Archive for 2026 Trade Deadline

On Monday morning, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal did what he does best. He unleashed a major trade deadline scoop. As it was a full week after the deadline, though, Rosenthal’s scoop wasn’t about who got traded where for what. It wasn’t about how the trades came together. It was, in fact, the opposite of the breathless deadline reporting and transaction analysis that can so often encourage us to view ballplayers as commodities rather than human beings who have little control over where they live and work. Rosenthal wrote about the emotional and logistical toll of being traded.

There’s a lot of that going around these days. The day after the deadline, Jacob Calvin Meyer of the Baltimore Sun reported that Adley Rutschman, Colton Cowser, Ryan Mountcastle, and Gunnar Henderson had been at the theater, about to see the new Spider-Man movie, when Rutschman found out he’d been traded to the Red Sox. “It was pretty emotional,” Cowser said. The foursome decided against watching the movie, which was probably for the best, as it’s about a talented young man with a powerful swing whose best friends have forgotten about him entirely after a move to Boston. Rosenthal’s article was about the team the Orioles faced the very next day.

On Sunday, August 2, the Angels broke a five-game losing streak with a win over the Brewers, then flew down to Baltimore. Monday, the day of the deadline, was an off day for both the Orioles and the Angels. Roughly a dozen Angels, plus assorted coaches and staffers spent the day in Vineland, New Jersey, playing a round of golf at Trout National – The Reserve. At Mike Trout’s golf course, they had what would no doubt have been a delightful day of fun in the sun if not for the fact that every couple holes, storm clouds showed up in the form of interim GM John Mozeliak, who was calling up another player to inform him that he’d been traded away. Oh, and there were literal storms too, so reliever Ryan Zeferjahn got his call while everybody was packed in a hut to stay out of the rain.

Those are just the Cliff’s Notes. You should read the whole article, and I don’t want to spoil it for you. It’s wild, and Rosenthal managed as well as anybody could have to report the facts and avoid editorializing without downplaying the over-the-top absurdity of the situation. Instead, what I’m going to do here is answer some of the more pressing, sillier questions raised by the story. It’s a sad story, but it’s also deliciously awkward. It’s absurdist comedy of the highest order. A third of the players who made the trip to Millville found out on the golf course that they’d been traded, because Trout planned a team-bonding event for the exact time when the team’s bonds would be dissolved with hydrochloric acid. Let’s get into it.

Mike Trout has a golf course?

No. Mike Trout doesn’t just have a golf course. In April, he opened a world-class, invitation-only golf club two miles from where he grew up. It cost $100 million. Tiger Woods designed it. It’s got a state-of-the-art training center, a lighted par-3 course named The Bullpen, and a 30,000-square-foot putting area. It’s got a spa, a barber shop, a bowling alley, a 2,500-bottle wine cellar, and a fitness center designed by Trout. It’s got a clubhouse named The Clubhouse. It’s got five-star accommodations that include two lodges, five cottages, and at least one hut. It’s got two comfort stations. One of them is called The Dugout, and it’s designed to look like a major league dugout (without the sunflower seeds, presumably). It’s got a freaking helipad.

It’s important to set the scene, but this is actually the least fun part of the story. As much as Millville loves Mike Trout, it does not love his 288-acre Shangri-La. Just a few weeks ago, Patrick Lanni of NJ.com wrote a deeply reported story highlighting the disconnect involved in building such a thing in Cumberland County, “widely considered New Jersey’s poorest county, with the state’s highest poverty rate, lowest median household income and an 8% unemployment rate.” Trout hasn’t necessarily gone out of his way to integrate Trout National – The Reserve into the community either. “It’s pure golf,” he told Golf.com. “You don’t see any houses.”

To be clear, the golf course is situated right next to many houses. You don’t see them because Trout National is surrounded by a stone wall that stands 15 feet tall. It’s built on an old silica salt mine and onetime farmland, but that wasn’t quite enough space. The developers also bought up at least 15 single-family homes for their land. Many neighbors now have a giant wall bordering their backyards. Some residents who refused to sell found their properties walled in on three sides. The Old Vineland Tavern sticks out like a sore thumb, but luckily Danny’s Pizza Pizzazz across the street is safe.

One resident told Lanni, “I’ve heard from the city council that everything is going to be so good for the community…. The club is its own thing. You go there, and you stay there. You don’t go to downtown Millville.” It’s hard to imagine the golfers arriving and departing by helicopter are going to spend all that much time outside walls of the compound, except maybe to duck into Danny’s for a pizza (and some pizzazz).

It may sound like the name of a fish stick company that went bankrupt in 1989, but Trout National has staked its brand on exclusivity and opulence. Its website doesn’t feature all that much copy, but whoever wrote it raided the thesaurus for “curated,” “luxurious,” “luxury,” “private,” “upscale,” “masterfully crafted,” “refined,” “secluded,” “custom,” “high-end,” and “luxury” one more time. Rosenthal didn’t provide any details about the hut where Zeferjahn found out he’d been traded, but I think we can safely assume it’s one of the fancier huts ever constructed.

Another Vineland resident told Lanni, “I think everyone understands that none of us will ever see inside of those walls.” Doing so would take quite an investment. Membership is limited to 227 people, a nod to Trout’s uniform number, 27. Mike’s brother Tyler told Golf.com that membership will be composed of athletes, young business professionals, and entrepreneurs. The fees aren’t public, but comparable ultra-exclusive courses have reported initiation fees in the vicinity of half a million dollars, along with annual membership fees around $200,000. And the place is literally called The Reserve; you know, as in an area that people are kept out of.

Mike Trout and his partners bought out more than a dozen people in his hometown in order to build a five-star golf paradise that no one in his hometown will ever be able to see. He surrounded it with a 15-foot wall so that none of his customers, 227 of the richest people on the planet, would be subjected to the sight of his hometown. You don’t have to be a resident of Millville to be offended by this kind of excess.

