Pirates Listed at Low -140 Odds to be Sellers at MLB Trade Deadline

To the surprise of anyone paying even remote attention, the Pittsburgh Pirates are favored to be sellers rather buyers with the Major League Baseball trading deadline approaching Aug. 2.

Bookies.com lists the Pirates’ odds to be sellers at -140. The odds of them being buyers are +120.

To quantify that, the oddsmakers give the Pirates a 58.33% implied probability of being sellers and 45.45% of being buyers.

Those sellers odds seem surprising low considering the Pirates are already in sell mode after trading designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach to the New York Mets for relief prospect Colin Holderman last Friday.

Furthermore, the Pirates are 10.5 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals for the third and final National League wild card. It’s hard to imagine the Pirates doing any buying in their situation.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have players teams are interesting in trading for, a list topped by left-hander Jose Quintana and including outfielders Ben Gamel and Jake Marisnick.