StewPod #10: Behind the scenes of the MLB trade deadline with a former GM

This is The StewPod, our weekly baseball podcast with a dash of pop culture. If you dig us, please subscribe on iTunes.

It’s trade-deadline week in MLB, with rumors and news popping up at any moment. Contenders are trying to improve themselves for a playoff run and cellar-dwellers are trying to spin off spare parts to rebuild. It will be a lot of fun to watch what happens before the non-waiver trade deadline at 4 p.m. ET Friday.

On this week’s StewPod, we’re in full trade deadline mode and we’ve got an ex-MLB general manager to take us behind the scenes. Dan O’Dowd was the Colorado Rockies GM for 15 years. He’s now an MLB Network analyst, so he has experiences on two sides of this wild week. O’Dowd will be part of MLB Network’s trade deadline coverage all week, including a special “MLB Tonight: Trade Deadline Edition,” airing Friday at 1 p.m. ET.

[Yahoo Sports Fantasy Football: Sign up and join a league today!]

You can hear him on The StewPod, as he talks takes us into an MLB front office to explain how trades are initiated, what steps come between that first idea and actually pulling the trigger, how social media and media reports impact what GMs do and much more. Because of his extensive history with the Rockies, we also had to ask him about the biggest news of the week — the Troy Tulowitzki trade to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Here’s a full rundown of this week’s show:
• Intro
• Dan O’Dowd joins the show to talk about Troy Tulowitzki trade.
• How important is payroll flexibility?
• How wild is trade-deadline week for execs?
• How are trade talks initiated? How do you communicate? What happens next?
• Which board game is trading most like?
• How has Twitter affected things?
• What’s the difference being on the media side of things?
• We talk about the Tulo deal.
• Best trade so far?
• What trade still needs to happen?
• Who may be a deadline dud?
• Important questions