’ Doyle Numbers, as the prospect of reloading for next season and beyond looks better if your World Series odds this season look worse. After all, why waste good prospects on a season that has little chance of ending in a championship?
But that doesn’t mean any of those mid-major teams wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) buy if given the chance to add talent this year. Here are the clubs Doyle thinks could be deadline buyers — meaning they’d have to be willing to give up more future talent than the current talent they’re getting back — if they’re able to add either a standard starter (worth 2 WAR ), All-Star-caliber player (5 WAR) or MVP-level superstar (8 WAR):
Sizing market buyers
MLB Trade Deadline Buyers (by Doyle Number), with the team’s weaknesses and amount of future WAR the team should trade away to acquire different levels of talent
Future WAR traded to Acquire … Team Starter (2 WAR) All-Star (5 WAR) MVP (8 WAR) Biggest Weakness Dodgers 4.5 12.0 20.7 3B (22nd) Yankees 4.3 11.7 20.4 SS (18th) Astros 4.3 11.7 20.4 SS (18th) Astros. ) Braves 3.7 10.4 19.0 SP (29th) Mets 3.6 10.2 18.6 C (27th) Blue Jays 2.9 8.4 15.8 SS (17th) Brewers 2.3 6, 9 13.2 RP (25th 10th) Twins 1.6 5.0 9.8 RP (20th) Mariners 1.5 4.7 9.4 2B (26th) Phillies 1.3 4.1 8.0 RF (30th)
*Based on the division in which the team ranks lowest in WAR relative to all MLB teams. Through the July 27 games.
Sources: Baseball-Reference.com, FanGraphs
The Minnesota Twins, for example, probably shouldn’t pursue small acquisitions – adding 2 WAR of talent at the 2022 deadline wouldn’t be worth giving up 2 WAR of prospects for the future. But their short-term and long-term projected leagues would roughly break even if they added 5 current WAR of talent for 5 future WAR of prospects, and could break even by adding an 8 WAR of talent, even if they gave up 9.8 WAR of prospects in return. Even a team like the Phillies, with a 2 percent chance of winning the World Series and just a 25 percent chance of making the division series, could be justified in going big at the deadline if the draft improves its odds enough World Series. (We all happen to know a right player who could fit that bill, though general manager Dave Dombrowski has been careful to silence any of those rumors.)
What may come as a surprise are the teams not on this list – including the Cardinals, White Sox, Guardians, Red Sox and Giants, as well as the upstart Orioles. While some of those clubs have decent playoff chances in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, only Chicago (34 percent) and St. Louis (27 percent) even have a 20 percent chance of making the division series, and they’re also the only members of this team with any kind of World Series odds. (The White Sox are at 2 percent, the Cardinals are at 1 percent.) Given the low chance this season turns into a championship for these teams, it’s likely that any future talent traded at the deadline will come to nothing.
Then ask the Atlanta Braves about their Doyle number last season. The algorithm assigned Atlanta a base Doyle of 0.47 at the 2021 deadline, with no reasonable trades with a WAR balance to support the Braves as buyers. Of course, Atlanta GM Alex Anthopoulos bought anyway — and all he did was pull off one of the greatest trade deadline streaks ever, one that helped spark a World Series title. So it’s entirely possible to ignore Doyle’s guidance and have a long deadline anyway.
But improbable tracks like Atlanta’s are special precisely because they’re improbable. Doyle, meanwhile, has his roots squarely in the cold odds — odds that have changed somewhat under MLB’s expanded postseason setup. Keep all of this in mind as you monitor Soto’s suitors and the rest of this year’s trades. A ton of big names on the block and an unusually large number of teams that aren’t obvious buyers or sellers could be the recipe for a wild deadline, no matter what the odds suggest.
Check out our latest MLB predictions.
