Getty Image
The MLB Trade Deadline is tomorrow, with teams posturing for position as they come down the home stretch of the grueling 162-game regular season. As a bunch of teams decide whether or not they’re going to be buyers or sellers, fans are anxious to find out which players might be on the move and which ones will be staying put.
While a lot of MLB Trade Deadline deals are looked at as video game sort of transactions, at least to fans, where players are shipped away and told that it’s just part of the business, many of us don’t know just how difficult all the behind-the-scenes stuff is. Things like finding a place to live. Or how a player tells his family. Or how tough it can be simply showing up when being traded from a good team to a very bad team.
To help us understand the many emotions, feelings and difficulties players who get traded during a MLB season have to deal with, ESPN talked to a few guys to see how the process goes. It’s safe to say that it’s not something many of us would want to experience.
One of the players talked to was the bearded Andrew Cashmer, who was involved in a 2016 trade from the San Diego Padres to the Miami Marlins, where beards were forbidden. After growing his facial whiskers out for five years, Cashmer said that, because the Marlins didn’t allow beards, he actually contemplated retiring from baseball altogether, but he held back because he didn’t earn enough money yet in his career.
“I didn’t want to shave.”
A native of Texas who hadn’t shaved in five years, he thought long and hard about hanging it up instead of shearing it off.
“I contemplated going home. Like, not showing up. In this game, you don’t really have a lot of decisions. So if it’s something you don’t really want to do, you don’t have to do it.” But the financial risk was too great. “I hadn’t really made enough money at the time,” says Cashner, who hit free agency for the first time following that season and signed a one-year, $10 million pact with the Texas Rangers, then inked a two-year, $16 million deal with Baltimore after that. So he caved.
“Never will I do it again. Mark my words. I’ll go home.”
Another player who was recently traded was closer Brad Hand, who went from the San Diego Padres to the Cleveland Indians last summer during an MLB Trade Deadline deal. After pitching for the Padres in the All-Star Game, Hand and his family were lounging at a resort for a couple days to take a break from the madness of the regular season. Then his phone started ringing, and he was told he got dealt.
According to Hand’s wife, Morgan, “that’s when crunch time started,” as the family had to figure out how to move as much as they could from Southern California to Northeast Ohio.
“I didn’t have time to deal with everything,” says Morgan. Instead, she secured a pod and shipped the large stuff to Florida. The rest of their belongings either went in suitcases on the plane, or in their two cars, which she had shipped to Ohio. Only one problem: The vehicles took several days longer than expected to arrive. “Everything was in there,” Morgan says. “That was rough.”
That’s one of the many things lost in the madness of a MLB Trade Deadline deal; that players are actually human beings, with real-life responsibilities outside of only playing baseball. They’ve got families. They’ve got kids. They’ve got homes and all that stuff. But organizations have to do what they have to do, and making a guy expendable just happens to be part of what comes with being a pro baseball player.
Finally, the first call that comes after a player’s notified that he’s been dealt comes from a team’s travel director, who’s responsible for getting a new player situated with all sorts of things, like getting a roof over their head and cash in their pockets. Thanks to the current MLB collective bargaining agreement, when a player is traded and on an active roster, he’s entitled to seven days of meal money and seven days in a hotel. The rate is $31.50 per day, with the meal money coming out to about $220.
Here’s what Chris Westmoreland, the travel director for the Tampa Bay Rays, said his responsibilities include.
During that first week, Westmoreland makes sure to put players in touch with realtors so that by the time their seven and seven runs out, they’ve got a place to crash. While some choose to stay in the hotel on their own dime or go the traditional rental route, Airbnb is becoming an increasingly popular option.
Regardless of which path a player chooses, the travel director’s job is to make it a smooth one.
“We want to make that transition as seamless as possible,” says Westmoreland, who’s on high alert with the contending Rays expected to be active in this year’s deadline doings. “We want them to forget about the transition they’re going through and just be comfortable.”
Sure, being a pro baseball player might sound amazing, but, whether you’re dealt during a MLB Trade Deadline swap or at some other point during the season, having to adjust on the fly and still be expected to perform on the field can be tough. Luckily, there’s a lot of support to try and make things as seamless as possible, but being told you and your family are moving from one city to another in a matter of hours sure doesn’t sound easy.
To see the full story from ESPN.com, head on over to their website, which gives more details and examples of players who are traded during a MLB season.
(H/T ESPN)