We're only about three weeks into the season, but let's pull out the old crystal ball and look ahead three months into the future to July 30 -- MLB trade deadline day.
What might happen? Who might be traded? This is a little exercise we'll call the Way-Early Trade Deadline Extravaganza Preview. We're going to list the one player (or sometimes, two) for each team who is most likely to be traded, focusing for the most part on major leaguers but we'll also include some prospects. This is an exercise of looking through rosters, surveying the players in free agent years who are more likely to be traded if a team is faltering and considering which teams will be adding -- or subtracting. (That is especially difficult this year since we only have a few obvious teams that won't be playoff contenders.)
In last year's edition, we correctly hit on seven players who were traded during the season: Lucas Giolito, C.J. Cron, Michael Lorenzen, Aroldis Chapman, Luis Urias, Luis Patino and JJ Bleday (who was traded before the season but after we completed this exercise). Another three -- Jarred Kelenic, Ryan Pepiot and Dominic Fletcher -- were traded this past offseason. Shohei Ohtani, you might recall, was not traded.
Who will we be right about this year? Let's get to it.