This is the setting for the day’s events. This is Trout’s fantastical chocolate factory, and much like Willy Wonka, his visitors kept getting whisked away one by one throughout the day. I’m sure you have more questions.

Oh yeah, when exactly did all the trades go down?

I’m so glad you asked. Not only can we timestamp the day’s events based on when the trades broke, but Rosenthal also told us what hole everyone was on when they got traded. Let’s update our scorecard, shall we?

• First Hole: Brent Suter to the Braves
  Suter got the first call right before everyone teed off. Some players were still warming up on a putting green; some were at the first tee box. ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke the news at 11:26 AM. As Passan said on Effectively Wild last year, he never breaks trade news until he’s sure the players involved have already been informed, so Mozeliak must have called Suter to deliver the news a bit beforehand. “Can I finish the round?” Suter asked. “Can I golf?” Mozeliak said yes, which makes him sound very magnanimous until you realize that he was no longer Suter’s boss.
• Seventh Hole: Jo Adell to the Guardians
  Jon Heyman broke this news at 12:19 PM. “I was in shock,” Adell said. He finished out the front nine, then left. I honestly don’t know where Adell went or how he got there. I can’t imagine he went all the way back to Baltimore. The Guardians were at home at the time, so maybe he called an Uber for the 45-minute ride to Philadelphia, then caught a flight to Cleveland.
• Hole Indeterminate: Reid Detmers to the Cubs (Not Real)
  So an incorrect report had Detmers going to the Cubs around 2:45 PM. That rumor made it to Detmers, but his foursome, which included Trout, quickly gathered that it was inaccurate. “I think it was good he was golfing,” said Trout. “It took his mind off it.” Detmers, however, told MLB.com that even after confirming with his agent that no trade had taken place, he didn’t feel safe until 30 minutes after the trade deadline. Based on the timing, we can assume Detmers was somewhere around the 10th hole.
• Twelfth or 13th Hole: Ryan Zeferjahn to the Cubs (For Real)
  At 3:46 PM, Passan broke the news that Zeferjahn really would be traded to the Cubs. As you know, when Zeferjahn got the call, he was gathered in a hut with all his teammates to avoid the rain. He had no privacy. On the bright side, all his teammates who had played in Chicago were able to brief him about his new organization.
• Nineteenth Hole: Kirby Yates to the Pirates
  This was the buzzer-beater move of the day. It came just as everyone had finished up the round and was getting ready to leave. Rosenthal broke it himself (along with colleague Will Sammon) at 6:00 PM. “I didn’t think I had a chance,” Yates told Rosenthal. “I did not think there was a market for a 39-year-old throwing 90 mph.” In the final ironic twist of the day, the Pirates were about to kick off a series against the Brewers, so Yates had to fly right back to Milwaukee. He ended up making three straight appearances against the Brewers.

This must have all been so weird.

Uh, yeah.

So… did Mike Trout not know when the trade deadline was?

Well, Trout planned the outing back in the spring. He saw a day off on the east coast on the schedule, and he went for it. It’s not surprising that he didn’t immediately realize it was the trade deadline. August 3 is unusually late, a result of the fact that August 1 fell on a Saturday and the deadline can’t be on a weekend. It probably wasn’t top of mind anyway. He couldn’t know that early on that the Angels — a team that despite being bad for years has never embarked upon the type of teardown we saw this season — would be selling at the deadline. Plus, he’s Mike Trout. He’s never had to worry about getting traded.

But he figured it out eventually, right?

Yes. Mike Trout learned that the trade deadline was on August 3 prior to the morning of August 3. In fact, Mozeliak briefed him on the team’s deadline strategy a few days beforehand.

Oh yeah! Trout was part of the trade deadline war room, right? Didn’t he know his teammates were going to get traded away?

Trout has said this report was blown out of proportion, but… yes. Mozeliak and Trout met a few weeks before the deadline and established that he wouldn’t be traded, Then, a few days before the deadline, he was invited into the war room. “People were blowing it up,” he told MLB.com. “It wasn’t what everybody’s saying. Basically, just going over everything. It wasn’t like I was telling him, ‘Oh, trade this guy, trade that guy.’ It was basically just a plan. It was just Mo trying to build a relationship with me in the couple weeks he’s been here. Just being transparent. I think that’s the biggest thing.”

All of this would seem fairly standard. Trout is the face of the franchise, and he’s under contract through 2030. It only makes sense to get him on board with the vision for the future of the team, especially before a teardown. But it gets weird when you factor the golf outing into the equation. By Trout’s own admission, Mozeliak told him the team’s plan for the deadline, which clearly involved trading everything that wasn’t nailed down. They went over everything – Trout’s own words – so at the very least, he had to have had an idea that some of his guests would cease to be his teammates.

So why didn’t he cancel?

That’s the hundred-million-dollar question, and only Mike Trout knows the answer. Rosenthal described the situation in hilariously deadpan language. “Trout came to realize, as he organized the outing, that it might be an unusual day. The group, he said, had an idea that trades were coming.” All the same, I can think of plenty of reasons that might have pushed to keep this particular tee time on the books.

