If hope springs eternal in spring training, then the waves of reality crash down around baseball’s summer trade deadline. With about 110 games’ worth of evidence, MLB teams have to stop gazing at the horizon and instead assess the ground on which they’re standing.
The evaluation seems simple: Look at the standings, see how your team is doing, behave accordingly. However, it doesn’t work that way, not functionally, in the calculating sphere of 2020s MLB front offices. Dissonance between the emotional direction of a team and a front office’s plotted trajectories and probabilistic forecasts can create bewildered fan bases, confusing decisions and rifts between players and leadership.