In the 45-year history of salary arbitration in baseball, no one on the players’ side could remember taking the action they did Thursday, shortly before the start of Joc Pederson’s hearing.



With an agreement reportedly in place for Pederson to be traded from the Dodgers to the Angels, the players’ union and the outfielder’s agents at Excel Sports Management filed a motion for the hearing to be delayed, contending that Pederson effectively was in limbo, a man without a team.



Major League Baseball already had rejected the union’s request. The three-person arbitration panel did the same. And thus began another odd chapter in an extraordinary week that started with two connected, captivating trade agreements and ended with the union again expressing public frustration over the way MLB treats its players.



Both the three-team blockbuster that would send star outfielder Mookie Betts to the Dodgers and a separate deal that would send...