• If I’ve learned one thing about Mike Trout in researching this article, it’s that the dude really loves golf. When baseball was shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, he would finish his baseball workout, then go play 36 holes of golf, then hit the driving range or the putting green to work on his game.
• Trout National took years to build, and I’m sure Trout is very, very proud of it. He was probably really excited to show all his buddies his opulent little city-state. He planned this whole trip, and he was reluctant to give it up.
• Remember when I mentioned that Trout saw a day off on the schedule and he jumped on it? That’s a bigger deal than you might realize. Last year, the Angels didn’t have a single off day on the east coast. You can understand why he wanted to hold onto this one.
• I don’t subscribe to this notion, but if you want to be really, really cynical, you could also posit that he viewed this little trip as a recruiting venture for prospective members.
• I imagine that baseball works a little differently for Mike Trout than for most players. He’s never been traded. He’s never been at risk of being traded. Considering how terrible they’ve been during his tenure, the Angels have done a surprisingly small amount of selling at the deadline. I don’t want to accuse him of a lack of empathy or anything, but the toll of this particular part of the game may just be a bit harder for Trout to grasp than for players who have lived through it or who enjoy less job security.
• In that same vein, I’m sure Trout didn’t pressure anybody into coming on the trip – José Soriano found out he’d been traded in his hotel in Baltimore because he’s not a golfer – but he also may not have realized how hard it would be for his teammates to turn down that invitation. That’s just human nature. He may not fully comprehend the amount of authority he has in the clubhouse simply by virtue of being Mike Trout.
• Trout may well have figured that cancelling would have just traded one form of awkwardness for another. He couldn’t exactly go around the clubhouse telling everyone they were uninvited because the deadline was going to be a bloodbath. But it would have been really weird to cancel without giving some excuse. Everybody knew he’d been briefed on the team’s deadline plans. They probably would have figured it out.
• Maybe he just thought spending the day golfing with your buddies would be a better way to deal with the stress of getting traded than moping around Baltimore and waiting for your phone to ring (though he’d have probably felt differently if he had known about Bergers cookies, the Baltimore delicacy that can turn any rough day around). “I guess if you’re going to get news like that,” Mozeliak told Rosenthal, “you might as well be having fun.”

Now that it’s over, does Trout wish he’d just cancelled the whole thing and organized a team outing to go see the new Spider-Man movie?

We’ll never know for sure, but my guess is no. Rosenthal came as close as he could to asking this question without being rude. Asked whether the day went as he had envisioned it, Trout said, “It was just different. We were all enjoying a round of golf. It was different, for sure.”

Can we back up and talk logistics for a second? Is Millville even convenient to get to?

Millville is extremely convenient to get to. From Philadelphia.

From Baltimore, not so much. Assuming there’s no traffic whatsoever, it’s a two-hour drive away from Baltimore. The team flew from Milwaukee to Baltimore, then roughly a dozen players hopped on a bus bound for New Jersey. Several coaches and staffers arrived on their own bus in the morning. I’ve run all the numbers here, and this was a hectic day for the Angels.

Here’s the most optimistic timeline I can possibly imagine. Sunday’s game in Milwaukee ended at 2:45 PM Central. Let’s say everybody really hustled in the shower and the bus left the ballpark at 3:15. It’s a 15-minute drive to the airport, and we’ll assume no traffic (not even airport traffic) and just 15 minutes to get the plane loaded and the wheels up. The flight from Milwaukee is an hour and 55 minutes long, and you lose an hour to time zones. We’ll give everybody another five minutes to get off the plane and on the bus, and then it’s a two-hour bus ride to Millville (again assuming no traffic whatsoever). That would put everyone in Millville at 8:45 PM Eastern at the very earliest. In reality, I’d bet they arrived closer to 11 or 12. This timeline doesn’t even account for the fact that they presumably ate dinner at some point.

Then they had a full day of golf, starting around 11:00 AM and wrapping up a bit before 6:00 PM, which means they didn’t get back into Baltimore until 8 at the earliest.

So where did everybody spend the night? At the golf club?

No. Rosenthal reported that the dozen or so players “stayed overnight at Trout’s home.”

Must be a pretty big home.

Yeah, Trout’s New Jersey home is a house in the same way that the White House is a house. It’s a custom-built mansion that took a year to design and more than two years to construct. Nobody was sleeping on a futon.

Something’s been bothering me for a while now.

I’m pretty sure I know where you’re going with this.

It’s the rain.

Yeah.

It rained in the middle of Mike Trout’s big day and everybody was stuck in a hut. Did Mike Trout fail to check the weather report?

I feel confident that Mike Trout knew it was going to rain. In fact, I feel confident that Mike Trout spent most of Sunday and Monday talking about the chance of precipitation to anybody who would listen and several people who weren’t listening. Surely, this was his big chance to call off the event without raising suspicion or hurting any feelings. “Sorry, guys, can’t do the big golf day. It’s going to rain in Millville. Next year for sure, though.” Easy-peasy. He must have just really, really wanted to do it.

Did the Angels get to finish their round of golf, or did the rain ruin it?

It sounds like they finished, but this has got to be the funniest part of the whole situation. Even Mike Trout’s one true love, the weather, was in on the plot to ruin his big day.

So this doesn’t sound like a very restful day off. Did the Angels win the next day?

Hahahahaha no.

Ranked and briefly analyzed below are the prospects who have been traded during the loosely defined “2026 deadline season,” which for simplicity’s sake we consider all of July. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of have been analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here; you can also click the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below, which will take you to the relevant article. We’ve moved all of the 35+ FV and above players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates and read their full scouting reports. You can also view all of the traded prospects on the 2026 Trade Deadline tab. The Farm System Rankings, which update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up following the draft and the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »

In this trade deadline season where everyone’s within reach of a playoff spot, the Marlins were one of several teams that attempted to chart a middle path. Sure, we’ll sell off some of our best players — including, in Liam Hicks and Lake Bachar, some guys with plenty of team control left — but we’ll add in other trades and try to backfill those roles.

Miami’s big major league add was 26-year-old reliever Victor Vodnik, late of the Colorado Rockies. That sounds like damning with faint praise, and it is: Vodnik has a 5.25 ERA in 36 innings this season, and at the time of the trade, he was fifth among Rockies relievers in gmLI, which is the average leverage index when he enters the game. In other words, the Rockies don’t think Vodnik is a high-leverage reliever, or at least they hadn’t been using him that way.

