Behind the Scenes of a Trade Deadline, with Derek Falvey

The 2026 MLB trade deadline is less than a week away, and teams are actively working the phones trying to improve their short-term or long-term outlooks (or both). We get the alerts and see the news, but what does it actually look like from inside an MLB front office?

Derek Falvey sat down with a group of members of MLB’s Fan Council on Tuesday to discuss just that. The Fan Council is an effort by MLB to do fan outreach, hold focus groups, and generally educate fans on behind-the-scenes stuff. You may have heard about our meeting on competitive balance, which caused quite a stir: there was an article from Evan Drellich of The Athletic, and a Foul Territory episode.

I’m a member. I have no idea why. I just got a DM from MLB in the spring of 2025 inviting me to join. I thought it was a scam at first. There are about 120 members, with about four representatives per team. The only other Twins fan I’m aware of is Tyler the Twins Guy, whom you can follow on Twitter here.

Anyway, on to the topic at hand. Falvey graciously met with us this week to answer all of our questions about how the deadline looks from inside a front office. We weren’t allowed to ask any questions about specific players or trades, out of respect for the players involved. Instead, the focus was on the deadline itself. I want to share some of that information with you, starting with a timeline for your average MLB trade deadline.

The Months Leading up to the Deadline
Even months out from the deadline, conversations are beginning. There’s not much concrete discussion going on here, to the dismay of fans who want their team to fill a need early. Many teams don’t know which direction they’re going, but teams are keeping in touch with each other throughout, trying to understand what every other club needs.

Many of these conversations aren’t GM-to-GM (or whatever the club calls their lead; I’ll say GM for brevity). Instead, other senior officials—assistant GMs and directors—handle many of these conversations. Most of the dialogue is over text. This is pretty consistent throughout the league, though there are some teams who still primarily communicate GM-to-GM.

This work is divided up because it’s hard for one person to keep 29 lines of communication open at all times. The other officials will keep the GM in the loop, but they’ll be tapping into connections in other organizations that their colleagues might not have. Every call is noted afterward on some sort of shared server or program, so that it can be reviewed ahead of any future conversations.

These conversations are not fast. Falvey estimated that there are 10-20 touch-bases (on average) between two teams before a trade actually comes to fruition. There are a lot of hypotheticals thrown out, most of which never progress—but this is also how funkier trades, such as three-team trades, start. A lot of the time, it’s best for the GM not to do this inefficient spitballing, which is why most clubs deputize the early conversations.

June-Mid July
By early June, teams start to sort themselves into buyers and sellers, and more concrete conversations can be had. It’s still pretty spread out among members of the front office, and it’s more in theoretical terms. One team will ask another, “Are you looking for something? Do any of our players fit that bill? What’s the range of prospects you’re looking for?”

The MLB Draft being moved to the All-Star break has been a detriment to trade deadline discussions, because although much of the decision-making and discussion is among the amateur scouting staff and executives, the GM and others from broader baseball operations are also part of those discussions, which shifts their focus away from trades. Many teams have scouts who spend time on both amateur and pro coverage, and they can't switch from one to the other (thereby laying the groundwork for trades) until after the draft.

This is when a war room starts to come together. Decision-makers, analysts, pro scouts, and even some members of the clubhouse are chosen to give input on trades and targets, and many lower-ranking members of baseball operations are included for education. A lot of information is gathered during this phase, including reports on players’ off-field reputations and clubhouse presence, but few trades are actually made.

Final Weeks
Members of the war room who don’t live in the team's home city (such as some pro scouts) make their way to HQ to be present for discussions. The phones are still being worked, but teams are getting closer, and their discussions become more concrete after the draft; GMs start communicating more directly.

Falvey mentioned that one of the most crucial parts of this time is understanding the cadence of other front offices. With enough time in the game, a GM will start to learn the patterns of rival GMs. Sometimes when a GM gives you a final offer, you know he doesn’t mean it, because he’s done this to you before. For other GMs, you need to learn what their final offer voice sounds like, lest you miss your chance to complete a trade because you assume they’ll circle back. (Again, he did not use any names, but you might be able to think of an example of this.)

These are long days, making sure no stone goes unturned. Some trades start trickling through at this point, and the landscape becomes ever clearer, even if that’s because your target just got acquired by a different team.

Deadline Day
This is where the fun happens. Trades are flying all over the place, and teams are sometimes learning about them at the same time as fans. When a trade takes place, there are several things front offices have to do that fans might not immediately think of. Every GM is different, but Falvey said he wanted to talk to any player he traded away, giving him the news first.

Falvey said he wouldn’t beat around the bush; he’d lead the conversation with the news. Many players know that they might be on the block. He might also have contacted his agent days ahead of time to make the player aware that they might be moved—even if they aren’t—so they aren't blindsided. He also mentioned being aware of whether the player had been traded before, or other factors like that that can influence how much information a player needs, or how they might react: sadness, shock, anger, happiness even.

