Did adding a third Wild Card hurt the Trade Deadline?

As we wait…and wait…and wait for the Cubs to address one of their big needs with a trade, I started to wonder whether adding a third Wild Card team has had any impact on decreasing the number of trades we see at the deadline. I’ve seen lots of speculation that teams are not sure if they are “buyers” or “sellers” and the opportunity to squeeze into that last Wild Card spot would seem to be an incentive for more teams to stand pat.

And at the very least, we might expect to more trades get backloaded to nearer the deadline, as the impact of the July games are realized.

There are currently 22 teams withing 5.5 games of a Wild Card spot ad only 8 teams more than 6 games back. If we removed that third Wild Card, the numbers would be 21 and 9. So, there’s really not been much of a change in the number of teams in playoff contention.

If we take a look at the number of trades in July per week in the past 6 full seasons (excluding the Covid year, 2020) we see a very similar pattern.

Year	July 1-7	July 8-14	July 15-21	July 22-28	July 29+	Total
2018	5	1	6	15	25	52
2019	6	5	7	11	37	66
2021	10	3	6	16	36	71
2022	7	6	2	5	19	39
2023	2	2	3	14	39	60
2024	5	4	3	19	45	76

Basically, the trades are all backloaded to the last couple of days before the deadline. There are very few trades — and most of them are minor — for the first few weeks. And then we see a few more a little over a week out from the deadline.

I would suspect the reason for this is that GMs across the league are looking to get as much leverage as possible, which means getting as close to the deadline as possible. And by the end of the month, the number of teams farther away from the playoffs should have increased, while the time they have to go on a winning streak has decreased.

My prediction is that Cub fans will most likely need to wait a couple more weeks, at trade deadline day, before we see what Jed Hoyer will be doing to improve the team. We might see one trade a bit earlier, but I’d guess it would be for a bench player, depth starter or depth reliever, as opposed to any big impact deals.

Of course, with my track record for predictions, that probably means they’ll make a blockbuster tomorrow.