Extend Trading Deadline, End Non-Waiver Trade Deadline

All around Major League Baseball every team is seemingly scrambling to either sell off their players or add players to their team before the July 31^st trading deadline. With the addition of a second Wild Card playoff spot in the both the American and National League’s many have been clamoring to extend the July 31^st trading deadline to give teams more time to determine whether they are contenders or pretenders and while this could easily be done on paper I personally believe something else would have to change. What I am suggesting here in this post is to push back the July 31^st trading deadline to August 15^th but I would also push to completely eliminate the August non-waiver trade deadline of August 31^st.

The August trade deadline is redundant in my opinion with not many notable trades get made during the month of August anyway. Pushing the non-waiver trade deadline back two weeks gives teams more than enough time to evaluate where they stand and evaluate which direction the team wants their organization to head in. Giving the team another month to try and pass players through waivers and unload hefty contracts does not add much to the sport and would likely spice up things before the new August 15^th trade deadline.

If a team knows they can’t simply wait to pass a Jose Reyes, a James Shields or a Chase Utley through waivers and trade them in August it will force the team to be more active before the deadline that counts. It also allows teams to evaluate what they have and where they are going before September call ups and before post season rosters and eligibility needs to be set. In my opinion this is a win, win for Major League Baseball all around.

This may never happen in my lifetime but I think it is something that Major League Baseball at least needs to consider. It brings more attention to the game for a longer period of time and may even get more people to watch and pay attention for longer, who knows.