Enter the hot stove

Dalton Vitt

As the all-seeing eye of the baseball world hones in on All-Star festivities, the ears of the game’s general managers are cinched to the earpieces on cell phones.

While July fades into its second week, the non-waiver July 31 trade deadline coming into visibility, the market begins to sizzle as organizations begin to tilt one way or the other: buyer or seller.

It’s an annual tradition, one that gets Cardinals, Giants, Red Sox and Yankees fans — perennial contenders — giddy, while fans of the Marlins and Padres — consistent losers — tremble under the weight of sub-.500 records and impending sales.

With the addition of an extra Wild Card playoff berth in each league in 2012, the always-invigorating trade season escalated its intrigue. An extra playoff team — one that could barely scrape out an above .500 year and sneak into the postseason — means more teams believe themselves to be contenders in July. More contenders means more buyers, which amounts to an increased level of competition to acquire assets from teams buried in their divisions, seeking to flip end-of-contract vets for future pieces.

For baseball junkies, July is a godsend. Names like Johnny Cueto, Scott Kazmir, Ben Zobrist and Cole Hamels are whirring around the rumor mill like flags in a wind tunnel, pulled in separate directions by hungry fanbases clamoring for their teams to make a move.

The Royals and Cardinals both find themselves as consumers, two of the clear-cut top teams in baseball, and while neither club normally makes the headline move, both organizations have to at least consider a blockbuster opportunity.

Kansas City has long been the doormat to the rest of the American League, and last year’s playoff sprint to within millimeters of the finish line just extended the hunger of the team’s fans. St. Louis, on the other hand, finds itself in a familiar space, head-and-shoulders above the rest of the NL thanks to some hefty overachieving from fill-in starting pitching and extra outfielders in the wake of injuries.

It’s easy to say both teams should plunge headfirst into the market aiming for the largest fish possible, but that simply isn’t the nature of either organization. The Cardinals have built a consistent winner with a commitment to cultivating players from within, not by swapping high-price blue chips for coveted veterans. And the same goes for Dayton Moore’s Royals: flipping, say, Raul Mondesi, Jr., a highly-touted hitter at a premier position, for a half-season rental of Cueto would nearly defeat the purpose of the last nine years of The Process.

With that framework in place, major acquisitions look more and more like a rarity for either of Missouri’s first-place clubs. But that doesn’t mean the two teams climbing the baseball mountain can’t gain a little ground.

Take last season, for example: Kansas City wasn’t willing to part with major-league pieces, according to reports, just to bolster other pieces of the team. So, instead of exchanging highly-valuable cogs for big names, Moore opted for a quieter path. He picked up Josh Willingham, a steady big-league bopper, for a fraction of what an All-Star name would’ve cost.

Similar options are available every season, and that’s the route we can probably expect KC and STL to go for.

Let’s start out east with the Cardinals, who held a 4.5-game lead over the Pirates in the NL Central entering Wednesday’s action. The glaring hole is the loss of Adam Wainwright, and although the ace said he’s aiming for a late-season comeback, the chance of him overcoming a torn Achilles in less than a handful of months is unlikely.

Glitzy names like Cueto and Hamels are supposedly fluttering around trade talks, but the best fit for the Cardinals is mid-tier southpaw Scott Kazmir of Oakland. Hamels is playing under the type of weighty contract (three years and a club option totaling $80-plus million remaining after this season, according to Spotrac) that St. Louis rarely commits to, while Cueto, a dominant righty for rival Cincinnati, was described as “the most hated MLB player in St. Louis” by one of my Cardinals friends.

That leaves the A’s lefty as a likely target, one that would probably require a package of mid-tier prospects in return, an easier price for GM John Mozeliak to cough up. (Other cheap options include Rockies starter Jorge De La Rosa, Padres strikeout-machine Ian Kennedy or White Sox lefty John Danks, all struggling players who could come at a small price with little left on their current contracts.)

As for the Royals, despite Paulo Orlando’s heroics on Tuesday, gaps loom in right field and at second base. Again, the big names are out there: Justin Upton for the underwhelming Padres and Zobrist for the mystifyingly atrocious A’s. Much like the Cardinals’ situation, giving up premier prospects like Mondesi, Kyle Zimmer, Brandon Finnegan or Hunter Dozier makes little sense for a small-market club always training one eye on the future.

Zobrist would likely come at a shallower price than Upton thanks to just the remainder of this season left on his contract and a decline in performance for the 34-year-old sure to come. What makes him a perfect fit, though, is his versatility — his primary positions happen to be second base and right field, the two holes for KC. While one man can’t fill both, he would allow the Royals to play the waiting game with Infante and Rios to see which one might eventually settle in.

A half-season of Zobrist would lead Billy Beane to at least ask on the availability of Finnegan, a high price to pay for just a few months of one player. More likely (and, again, cheaper) options exist, such as Cincinnati’s Marlon Byrd, Seattle’s recently-acquired Mark Trumbo or Atlanta’s Jonny Gomes. It’s a handful of names that don’t conjure much excitement, but also wouldn’t cost KC one of its higher-rated youngsters.

The trade skillet will start sizzling in the coming days (last year’s first blockbuster came with Oakland’s acquisition of Jeff Samardzija on July 5) as clubs make their decisions to either wait in the kitchen or dive wallet-first into the frying pan.

Put on your oven mitts. Another midseason hot-stove period is about to get interesting.