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How unusual? The trade deadline floats now, from as early as July 30 to as late as August 2, the actual date and time seemingly picked to maximize the amount of chaos before a night of baseball games. This year’s deadline falls 35 minutes before the Blue Jays and Orioles, two teams that have been and will continue to be active, take the field at Camden Yards. If you set deadline day, whenever it lands, as a fixed point and work backwards, you get D, D-1, D-2, etc.
I did that for the last three years, using MLB.com’s transaction log. Sometimes a deal gets leaked to Jeff Passan at 8:30 p.m. and doesn’t become official until the next afternoon. Take it up with MLB. With that said, there’s no way to massage the numbers that changes the conclusion that this has been a notably active stretch. The 14 trades we’ve seen over the last three days, D-5 through D-3 in this parlance, are nearly as many as occurred on those days total over the last three years.
2021: 5
2022: 5
2023: 5
2024: 14
