Go for it or give up? What your favorite team should do at the trade deadline

• Sports reporter, Kansas City Star, 2002-09
• Writer, Baseball, Baseball Prospectus
• Co-author, Pro Basketball Prospectus
• Member, Baseball Writers Association of America
• Member, Professional Basketball Writers Association

With every team but the Mets past the 60-game mark, the point at which last season’s standings were forever frozen, we have a pretty good idea of how this summer’s playoff races are setting up.

There will be further movement, to be sure. Some divisions haven’t shown much separation, which is exciting but can also be misleading when trying to sort pretenders from contenders. Also, the plague of injuries in 2021 adds an extra layer of uncertainty.

Still, with a little over six weeks to go before this year’s trade deadline, we can begin to designate teams looking to add or subtract, along with the middle group of teams that could still move in either direction, or add and subtract at the same time, as sometimes is the case.

With this month’s edition of Stock Watch, that’s what we’re going to do. Along with that, I’ll identify a couple of key needs for playoff-contending teams and trade candidates for non-contending teams. For the teams in the middle, I’ll touch on what needs to happen for them to reach the coveted top tier.

Where does your team land?

As always, teams are ranked according to a power ranking calculated by my projection system, which considers individual player forecasts, injuries and current depth charts. Those power rankings serve as the basis for 10,000 simulations of the remaining schedule, which gives us our team win forecasts and playoff probabilities.

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