{"id":819429,"date":"2026-07-23T20:55:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T20:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/819429\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T20:55:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T20:55:51","slug":"anatomy-of-a-three-team-trade-how-mlbs-architects-pull-off-the-unlikeliest-of-swaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/819429\/","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a three-team trade: How MLB\u2019s architects pull off the unlikeliest of swaps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Arnold, the general manager and president of baseball operations for the Milwaukee Brewers, keeps in his office closet a whiteboard on which he sketches his zaniest trade concoctions. The more complex, the more he\u2019s tickled by the daunting premise.<\/p>\n

Arnold has been building rosters since he was a kid studying Street & Smith magazines, scribbling scrupulous notes and then tagging along for his dad\u2019s workplace fantasy baseball drafts. While working under Andrew Friedman in the innovation hub that is the Tampa Bay Rays front office, Arnold learned the value of satisfying the \u201cgive\u201d and \u201cget\u201d for all sides to push a trade to the finish line. The deals they pulled off \u2014\u00a0and the many that fizzled \u2014\u00a0are \u201con the whiteboard somewhere,\u201d Arnold said.<\/p>\n

With trade season at hand, executives will keep a death grip on their phones and their eyes glued to laptops (or whiteboards) until 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Aug. 3. They\u2019ll try to find a partner to align on a surplus-for-deficit deal, or an exchange of a veteran for prospects. Many conversations will ultimately plow into dead ends. Yet some stalled talks, with a little creativity and courage, can be revived by bringing in another party to facilitate the deal.<\/p>\n

In most cases, a three-team trade is the product of a failed two-team trade and bullheaded persistence. It\u2019s hard getting two teams to agree on fair value, said Major League Baseball\u2019s most notorious wheeler and dealer, San Diego Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller. \u201cAdding a satisfied third party is even harder.\u201d One side tends to feel shortchanged, and the other two have to decide whether to kick in more value to save the deal. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like you\u2019re going to dinner with a bunch of people, and someone\u2019s got to throw in a little extra money to pay the bill,\u201d said Atlanta Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos.<\/p>\n

In recent months, The Athletic canvassed MLB general managers and presidents of baseball operations to dissect the anatomy of a three-team trade. It\u2019s a delicate and frequently fruitless dance. \u201cI hate doing three-team deals,\u201d one exec grumbled. \u201cThey\u2019re such a pain in the ass.\u201d They require the right players, an intimate knowledge of the market, and trust that introducing a third team won\u2019t irk your original trade partner, and that the other two teams won\u2019t run off together and leave you alone at the altar. Billy Beane, the Athletics exec of \u201cMoneyball\u201d fame, coined these complicated deals \u201chairballs.\u201d The framework of the trade can grow so gnarly and convoluted that you wish you had never brought it up.<\/p>\n

One such hairball started innocuously after Arnold took over as the Brewers\u2019 chief decision-maker in October 2022. The then-Oakland Athletics expressed interest in speedy Brewers outfield prospect Esteury Ruiz. Those talks, like most, went nowhere. The teams weren\u2019t a fit.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, reports emerged that the Braves were working to acquire Athletics catcher Sean Murphy. The Brewers liked the catcher set to lose playing time to Murphy: William Contreras. Sensing the ingredients were there for a three-team trade, Arnold re-engaged the Athletics.<\/p>\n

Each trader has a different operating style<\/a> and appetite for intricate deals. Arnold is a transaction fiend. At the mere mention of a three-team concept, a grin spreads across his face. \u201cI love trying to get in the middle of those things,\u201d he said. \u201cEspecially if you have a whiteboard at the Winter Meetings and you\u2019re just kind of bored and you\u2019re trying to get some stuff done, it\u2019s like, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s see if we can insert ourselves in a deal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Three-team trades aren\u2019t unique to baseball. They are far more frequent in the NBA because of its strict salary-matching rules for teams over the salary cap (which is almost all of them); a third team with cap space is brought in to balance the money. Similar brokering is common in the NHL. In the NFL, however, three-way deals are virtually non-existent these days, as there are fewer trades overall and more ways to create cap space.<\/p>\n

Unencumbered by salary caps or mandatory money-matching, MLB tends to produce more three-team trades that meaningfully benefit all sides. Often, one team is primarily focused on future value \u2014 a team targeting prospects \u2014\u00a0and because most MLB draft picks are not tradeable, clubs\u2019 massive farm systems become the currency that can bridge the gap.<\/p>\n

In MLB, three-team deals have accounted for roughly 1.5 percent of trades in the past five seasons, according to data from FanGraphs\u2019 transaction tracker<\/a>, with as few as one and as many as four three-teamers in a year.<\/p>\n

No team has embraced the Rubik\u2019s Cube nature of the three-team trade like the Rays, who have nudged their way into five of the past six three-way swaps. That bit of trivia surprised Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander<\/a>, but not his counterparts across the league. Tampa\u2019s front office looks to eke maximum value in trades and find exact fits, even if it means involving additional teams. In theory, the matchmaker GM brokering a three-team trade could try to play both sides and obfuscate who\u2019s getting what in the trade. Neander lays all the cards on the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rays are not only going to be creative and open-minded,\u201d Pittsburgh Pirates GM Ben Cherington said, \u201cbut they\u2019re going to be pretty honest about how they\u2019re valuing players and honest about the different components of the deal. That leads to trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

