This story was excerpted from Adam Berry’s Rays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

We are officially through Trade Deadline season, a period that revolves around questions of player value and playoff probabilities, or roster construction and resource management.

It can also be a bizarre time for the players involved in deals, from low-level prospects to veteran big leaguers, and their families. They are essentially having their jobs transferred from one organization to another and their lives uprooted from one community to another, whether it’s for a few months or somewhere north of six years.

In the Rays’ clubhouse alone, there were dozens of stories to be found -- beyond recent acquisition Aaron Civale-- about what it’s like to be dealt ahead of the Trade Deadline.

Isaac Paredes, Harold Ramírez and Luke Raley were traded as prospects. Pete Fairbanks, Shawn Armstrong and Jose Siri were surprised while in Triple-A. Tyler Glasnow was in desperate need of different MLB scenery. Then there’s Jake Diekman, who’s been traded as a big leaguer in four different Deadline deals.

“For the most part, I feel like it’s pretty easy on the player -- maybe not your first time,” Diekman said. “It takes a bigger toll on the family than it does the actual player. But for the most part, if you’re getting traded, most of the time it’s to somewhat of a better team, a team that’s in the hunt.”

The first time he was dealt, Diekman went from a last-place Phillies club to a Rangers team that won the American League West in 2015. The lefty said he was sitting in the visitors’ bullpen in Toronto when he turned to the Phillies’ bullpen coach and said, “I have a weird feeling I was just traded.”

A few hours later, Diekman boarded the team flight, and club officials confirmed he was headed out.

After that, Diekman started asking his GMs for 24-48 hours of notice, if possible. So he was less surprised to go from Texas to Arizona in 2018, although it was weird to pitch against the D-backs on July 30 and walk across the ballpark to join them on July 31. And he credited former Royals GM Dayton Moore for making the expected '19 trade from Kansas City to Oakland as smooth as possible, even letting Diekman know the night before that he’d be moved.

But Diekman was shocked when Red Sox manager Alex Cora tapped him on the shoulder last year and told him he was going to the White Sox. The reliever called his wife, Amanda.

“She’s like, ‘You’re joking,’” Diekman remembered. “I was like, ‘I’m sorry.’”

It took Amanda just one day to secure a place for their family to live.

“My wife is the MVP in that scenario,” Diekman said.

Glasnow was sitting in the Pirates’ clubhouse at PNC Park on Deadline day in 2018, having been relegated to lower-leverage bullpen work a year after being regarded as one of the best prospects in baseball. He saw that he was part of Pittsburgh’s trade for Chris Archer while looking up at a TV screen. Club officials quickly whisked him to another room in the clubhouse and told him he was being traded.

“It was kind of like a whirlwind, but I was pretty excited,” Glasnow said. “I was sad to leave all my friends, but they told me that I was going to start [for the Rays]. It was a new experience. … I didn’t have time to think on it, ruminate on it, so it was probably good.”

Fairbanks said he was similarly surprised when he was dealt from Texas to Tampa Bay in 2019, especially being involved in a fairly rare one-for-one trade opposite Nick Solak that initially sent Fairbanks from Triple-A Nashville to Triple-A Durham.

How’d he find out? By ignoring a call from a number that wasn’t saved in his phone. Two minutes later, that number texted him: “Hey, this is Jon Daniels. Give me a call.” Shortly thereafter, Fairbanks received the news from Daniels, which was followed by a welcome call from the Rays’ Erik Neander.

“I was definitely not expecting it,” Fairbanks said. “But I’m very thankful for it.”

Same goes for Armstrong. Nearly a month after being removed from the Orioles’ 40-man roster, he was told by Baltimore’s front office that he would be back in the big leagues after they traded another player. Instead, Armstrong was traded to the Rays on July 30, 2021.

Raley experienced a comparable rollercoaster of emotions before going from the Dodgers to the Twins in 2018. Los Angeles was known to be in pursuit of then-Orioles star Manny Machado, and Raley thought he’d be traded to Baltimore as part of that deal.

When the Dodgers dealt for Machado, Raley wasn’t in it. The trade buzz faded. The Deadline came and went, and he didn’t hear anything. So Raley reported to work with his Double-A Tulsa club in Springfield, Mo., only to find his manager waiting for him outside.

The Dodgers had traded for the Twins’ Brian Dozier. Raley and teammate Devin Smeltzer, part of a tight-knit group that season, now played for Minnesota.

“He was fricking crying, so it made me cry. Everybody inside was crying. I’m not a super emotional person in general, but when everyone is feeling it, it’s kind of different,” Raley said. “It was shocking. It was kind of weird. I didn’t know until probably about 15-20 minutes after the Deadline.”

There was one last bit of business to handle. Raley and Smeltzer needed their cars. So they took an Uber from Springfield to Tulsa, Okla., then drove to the Twins’ Double-A affiliate in Chattanooga, Tenn.

“A lot of driving,” Raley said. “It was weird.”