Vodnik cost the Marlins third baseman Connor Norby, who was the less successful half of the Trevor Rogers trade, and pitching prospect Aiden May. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline was yesterday. Are you tired? I’m tired. But we’re not done yet. We’ve still got to break down the three trades the Reds managed to swing at the bell. Let’s get to it, and then let’s take a nap. First, the Reds sent reliever Caleb Ferguson to the Cardinals in exchange for $250,000 of international bonus pool space. Then the Reds hooked up with the Guardians for two intrastate deals: Cleveland sent Cincinnati pitching prospect Alejandro Rivera in exchange for first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, and, in a separate transaction, traded rookie second baseman Juan Brito in exchange for a pile of money whose size has not yet been revealed. Were I in charge of one of these Ohio franchises, I might have combined those deals into one move, as it likely would have made everyone feel a bit better. Brito would definitely feel a bit better if he thought his contract hadn’t simply been sold outright, and Lowe might have an extra bit of pep in his step if he thought he got traded for not one but two players (plus he could’ve delivered the cash considerations himself, saving the Reds a trip to the post office for a money order). Let’s take these in order, shall we?

Ferguson must be getting used to this. He got traded at the deadline from the Yankees to the Astros in 2024 and the Pirates to the Mariners in 2025. At least Cincinnati to St. Louis is his shortest move yet. The 30-year-old lefty reliever is running a 4.01 ERA and 4.23 FIP this season. That FIP is grumpy, his highest since 2019, because he’s walking 10.1% of the batters he faces and running his worst home run rate since 2020. Although his hard-hit rate is still excellent and he has a great groundball rate, batters seem more comfortable. Their bat speed against him is up more than two ticks from last season, a huge jump that makes it seem like the high home run rate might be more than just bad luck. Still, we should note that we’re talking about a small sample here. Ferguson has only made 26 appearances (24.2 inning) because he missed the first two months of the season with an oblique injury (that is, an injury to his obliques; not some sort of obscure, unparsable injury). He is also running the second-highest BABIP of his career and his expected ERA is 3.49, almost exactly the same as last year, so Statcast isn’t too worried about his contact quality.

However, we do need to note some real changes in Ferguson’s profile. His average fastball velocity has dropped from 93.9 mph last year to 92.4 mph this year. His arm angle has also dropped significantly, from 46 degrees to 39. These are big changes, and as you’d expect when a pitcher’s arm angle drops, Ferguson’s stuff has traded a small amount of vertical movement for some horizontal movement. Now, maybe this is intentional. Maybe it’s a result of the oblique injury, and Ferguson’s velocity, arm angle, or both will jump back up toward the end of the season. I don’t have a way of knowing, but it obviously didn’t scare off St. Louis.

As for why the Cardinals made this move, my only guess is that they weren’t planning on using that bonus pool money. They traded away Dustin May, JoJo Romero, and Lars Nootbaar at the deadline. After beating the Yankees last night, their playoff odds sit at 5.5%. Ferguson can take the left-handed Romero’s spot in a bullpen that ranks 24th in ERA and 21st in FIP.

That brings us to the Reds-Guardians trades. Lowe is the big-ticket item here. After a dismal 2025 season in which he ran a 91 wRC+ and put up -0.3 WAR, he is back where he’s been for most of his career, running a 120 wRC+ and, when he’s not DH’ing, providing first base defense that is better left unmentioned. However, in recent years, Lowe has been going about it in a very different fashion.

Lowe bats left-handed, but his career platoon splits aren’t that extreme. He’s got a 103 wRC+ against lefties and a 123 mark against righties. Last year, that changed. He put up a wRC+ of just 41 against lefties. It’s the main reason his season was such a disaster. This year, the Reds have been shielding Lowe from lefties at all costs. He’s only faced them 10% of the time, and while that’s a tiny sample, you can’t fault them: He’s running a 137 wRC+ against righties and a -52 wRC+ against lefties. Yes, I said negative 52. He’s going to keep on platooning in Cleveland.

To that end, the Guardians made room on the roster for Lowe and fellow trade acquisition Jo Adell by optioning Kyle Manzardo and David Fry to Triple-A. Manzardo had been platooning with Rhys Hoskins at first base, but after running a 113 wRC+ in his first full major league season last year, he’s backslid to a 95 wRC+. His defense, while not Nathaniel Lowe-bad, hasn’t helped much either. Lowe will slide into Manzardo’s spot, serving as the big spoon in the first base platoon with Hoskins.

This isn’t the sexiest move, and the defensive side will cost the Guardians some. Manzardo and Lowe have both put up -4 FRV at first base this season, but Lowe has accrued that negative value in just 30% of the innings (and to be fair to Manzardo, DRS actually thinks he’s actually been a good defender). Still, the offensive bump will more than offset that, and – stop me if you’ve heard this before – the Guards need some help at the plate. With a 93 wRC+, they rank 25th in baseball. This isn’t exactly a new problem, but Lowe should be able to provide some real help.

Cincinnati’s return for Lowe is intriguing, though the player is a ways off from the majors. The Guardians signed the 19-year-old Rivera out of Venezuela, and he’s spent the past two seasons dominating the DSL to the tune of a 1.60 ERA and a 3.97 FIP. (I know the FIP doesn’t sound that impressive, but in the DSL, that still works out to an impressive FIP- of 78.) Rivera ran a 2.44 ERA with a 3.59 FIP and a huge 36% strikeout rate in the complex this year, and made one start at Low-A before the deadline. Eric Longenhagen likes Rivera’s athleticism, noting that although the righty is just 5-foot-10, he generates six-and-a-half feet of extension. He’s got a plus changeup, and a low release gives his fastball, which sits 90-94 mph, an uphill angle. Eric put a 35+ FV on Rivera, noting that the “lack of size makes it tough to comfortably project him as a starter.”

