Reliever Brock Burke has been traded twice before, including this year, but never before at the trade deadline.
“I always live out of a suitcase this time of year anyway,” the Cincinnati Redsleft-hander said. “I guess I’m kind of always prepared.”
As the clocked inside of 24 hours until the Aug. 3 MLB trade deadline, Burke joined a handful of Reds pending free agents waiting for the next shoe to drop in a trade market that began to buzz with activity over the previous two days — if not the next clubhouse each will call home for the rest of the season.
“I’d be lying if I said
I didn’t (think about it),” said Burke, who added to his trade value the day before the deadline with a 1-2-3, two-strikeout seventh inning in the Reds’ victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“I just keep telling myself that in the end, baseball’s baseball,” said Burke, who lowered his season ERA to 2.52 in a league-high 56 appearances. “Whenever I go out there I try to assume it’s a 0-0 game and we’re winning baseball games and all I can do is try to help the team win, whatever team I happen to be on.”
Burke, who turns 30 the day after the deadline, has played for the Rangers and Angels before getting swapped to the Reds over the winter in a deal that sent Gavin Lux to the Tampa Bay Rays.
In the midst of his best season in four years, Burke has become one of the Reds potentially more valuable trade chips as relievers are expected to start moving in flurries over the final hours before the deadline.
“I feel good. I feel confident,” he said. “And the more I get in there, the better I feel, just the comfortability on the mound. It’s been working.”
Burke doesn’t have kids, so family considerations of a midseason trade involve just him and his wife. “She’s pretty mobile as well,” he said. “We’ve been married a couple years now, so she gets it.”
Burke was just one of seven pending Reds free agents on the block as the Reds waited to make their moves in the wake of big-ticket trades of pitchers Tarik Skubal (Tigers to Dodgers) and Freddy Peralta (Mets to Rays).
The upside for that group is the chance to make what might be significant leaps in the standings with the opportunity to return to the playoffs.
For Burke that would mean a second career October run, first since winning a championship with the Rangers in 2023.
“It’d be cool again,” he said. “Obviously, we won it all in ’23, and that was a very cool experience. Back then I wish I pitched in more meaningful innings when it did come to that time. So hopefully I get redemption at that and get a chance to pitch for a team that’s in the playoffs and to pitch some meaningful innings to help the team win.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Brock Burke, Reds teammates brace for 24-hour trade flurry to deadline
