Unsolved MLB mysteries as trade deadline approaches
NY Post
ARLINGTON, Texas — The first half officially closed Tuesday night with the All-Star Game, but with way more than half a season completed.
No team had played fewer than 95 games and, in all, an MLB-record 1,449 games and 59.6 percent of its schedule had been exhausted prior to the Midsummer Classic (thanks to MLB Network research). Yet, even with that much season played, there remains so much mystery about a trade deadline two weeks away, including:
1. Is Mason Miller available? It feels like no player should be more so.
The A’s are unlikely to play a meaningful game until they get to Las Vegas, no earlier than 2028. That is hundreds of appearances from now for a bad team. And the risk of staying healthy for that period for a guy who throws the hardest average fastball in the majors (100.9 mph) and had shoulder and elbow issues over the past two seasons seems red-line high.
Miller has five years of control and is the kind of end-game piece that every contender would see meaningfully upgrading championship odds. Thus, the A’s could theoretically return a haul.
Conversely, as heated as buying teams would be to add Miller’s heat — his 46.7 strikeout percentage is not only first, but second is in the distance: Josh Hader at 40.4 — there must be concern by any acquiring team of giving up that haul and having Miller blow out quickly.
With the Yankees on an impressive run of mostly correct decisions, there’s some reason to leave them alone and just let the best team in the American League continue to roll. But they did raise serious doubt and leave room for suggestions (and even ridicule) following maybe the most inexplicable decision of this season, or any season.
The Giants have never been 0-2 under Brian Daboll, until now. They were 2-0 and flying high in 2022 and 1-1 after a rousing comeback in Arizona in 2023. So, this represents a low point as far as early-season difficulties for Daboll and the Giants. They had no business beating the Vikings in the opener and no business losing to the Commanders in Week 2. But here they are.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Harrison Butker kept making a lonely walk to midfield after each quarter Sunday to check on the direction of the wind, which tends to swirl inside Arrowhead Stadium. He did it one last time during the 2-minute warning, when his Chiefs were trailing the Bengals by two and trying to give him a winning field-goal attempt.