At times, leaks will break the news before it’s official, which puts a GM in a tough spot. A lot of these calls are uncomfortable, but Falvey found it important to do them himself. If a player wants to know why he was traded, he’s owed that, too.

GMs will also get the process of the player joining a new organization started by giving them a phone number from the other club who will be reaching out to coordinate travel and logistics. The immediate focus is to get the player and his belongings to the new city. He, or someone in the organization (depending on the level of player acquired), would also start communicating with any new players coming back in the trade.

Part of their background research on each player is understanding who they are and how they might fit into a clubhouse, but teams will also share some information with the new organization about what they’ve been working on. For instance, if a guy has been tinkering with his swing or doing extra defensive drills, it’s helpful to know what he’s focused on at that moment. Beyond that, they’ll learn as much about the player’s history as possible to start forming a human connection with them.

Medicals are also being surveyed during this time. Even after a trade is agreed to, there’s work to do. Teams need to do their due diligence on the player they’re bringing in, and a spotty medical record has thwarted many trades. Again, you can probably think of trades in Twins history where this is relevant.

Furthermore, team owners need to be consulted about any major money being added to the team’s payroll. And if the trade involves a transfer of funds, such as one team retaining a portion of a player’s salary after trading him away, the league office needs to approve the transaction.

The Final Hour
Falvey noted that the final hour is the most fun, but also the most dangerous. More deals get completed in that hour than any other hour leading up to it, and there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of—which is part of the reason that it’s helpful to have multiple people working the phones.

Some teams will mistime the final hour, though that’s sometimes to their benefit. Many of the most reckless trades occur during this period, and some are proposed with too little time to do proper due diligence. As noted, there are medical reports to review, and many trades require league office approval, which must happen before the deadline.

Some trades that a team might have otherwise agreed to dissolve during this time. It’s not as relevant for a player on an expiring contract—with those guys, you are more desperate to move on from them or acquire them for the here and now. But if the trade involves a player with multiple years of control (say, a mid-20s starting pitcher), there might not be enough time between a proposal and the deadline to conduct a proper review of his medical records. If there’s an underlying injury, the deal is liable to blow up within months of the player’s acquisition.

The losers of this period are often the teams who’ve been holding their cards tight to the chest. Without transparency, the background work required to make a significant deal won’t happen ahead of time, and the other team will often choose not to make a deal, rather than jumping into an enticing one. This is, again, an example of why all the weeks of communication between teams is so important. Hopefully, the last hour is reserved for finalizing deals, or selecting the best package, rather than running through brand new ideas. Again, Falvey couldn’t name names, but I’d bet you might have heard of one of these in recent years (or weeks) (or days).

The Aftermath
This was my question for Falvey. What are the moments immediately after the clock hits zero like? What about the following hours? Do you look around and start questioning “What have we done?”

Falvey noted that deals aren’t all announced by the buzzer, and, like fans, the team also waits to watch any straggling deals come in between other clubs. But the adrenaline doesn’t go away for a while. It’s mostly excitement in the room, no matter which direction the deadline went for the team, but there’s a lot of variance in what kind of excitement that is from year to year.

But then, at least for the GM, you need to rebalance yourself. The media gets access very quickly, and you have to be professional, no matter what transpired over the past several hours. Maybe on the car ride home you can soak it in and start really thinking through it, but it’s going to be a few hours.

There’s also the matter of talking to stakeholders. Ownership needs to be appeased, and you have a clubhouse to answer to. Some GMs will travel with the team during deadline week, but Falvey preferred to stay in Minneapolis. If the club was on the road, he flew out the next day. Sometimes the team needs to have a full meeting to discuss what happened. Other times, key players will get meetings and are trusted to communicate with their teammates.

Nevertheless, Falvey saw it as important to be there and be available to answer questions from anyone who had them. There are a lot of uncomfortable conversations to be had, even with the players who weren’t traded. They might be upset about players who were traded away. Sometimes rumors come out that the club knows aren’t true, but they need to explain it to players who weren’t in the war room.

After-Action Reviews
Falvey stated that within days following the deadline, he liked to hold after-action reviews to discuss what went well, what went poorly, and what needs to change in future years. He liked to note the thought process behind all moves that did or didn’t happen. It’s easy to look back in hindsight, but having a record showing why a deal did or didn’t happen (or how the team evaluated a player) is vital for the group's growth. It helps to identify what the group did well or poorly and can be revisited years down the line.

I hope this writeup has been informative. I'm no GM, so a lot of this stuff was new, and the things that weren't new were interesting to hear from Falvey's perspective. I’ve gotten to peek behind the curtain of a few of these processes as a member of the Fan Council, but none thus far has been Twins-relevant enough to devote a writeup. I also have a whole host of assorted topics that Falvey discussed, and I’m going to be writing a Part 2 shortly. Look out for that to learn about how GMs use emojis and GIFs to make trades.