As we enter the final week before the July 31 trade deadline, it's a fun diversion to try to figure out who ought to be "sellers" and who ought to be "buyers." But in the world of two wild cards per league, that's not as easy a distinction as it used to be. These days, some teams wind up not really belonging in either category.
Still, we can look at the current FanGraphs playoff odds and split baseball pretty evenly in half to get a good idea of who should be doing what.
Fifteen teams have at least a 25 percent chance of making it to the playoffs, or in the case of the New York Yankees, are within one game of a playoff spot. Everyone else is looking at odds that are less than 15 percent, and while mathematically generated odds don't automatically rule out a late run, a low probability isn't exactly a reason to dive into the trade market looking for help.
Most of those bottom-feeding clubs have no uncertainty about where they are, of course. Teams like the San Diego Padres, Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers have known for a while now that 2014 won't be their year. Others, such as the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Mets and Minnesota Twins have begrudgingly accepted that they won't be playing in October. These teams might not outright be sellers, but they aren't going to give up the future for this year, either. That is, except for one team, a team that looks increasingly unlikely to make a run but seems hell-bent on making the wrong decision anyway: the Kansas City Royals.