That brings us to our last move: Juan Brito for a mystery amount of cash. You don’t need me to break down the present or future value of cash. That’s helpfully printed on the corners, so we can get right to Brito, whom the Guardians DFA’d a few hours before the trade. The 24-year-old infielder made his major league debut in April, and in 15 games, he’s put up a wRC+ of 45 and struck out more than 30% of the time. He’s mostly hit in the minors. In 2022, he ran a 131 wRC+ as a Colorado farmhand in Low-A. In 2023, he ran a 128 wRC+ across three levels for the Guardians. In 2024, he ran a 114 wRC+ at Triple-A, and in 2025, that number was 110. But you might have noticed that those numbers have trended downward over time, and Brito has been worse this year, running a 98 wRC+ at Triple-A to go with the short, ugly debut.

Even worse, as Eric and Brendan Gawlowski noted back in January, Brito’s defense has been trending downward too. While he once looked like he’d play a passable second base, “Brito has tumbled down the defensive spectrum, and after experimentation at third base and in the outfield, it’s starting to look like his best position is first base. He’ll still play second, but not particularly well.” Eric and Brendan put a 40 FV on Brito, noting that “he hits righties well enough to play a small role.” With Matt McLain struggling for the second year in a row, maybe Brito will get a chance to show the Reds what he can do at some point in the next couple months.

So those are our trades. The Cardinals bought a lefty to replace the lefty they didn’t need anymore because they were giving up on the season. The Guardians gave up an interesting young pitcher to make a small upgrade at first base, and the Reds are giving a look to an infielder whose arrow is pointing down. We did it, you guys. Let’s take that nap.

It looked like it was going to be a quiet deadline for a while, but the floodgate opened over the weekend, and we got a lot of fun moves, including a deal involving two-time reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. In the end, it feels better than last year’s deadline, when every team seemed preoccupied mainly with shoring up its bullpen. Now, there were certainly a lot of relievers shifting around, but plenty of starting pitchers and position players were also traded, and variety is the spice of deadline life.

Deciding the victor and the goat of the trade deadline is a vexing philosophical exercise, as teams come into swapping season with different goals. That makes it hard to distill deadline performance into a single, all-purpose number. But since distillation is a fun process — we would not be blessed with bourbon without it — let’s narrow down the question to something a projection system can get its virtual mind around. I focused on the 2026 part of the equation to cover the ZiPS portion of the deadline: Which teams helped their 2026 chances the most? Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, baseball teams cram a whole season of trade activity and rumors into about four days of mayhem. This year was no exception, and there was an even bigger prize than normal. The best player available at the deadline isn’t always one of the best players in baseball; it’s often merely the best player nearing free agency on a team that isn’t competing. But this year, one of the best few pitchers on the planet fell into that category, and a broad cast of would-be contenders saw opportunities to add some juice to their rosters too. This isn’t a comprehensive list. Give me another few weeks, and I’ll have more nuanced opinions about everyone’s actions. But one day after the sound and the fury, here are the trends that most stood out to me.

Winner: The Dodgers
Duh. They got Tarik Skubal. Analysis doesn’t always have to be complicated. The Dodgers gave up two Top 100 prospects in the deal, but they’re accumulating top prospects through good drafting and development faster than they can spend them in trades and major league playing time, so that’s not a huge cost. They even get the ancillary benefit of preventing their opponents from trading for Skubal, which is non-neglible.

The Dodgers have made three big acquisitions in the past year: Skubal, Kyle Tucker, and Edwin Díaz. That’s the top available starter, hitter, and reliever (in expectation, at least) over that time period, whether in free agency or trade. The Dodgers know that they’re good now, and they’re pressing the advantage at every turn. That killer instinct puts them in great position to add a third straight championship. Not that they’re favorites, because the baseball playoffs are fueled by randomness, but they’re about as favored as it’s possible to be. Read the rest of this entry »

The dust has barely settled from a wild day of wheeling and dealing, but the season continues to chug along. The dog days of summer are just ahead, the playoff pictures in both leagues are a little clearer after a few teams on the fence decided to sell, and the stretch run looks like it’ll have plenty of drama as teams race toward the playoffs.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

Note: All power rankings stats, including team records, are updated through Sunday’s games. The rest of the information below is current as of Tuesday morning.

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The Red Sox might not have the best overall record in baseball, but they just swept the Dodgers over the weekend and have taken the top spot in these power rankings as a result. Boston has been the best team in baseball for about a month and a half now; the Sox are 31-8 record since the start of play on June 19. They also made one of the most surprising moves on Monday, acquiring Adley Rutschman to significantly improve their production from behind the plate. They gave up a serious haul for the three-time All-Star catcher, but the bold move signals that Boston believes this recent hot streak is more indicative of its true talent over the remainder of the regular season.

The Brewers didn’t land Tarik Skubal, instead opting to make a handful of moves around the margins of their roster. They added Dustin May, JoJo Romero, and Antonio Senzatela to provide a ton of necessary depth for the pitching staff. That trio should be solid enough, but none of them is the kind of impact addition that Skubal could have been. The Brewers currently have the best record in baseball, but even after they made the necessary moves to improve their roster for the stretch run, it still feels like a pretty disappointing trade deadline for them.

