Baseball Trade Deadline Double Play

Aug 4, 2025

The Baltimore Orioles and the Toronto Blue Jays played two games the same afternoon on July 29, a double header. Relief pitcher Seranthony Domínguez played both games—the first for Baltimore as an Oriole, and the second for Toronto as a Blue Jay. In between the games, the owners traded him!

He had to walk through a tunnel from the home team dugout to the visiting team dugout, and change uniforms. And somehow find the time to tell his family they are moving from the U.S. to Canada, after moving from Philadelphia to Baltimore last year when he was traded before.

“A really, really smart, intelligent baseball person…. We’re really going to miss him,” the Baltimore manager said. The teams also traded minor league player Juaron Watts-Brown. The exchange was done in a rush to beat the trade deadline of July 31.

This kind of trade has been done by all major league teams, every year, for over a century. It’s treated as perfectly normal. But player’s lives can be upended in a second, without a second thought by executives and owners.

Bosses want workers to be loyal to their “teams.” In the big business world of sports, as in the rest of the business world, bosses have no loyalty to their workers. And as in the rest of the economy, baseball bosses are making more money from workers now than even in recent years.

For example, as the Orioles’ revenue has nearly tripled since 2002 from around 130 million dollars to 366 million dollars last year, profits grew to 99 million dollars. Major League Baseball team owners are also keeping more of the revenue as profit, and paying a smaller share to the athletes: 47% now, down from 63% then, according to the commissioner.

Fans want to watch athletes play baseball, but the business side has us watching team owners play ping-pong with players, while scoring big home runs with profits.