In December, Cherington, pursuing lineup upgrades, was working with the Rays on a deal centered on second baseman Brandon Lowe. Cherington was also talking to the Houston Astros, who wanted controllable starting pitching but weren\u2019t inclined to trade big-league hitters. Neander realized their trade talks already formed a triangle. \u201cIt pretty quickly turned into, maybe this is easier if we involve all three,\u201d Cherington recalled.<\/p>\n

A couple calls later, a three-way text thread was established. The resulting six-player trade ticked boxes on each team\u2019s offseason checklist.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason the same clubs regularly appear in three-team trades. Many of the GMs involved worked together in the past, and they know each other to be open to considering complicated solutions in order to piece the puzzle together. Some front offices aren\u2019t interested in such creativity.<\/p>\n

The spiderweb sprawl of a three-team trade often starts from a kernel of interest, like the Athletics kicking the tires on Ruiz. Initial trade talks rarely involve more than two teams. The three-team concepts you dream up in your office and then pitch cold to the other two teams \u201ctend to not go very far,\u201d Cherington said with a laugh. The necessary conditions for a three-team trade generally arise when there\u2019s smoke between two teams but no perfect match. Team A has a surplus of pitching, but Team B needs a big bat. Rather than throw up their hands, they might ask Team C about parting with a slugger for some pitching. In other cases, the third team might elbow its way into a deal to access a player it couldn\u2019t otherwise.<\/p>\n

The executives surveyed for this story explained the key to tri-team harmony is to clearly communicate what you\u2019re attempting to accomplish \u2014\u00a0which can mean showing your cards and hoping it won\u2019t come back to haunt you \u2014\u00a0and to understand other teams\u2019 surpluses and needs.<\/p>\n

At the 2012 Winter Meetings in Nashville, Cleveland GM Chris Antonetti was desperate for starting pitching, so he pursued Trevor Bauer, a top pitching prospect<\/a> who had worn out his welcome with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Antonetti was trying to move right fielder Shin-Soo Choo, who was entering a contract year, but the Diamondbacks wanted a shortstop. They were after well-regarded Cincinnati Reds prospect Didi Gregorius. Cincinnati wanted Choo.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n The 2012 trade between Arizona, Cincinnati and Cleveland would lay the foundation for another trade nearly a decade later. (Illustration: Kelsea Petersen \/ The Athletic; Mike Christy \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Knowing all of this, Antonetti suggested a three-team arrangement and coordinated with Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers and Reds GM Walt Jocketty until everyone was on board. The trade ultimately involved nine players.<\/p>\n

Nine years later, Cleveland and Cincinnati reunited for another three-teamer involving Bauer. This time, though, as Antonetti and Reds president Dick Williams wrapped up negotiations and awaited a postgame sign-off of medicals, they watched in horror as outfielder Yasiel Puig, a part of the trade, was in the center of a benches-clearing brawl at Great American Ball Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat one was a mess,\u201d Antonetti said.<\/p>\n

They often are. Seattle Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, a high-volume trader in sickness and in health, finalized a three-team deal in December 2018 from a Las Vegas hospital bed, where the gunslinger was being treated for blood clots in his lungs. Another exec insisted he was once on the cusp of a significant trade, then invited a third team into the mix and watched the other two cut a deal without him.<\/p>\n

One night when Perry Minasian, the now-former Los Angeles Angels GM, was a young staffer witnessing the whir of the Winter Meetings for the first time, he saw three executives huddled at a smoky hotel bar. One would jot down a trade concept on a napkin and slide it to the next.<\/p>\n

Technology has all but retired that sort of scene. GMs now communicate via texts and calls, even when they\u2019re under the same roof. Only occasionally do the parties in a three-way trade jump on a call or initiate a group text thread. Typically, one GM runs point.<\/p>\n

In January, Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall anchored talks on a three-team deal that started with a call to Minasian. The Reds were interested in lefty reliever Brock Burke. They dangled infielder Gavin Lux, but the Angels were looking for a lefty-hitting outfielder. When Neander asked about Lux, Krall helped orchestrate a trade that sent Lux and an Angels pitching prospect to Tampa, Burke to Cincinnati and outfielder Josh Lowe to Anaheim.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s a rarity that a three-team trade can be called \u201ceasy,\u201d but the swap this offseason between the Reds, Angels and Rays was relatively seamless.\u00a0 (Illustration: Kelsea Petersen \/ The Athletic; Mike Christy \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Krall said the deal was \u201cpretty easy\u201d to complete. \u201cThat, for a three-team trade,\u201d Minasian echoed, \u201c(was) one of the easier ones I\u2019ve been a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

But few trades, especially three-teamers, wind up closely resembling the initial concept that was proposed, one exec said.<\/p>\n

