The annual ritual of the trading deadline is complete. Contenders used the system to make themselves better; bad teams used the system to make themselves lighter by unloading expensive contracts.
In a sport defined by ritual and lore, the trading deadline is one of baseball's great traditions, but there's something un-American about the trading deadline. The notion of bad teams eagerly raising the white flag is a peculiar tradition that should be eliminated.
Imagine a world-class distance runner, hopelessly out of contention. Does the runner quit? A team is losing by 30 points. Does the team quit? No -- it goes with what it has.
Not in baseball. During the course of a season, as the distance widens between leaders and the pack, lousy teams begin to jettison unwanted players with fat contracts, effectively turning themselves into farm teams for the contenders. The result is a fire sale by losers, and bargain shopping by contenders.
This old, familiar ritual kills the spirit of the game.
Pat Gillick, the Seattle Mariners' general manager, said on Sunday that the trading deadline has outlived its usefulness. Gillick wants to obliterate it.
"This whole July 31 deadline is really something we have to take a look at and revise," he said on Sunday in a telephone interview. "It's unfair to the fans. What is competitive about selling off players? You're telling fans, `We're through with the season.' I don't see it as good for the game."
Gillick said he heard of one proposal that would bar in-season trades. This is how it should be: make your moves before the season and live with them. Make moves after the season to correct mistakes. I might allow one in-season trade per team, but not an entire re-engineering of teams.
"That's radical," Gillick said, "but there has to be a change. Put a committee together -- players association, management council -- to come up with something that is fair to all clubs."
The trading deadline is baseball's version of binging and purging: fill up on fat contracts during the off-season, then purge when you fall too far behind.
Jim Duquette, the Mets' interim general manager, likes the idea behind the deadline. The idea is to allow teams that are struggling to get something in return for players they are unlikely to re-sign in the off-season, then start again. "You have the ability to revamp and restructure your club overnight," Duquette said on Sunday before the Mets blasted St. Louis at Shea Stadium.
Duquette said he walked a thin line between looking at reality -- the Mets are 28 games out of first place -- and competing. Duquette has the daunting task of digging out from under the mess created by Steve Phillips, who was fired as general manager in June.
The Mets shed some costly baggage. They sent pitcher Graeme Lloyd to Kansas City for a prospect; sent Armando Benitez to the Yankees for prospects. On July 14, the Mets traded Jeromy Burnitz to the Dodgers for prospects. At the time of the Burnitz trade, the Mets had nearly half their games left, but the likelihood of catching the contending teams was unlikely.
"At that point we made the decision," Duquette said. "How many more games was he going to help us win going down the stretch? There were a lot of different issues that we spoke about before deciding to go down that road.
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