The Dodgers made their big move a few days before the trade deadline, acquiring Skubal from the Tigers on Saturday. This trade isn’t meant to shore up the roster ahead of a summer push in a tight playoff race; rather, it’s all about improving the team’s odds of winning a third World Series championship in a row. The Dodgers are in an odd place on the win curve, where a postseason berth is all but guaranteed but the randomness of the playoffs still looms. Nothing can fully eliminate that risk in October, but adding the two-time Cy Young winner to an already-stacked rotation goes a long way toward reducing the potential for an early-round upset. Alas, a sloppy series against the Red Sox this past weekend resulted in a sweep, and Los Angeles also lost the first game of a series against the Cubs on Monday. Skubal is slated to start on Tuesday, and he’ll be tasked with stopping this four-game slide.

The Braves had a pretty quiet trade deadline, choosing to add a few minor pieces in outfielder Lane Thomas, righty starter Tyler Mahle, and lefty reliever Brent Suter. Riding a five-game winning streak and a 12-5 record coming out of the All-Star break, Atlanta must mot have felt the need to act very aggressively. It’s a little surprising the team didn’t do more to improve the depth of the starting rotation, especially since Reynaldo López injured his knee last week, further depleting the group. The Braves have a bunch of young starters stashed in Triple-A they can cycle through if needed, and Spencer Schwellenbach is on track to return sometime before the end of the regular season, but their deadline inaction still feels like a missed opportunity.

The Rays added to a position of strength when they acquired right-handed starter Freddy Peralta from the Mets over the weekend. Their pitching staff has been solid all season long, but their position in the standings has forced them to think about what a deep postseason run might look like. All-Star righty Drew Rasmussen has been fantastic, and Shane McClanahan has been wonderful, though the lefty was placed on the IL last week with a minor back strain. Tampa Bay also has to be thinking about McClanahan’s workload after he missed all of the past two years due to injury. Peralta might not be the ace he was in Milwaukee, but he’s a veteran starter who should help the Rays make some noise in October. They also added Liam Hicks to solidify their production behind the plate and lengthen the lineup.

The Cubs did what they had to do at the trade deadline: add pitching. They acquired right-handed starter Kevin Gausman from the Blue Jays on Sunday, and then traded with the Mets for righty starter Clay Holmes, with the Marlins for lefty starter Braxton Garrett, and with the Angels for righty reliever Ryan Zeferjahn on Monday. While all those additions might not be enough to help Chicago chase down the Brewers in the NL Central, they do give the team a much stronger foundation for a deep postseason run.

With injuries decimating their lineup, the Yankees were focused on bulking up the offense at the deadline. They added first baseman/second baseman Luis García Jr. from the Nationals on Sunday, left fielder Heliot Ramos from the Giants on Monday, and are reportedly promoting top prospect George Lombard Jr. on Tuesday. Without a timeline for the returns of both Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, and a hamstring injury sidelining Cody Bellinger, the Yankees needed to act decisively to improve their standing in the AL playoff picture. With a fantastic pitching staff now supported by a strengthened lineup, this team should be a force to reckon with in October. The only lingering question is whether or not Judge will be healthy for that postseason run.

The Astros swept the Rangers this past weekend to claim first place in the AL West for the first time since early April, and they’ve now won 10 of their last 12 games. This hot streak has helped them leapfrog both Texas and Seattle in the standings, putting them in the driver’s seat in their division. They didn’t make any splashy moves at the trade deadline, only sending right-hander Spencer Arrighetti to the Blue Jays for Daulton Varsho to give them a much-needed center fielder. The pitching staff has seen the return of Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski from their respective injuries recently, but it feels like Houston will only go as far as Yordan Alvarez can carry it.

The White Sox fared well in their matchups with the Yankees and Rays last week, going 4-3 against two of the best teams in the AL. The two wins vs. New York were particularly dramatic; they were both walk-offs in extra innings to secure the series split. Now Chicago has to face the Red Sox and Guardians this week to complete its AL gauntlet. In a welcome show of faith in the progress the team has made this year, the White Sox acquired veteran right-hander Luis Castillo from the Mariners to hopefully improve the starting rotation, along with a bunch of depth pieces — catcher Joey Bart from the Braves, center fielder Brenton Doyle from the Rockies, and righty reliever Huascar Brazobán from the Mets — to reinforce the rest of the roster. It’s now up to the young core to lead the South Siders through this stretch run.

The Diamondbacks were in a really weird position ahead of the trade deadline. They had played their way into a Wild Card spot over the last few weeks — they’re 14-6 since July 9 — but they didn’t exactly act like a buyer on Monday. Perhaps it was because they’ve got a handful of injured pitchers — Corbin Burnes, Zac Gallen, Michael Soroka, and Justin Martinez are all in various stages of rehabbing from their respective injuries — who should help reinforce the pitching staff over the next few weeks. The one move they made, trading for lefty-hitting outfielder Lars Nootbaar, addresses one of the biggest holes in their lineup. Arizona started a critical four-game series against the Padres with a win on Monday.

The Twins were one of the surprising buyers at the deadline, adding righty reliever Jeff Hoffman from the Blue Jays, lefty reliever A.J. Minter from the Mets, and righty starter Dean Kremer to bolster the pitching staff. After losing the final two games of their weekend series against the Mariners in walk-off fashion, those bullpen reinforcements will be a huge help. The Twins are just a game behind the Guardians for the final Wild Card spot and four games back in the AL Central. Their roster looks pretty solid, but they’re currently missing the superstar who was carrying a lot of the offensive load, as Byron Buxton was placed back on the IL last week with the same hip injury that sidelined him for a few weeks earlier in July. Meanwhile, Cleveland added left-handed starter Foster Griffin, right-handed-hitting outfielder Jo Adell, and lefty-swinging first baseman Nathaniel Lowe to its roster on Monday. The three moves should add some juice to a team that’s been limping along with a 6-10 record since the All-Star break.

