The Marlins will behave unpredictably leading up to next week’s 2018 non-waiver trade deadline. Other sellers have already pounced—mostly by unloading rental players—while this team is only loosely linked to contenders in what appear to be very preliminary negotiations.
I polled the Twitter crowd to get a sense for what volume of moves they expect, and the results were surprisingly conservative:
POLL: How many of their major league players will the Marlins trade before the July 31 deadline?
— Fish Stripes (@fishstripes) July 21, 2018
Swapping veterans for prospects sends a frustrating message to a club that’s been playing competitive ball for an extended period, but don’t lose sight of the fact that this is still an early stage of the rebuild.