If there were such a thing as a prevailing rule of three-team trades, it\u2019s this:<\/p>\n

Be transparent.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re talking to a third team, keep the original partner in the loop. Kansas City Royals president of baseball operations J.J. Picollo fielded a call last winter from an exec with whom he had discussed a trade. This time, the exec surprised Picollo by saying the GM from a third team was on the other line. \u201cYou get caught off guard, like, \u2018Where\u2019s this going?\u2019\u201d Picollo said.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re acquiring a player intending to flip him to another team, say so. \u201cThere is some sportsmanship of, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re gonna take your player and send him here,\u2019\u201d Preller said. Some GMs won\u2019t care. Others will ask that the player not be traded to a division rival or a team fighting them for a playoff spot.<\/p>\n

When the Guardians traded infielder Andr\u00e9s Gim\u00e9nez to the Toronto Blue Jays for first baseman Spencer Horwitz and a prospect in December 2024, Antonetti was direct with Toronto\u2019s braintrust that he planned to flip Horwitz to the Pirates. But there was a hurdle to clear: Horwitz had a wrist injury, and the Guardians couldn\u2019t trade him until the Pirates signed off on his medicals. Had Pittsburgh not approved, Cleveland would have kept Horwitz. So, what looks like a three-team trade on the surface was actually separate deals completed hours apart.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned it\u2019s better to be upfront about what that whole picture is going to look like,\u201d said Guardians GM Mike Chernoff. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to pull a fast one on someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Brewers GM Matt Arnold\u2019s whiteboard of dream three-team trade calculations is never blank. (Illustration: Kelsea Petersen \/ The Athletic; David Zalubowski \/ AP Photo)<\/p>\n

In the end, Arnold\u2019s 2022 hairball included three teams and nine players. The Braves wound up with Murphy; the A\u2019s got four prospects and a backup catcher; the Brewers landed Contreras and two relievers. Arnold\u2019s give-get calculation \u2014 one prospect for two big leaguers and a Double-A arm \u2014 checked out at the time. It looks even better now. Ruiz has bounced around the league, and Contreras is a three-time All-Star batting cleanup for the Brewers.<\/p>\n

All six of MLB\u2019s three-team trades since then have included Arnold\u2019s former Tampa colleagues. The only non-Rays three-team trade of the past three years involved Freidman, the ex-Rays exec whose Dodgers are currently jockeying with Milwaukee for the best record in baseball.<\/p>\n

In February, after finalizing his third three-team exchange of the offseason, Neander joked to MLB.com<\/a> that the Rays only get attention for all their three-way trades because they haven\u2019t executed a four-teamer. It was said in jest, yet the sport\u2019s most audacious instigators might take him up on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh yeah, I noodle on all that stuff,\u201d Arnold said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a two-team trade is like 1 in 100 and a three-team trade is, I don\u2019t know, 1 in 500,\u201d an AL executive said, \u201ca four-team trade is 1 in 5,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the 1977 Winter Meetings, on the shores of Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, the New York Mets, Texas Rangers, Braves and Pirates consummated an 11-player blockbuster that stunned the baseball contingent gathered at the Sheraton-Waikiki Hotel. As the elaborate arrangement was announced, Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda looked on and quipped: \u201cThis thing must have been put together by the teamsters.\u201d<\/p>\n

That degree of complexity is no easier to hammer out a half-century later. Today, four-team trades are little more than whiteboard fodder. \u201cGod, I can only imagine,\u201d Anthopoulos said. \u201cYou\u2019d have to be really motivated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chernoff said the mere suggestion of a fourth team \u2014 a Hail Mary when the optimism of a three-team setup is fading \u2014 can torpedo a conversation. \u201cThat\u2019s when we\u2019re like, \u2018There\u2019s no chance,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201c\u2018Let\u2019s be realistic here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Krall was an Athletics intern in 2002, when they were discussing a deal that eventually expanded to include the Reds, Diamondbacks and Toronto Blue Jays. Krall just so happened to be interviewing for a full-time gig with the Reds as the trade was materializing at the Winter Meetings in Nashville. He bounced between the teams\u2019 hotel suites as they reached the finish line on a four-player reassignment: Erubiel Durazo to the Athletics, Elmer Dessens to the Diamondbacks, Felipe L\u00f3pez to the Reds and prospect Jason Arnold to the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was crazy,\u201d Krall said.<\/p>\n

Ten years later, at another Winter Meetings, Arnold was working the whiteboard as the Rays shopped pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis. Before settling on a seven-player swap with the Royals, they pondered permutations of a four-team trade that also included the Diamondbacks and Rangers. The simpler structure proved to be the winner. But the head-spinning four-team concept was undeniably more fun.<\/p>\n

To some maestros of the whiteboard, the wackier, the more parties involved, the better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d say 99.7 percent of the things we work on never happen,\u201d Arnold said, \u201cbut they\u2019re fun to dream on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Arnold, the general manager and president of baseball operations for the Milwaukee Brewers, keeps in his office…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5257,5258,5261,5262,5159,591,5160,1189,85,1190],"class_list":["post-819429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-mlb","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}