The Marlins snapped their 12-game losing streak last Monday and immediately rattled off six wins in seven games to jump right back into the thick of the NL Wild Card race. That perfectly timed hot streak wasn’t enough to prevent the team from soft-selling at the deadline. Trading away catcher/first baseman Liam Hicks won’t have too much of a long-term impact since Miami had a bit of a logjam at first base and designated hitter, and catcher Joe Mack has acclimated to the big leagues very well since being called up in May. The core that had carried the Fish into this position in the playoff picture is still very much intact.

After being swept by the Astros over the weekend, there was some speculation that the Rangers would sell despite sitting two games back in the AL Wild Card race. They wound up standing pat and will ride their current roster as far as it will take them. The same can’t be said for the Orioles and Tigers. Both of those teams are just a half game behind Texas in the standings, but they opted for pretty dramatic teardowns. Detroit moved Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize, while Baltimore traded away Adley Rutschman, Dean Kremer, Taylor Ward, and Tyler Wells. The AL standings have been wide open for the entire season, and instead of gambling on a chance at a playoff spot, these two teams have opted to punt for next year. That undoubtedly helps the Twins, Guardians, Rangers, and Mariners, all of whom are vying for that final Wild Card spot in addition to their respective divisional races.

The Blue Jays had a weird trade deadline. They dealt away Kevin Gausman and Daulton Varsho, two of their players on expiring contracts. They also went out and traded for right-handed starter José Soriano, giving up a significant prospect package to get the flamethrower from the Angels. Somehow, the Blue Jays successfully managed to straddle the line between selling and reloading for next year. Toronto’s follow-up season after coming so close to winning a championship has been incredibly disappointing, but the roster is built to win, World Series hangover be damned. Soriano and Arrighetti are two young starters who will definitely help the team in the years to come.

A five-game losing streak last week was a huge blow to the Nationals’ chances of staying in the NL Wild Card race down the stretch. They truly waived the white flag on competing this season when they traded Luis García Jr. to the Yankees on Sunday, then sent Foster Griffin to Cleveland on Monday. All is not lost in Washington, however. The offensive improvements seem like they’re for real, even if García Jr.’s power breakout was a big part of that jump forward. Now the Nats just need to figure out their pitching staff — and finding out if Cade Cavalli is the guy to lead the rotation is a big part of that.

The Angels had a surprisingly strong deadline, embracing their role as a seller and netting a ton of young talent to restock a barren farm system. Interim general manager John Mozeliak ripped the Band-Aid off the team’s resistance to tear things down and set the Halos on the path toward a full-scale rebuild. Overhauling their development pipeline to support these new prospects is the next priority, but these moves were a good first step.

The Athletics’ truly miserable stretch of play continued into August. They won just five games in July and started this month off getting swept by the Tigers. The team was leading the division on May 26 and had a .500 record as recently as June 19, and now it’s on the verge of dropping below the Angels for the worst record in baseball. To make things worse, Nick Kurtz is dealing with a hand issue after being hit by a pitch on the forearm on Wednesday. It’s unclear if he’ll need another IL stint so soon after returning from a thumb injury.

Plan A for Chicago’s starting rotation went out the window all the way back on April 4 when Cade Horton went down with a forearm strain. After he’d finished second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2025, the Cubs were counting on him as a key contributor in 2026. Instead, his season ended after just two starts. Then on April 6, Matthew Boyd hit the IL with a bicep strain. Fortunately, he was only sidelined for two weeks, but by May 6 he was out of commission again, this time with a meniscus tear that took him out until June 25. Offseason rotation addition Edward Cabrera has also logged multiple IL stints this year — first, a blister that sidelined him from May 24 to June 5, then a hamstring strain that has had him on the shelf since June 24. Strained hamstrings aren’t contagious, but if they were, Cabrera would’ve caught his from Jameson Taillon, who was out with the same injury from June 9 to July 20 and then designated for assignment a week following his return due to poor performance. Given the myriad of injured starters, by early May the Cubs were forced to move Ben Brown from his long-relief role in the bullpen back to the starting rotation. He made eight starts before landing on the IL with a neck strain.

After placing both Cabrera and Brown on the IL on June 24, the Cubs started their deadline shopping a little early, trading with the Mets for left-handed starter David Peterson on June 25. Peterson has not pitched well this season, posting a 5.52 ERA and a 4.11 FIP over 101 innings, but aside from one clunker against the Cardinals, his results have been much better with the Cubs. Over his last four starts, he’s pitched to a 1.52 ERA, albeit with a 4.20 FIP. Nevertheless, Peterson does not single-handedly fix the Cubs’ rotation, nor does Kevin Gausman, whom they acquired from the Blue Jays on Sunday. No, and even with Cabrera pitching in his first Triple-A rehab game last Friday (1 2/3 IP, 3 ER, 2 BB, 3 K), it’s always a good idea to go ahead and add one more guy. Maybe even two.

Thus, in the hours before the trade deadline on Monday, the Cubs linked up with the Mets once more, this time agreeing to send infield prospect Jefferson Rojas to New York in exchange for right-handed starting pitcher Clay Holmes and outfielder Tyrone Taylor. But that’s not all, as Chicago also acquired right-handed reliever Ryan Zeferjahn from the Angels in exchange for catcher/DH Moisés Ballestero and right-handed pitcher Mason McGwire. To cap it off, the Cubs sealed a swap with the Marlins in which they sent infielder Jonathon Long and pitcher Jace Beck to Miami for pitcher lefty Braxton Garrett. Read the rest of this entry »

You might have thought it was the Presidents Day Blowout Sale in San Francisco, as all 2026 models MUST GO, with 0% APR financing and additional dealer cash. All kidding aside — or maybe not, since this is a Szymborski piece — the Giants were one of deadline’s the most aggressive sellers and they continued the trend yesterday by trading two more veterans to contending teams. Heading to the Yankees is outfielder Heliot Ramos, who has hit .264/.304/.424 with nine homers in 74 games this season, good for 0.7 WAR, down numbers compared to his 2025 and especially his All-Star 2024 season. Elsewhere in the AL East, the Red Sox acquired lefty reliever Erik Miller, who has a 2.76 ERA and a 3.34 FIP, with 12 strikeouts per nine alongside six walks; Boston also picked up minor league outfielder Carlos Gutierrez. Of course, the Giants didn’t help restock these division rivals out of the goodness of their hearts: they received infielder Marcelo Mayer from the Red Sox, and pitcher Henry Lalane and infielder Kaeden Kent from the Yankees.

