Nearly two months before the July 30 trade deadline, conversations are already happening, which shouldn't come entirely as a surprise in a baseball environment like the 2024 season. Not only is there no obvious World Series favorite, 24 of 30 MLB teams can still call themselves contenders; they're either in playoff position or within five games of the final wild-card spot.
As usual, San Diego Padres general manager A.J. Preller is burning up the phones, this time in search of a starting pitcher, but he's not the only one. This is likely to be a deadline with a plethora of teams looking to add and only a few willing to ship out players.