The 2022 trade deadline will be set for Tuesday, August 2 at 6:00 pm EST, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com (Twitter link). As previously reported, the new collective bargaining agreement gives Major League Baseball the authority to set each season’s deadline on any date between July 28 and August 3. In the past, the deadline has typically fallen in late July. MLB has been reluctant to set it on a weekend, preferring to avoid the potential awkwardness associated with conducting a large swath of trades at a time when there’s a slate of afternoon games ongoing.
This year, July 30-31 fall on a weekend. It always seemed likely MLB would push the deadline back to at least August 1 because of that, and they’ve elected to wait until the second of the month. The start to the regular season was delayed a week because of the lockout, so setting the deadline towards the back of the allotted window gives teams an extra couple days to evaluate their place in the standings during a slightly compressed schedule.
Some more notes from around the game:
- Joe Davis is set to take over as the play-by-play broadcaster for World Series coverage on Fox, reports Andrew Marchand of the New York Post. The 34-year-old has been the Dodgers television play-by-play man for the past five seasons, taking over in the L.A. booth after legendary broadcaster Vin Scully retired. Davis has also called some national broadcast games for Fox in recent years, both during the regular season and occasional playoff games when previous Fox lead broadcaster Joe Buck was unavailable. Buck had been the play-by-play voice of the World Series for each of the last 21 years, originally pairing with Tim McCarver before more recently teaming with John Smoltz. Buck recently left Fox to join ESPN, however, and the network will promote Davis to pair with Smoltz on World Series broadcasts moving forward.
- Longtime big league hurler Andrew Miller announced his retirement last month, wrapping up a 16-year MLB career that included a pair of All-Star appearances and top ten finishes in Cy Young voting. That came as a bit of a surprise, not least because Miller had taken on an active role during the lockout as a member of the MLB Players Association’s executive subcommittee. In a recent chat with the PA’s Jerry Crasnick, Miller explained why he assumed an active role in the union. “I got lucky in the sense that I got elected to be the team rep in Miami. Once that happens, you start to meet people and make connections and see the inner workings and appreciate how important the union is — what they can do for players even on things a lot of people probably think of as minor issues. They mean a lot to the individual player, and to be able to help guys through that helped me understand that side of the game. Once you get invested and get to know the people, it’s almost like a second team that you’re a part of.” Miller and Crasnick also chat about plenty of non-labor topics, including his transition from the rotation to the bullpen, his most memorable seasons and teammates, and his post-playing goals.