10 Players That Should Have Been Traded at Deadline

The 2013 trade deadline has come and gone, leaving behind a faint whisper of what has typically been seen at each year’s deadline. The premier deal at the deadline was the seven-player deal that sent Jake Peavy to the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday evening.

Although the trade involved a former-Cy Young award winner, who should provide Boston with a solid arm down the stretch, the Peavy deal is far from blockbuster status.

This year’s lackluster trade deadline can be partially attributed to recent changes in terms of compensation restriction.

Prior to this season, if a player was rated as either a Type A or B free agent and he was offered salary arbitration by his team, that team would receive a compensation pick in the following First-Year Player Draft in the event that that particular free agent chose to leave the team.

However, teams are no longer eligible for compensation for a player that has spent less than one full season with the team. As a result, teams may be dissuaded from trading for rental players as they would not be able to ensure the “fall back” option of receiving a compensation draft pick in the event that they would be unable to sign their rental player.

As such, it has appeared that teams have proceeded with caution as a result of recent changes to compensation rules, as a number of rumored deals involving some of the better players in the game failed to materialize.

The following is a list of the Top 10 players who were not traded at the deadline, but perhaps should have been, both in terms of the interest that was shown by teams and the plausibility of said players leaving their current respective teams.