Over the weekend, I wrote about the Yankees trading for Luis García Jr. to help bolster their lineup until they get Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton back healthy. Through the use of cry-laughing emojis in our company Slack, fellow FanGraphiér Jeff Zimmerman quite rightly noted my possible naïveté in having confidence that this particular result would actually come to pass. Whether or not the Yankees hacked my computer, received a telepathic message from Jeff, or (most likely) came to the same conclusion, they’ve hedged their bets on their veterans returning by picking up Ramos.

Early in his career, Ramos appeared to be a star in the making. That stardom seemed almost within reach in 2024, but his power didn’t continue to develop (just the opposite), and he turned out to be a rather middling defensive corner outfielder who couldn’t stick in center. Still, Ramos does do something well: He hits left-handed pitching. Indeed, even in a rather mediocre season, he’s gone after southpaws to the tune of a 127 wRC+. I think García was a necessary addition to the Yankees offense, but the team also needed someone who could tee off on lefties, which García doesn’t, and who has experience in the outfield. And while Ramos is certainly below average out there — his 2026 numbers have rebounded from his dreadful 2025, though they’re still slightly under water — he at least has experience playing in the outfield. In fact, if I’m being perfectly honest, he’s probably as valuable of a player overall as Stanton, albeit without the highlight reel, 120-mph home runs. Ramos isn’t a free agent until after the 2029 season, so unless he’s traded again, the Yankees will have him in the mix over the next few years, assuming they want to. Here’s his ZiPS projection:

If you told me six weeks ago that the Red Sox would be one of the hottest teams in baseball and would be buyers at the trade deadline, I would have been shocked beyond belief. After all, not only would you have had an actual time machine, but you would have been using it for the extremely unambitious task of telling me and my cats how teams played in July. The Red Sox went 21-4 last month, highlighted by a 15-game winning streak, the majors’ longest since the 2021 Cardinals rolled off 17 wins in a row. They entered Monday’s games with the second Wild Card spot in hand, a four-game cushion on the Guardians behind them, and a shopping list to improve the 2026 team. Their big move was acquiring Adley Rutschman from Baltimore, but that wasn’t all they did.

Boston’s bullpen certainly isn’t a weak spot; the relief corps currently leads baseball in both ERA and FIP. But as quesabirria should have shown you, great things can be made even greater. With Aroldis Chapman firmly reserved for the ninth inning, Jovani Morán was the only other lefty on the roster, and though I’m a fan of Tyler Samaniego as a relief option, there’s no question that a risk-averse playoff team would rather have Miller in October, even with the walks. Miller isn’t merely a rental, either; unless the free agency rules change this winter, the Red Sox have him cost-controlled for three more seasons after this one. Here’s the ZiPS:

Also going to Boston is Gutierrez, a smallish lefty outfielder who has the misfortune of being adequate in basically every way instead of having one standout tool to inspire scouts. He’ll draw a walk or two, and while his contact rate has dropped this year, he has generally displayed a pretty decent hit tool. He seems unlikely to really develop a whole lot of power, but he looks to me like a future fourth outfielder type. ZiPS throws out names like Jon Jay, Chris Duffy, Kerry Robinson, and Pookie Wilson (who is not related to Mookie Wilson, as far as I am aware) as comps. I kind of think of him as a poor man’s Steven Kwan. To the ZiPS!

As for the return, Marcelo Mayer sounds like a pretty big name to send to San Francisco in exchange for a solid-but-not-elite reliever. And it would have been… in 2024. However you choose to portion out the blame, Mayer has been hit with a number of injuries and, when healthy, has regressed from his 2024 form. While he’s still just 23 and could very well have a bright future, his phenom days are past, and if you suddenly gave him his prospect eligibility back by some weird authoritative fiat, he’d slot in far lower than the number-three ranking he earned on our updated 2024 Top 100. With Luis Arraez gone and Casey Schmitt almost certainly out until 2027, the path is clear for Mayer to take the second base job as soon as he’s recovered from the stress fracture in his forearm. His ZiPS:

In return for Ramos, the Giants picked up pitcher Henry Lalane and infielder Kaeden Kent.

Lalane is a big lefty with good offspeed stuff and a fastball with decent movement. The heater’s velocity has ticked up in recent months, going from the 93-95 mph range to 95-97 mph. He’s awfully old for a prospect in A-ball, but that’s due to shoulder problems that have kept him off the field. A lot of scouts see him as a future middle reliever, but I imagine that the Giants will wait to see if his breaking pitches develop further and how he fares at the upper levels. ZiPS broadly thinks Lalane has upside, though I don’t generally like publishing ZiPS seasonal lines for pitchers until they debut in Double-A since the error bars are so large.

Kent was a third-round pick for the Yankees in the 2025 draft who struggled in his professional debut, hitting .182/.217/.265 in 25 games last year. That wasn’t enough to keep him off our Yankees Top Prospects list, where he ranked 11th as a 40 FV. With the caveat that he’s a High-A repeater, he’s having a much better year in 2026, with a .302/.359/.433 slashline, good for a 107 wRC+. The Yankees have been playing him at shortstop, second, and third, so if he hits well after his high-stakes promotion to Double-A, he could at least enter the utility infield picture. A lefty hitter with a bit of power who can play anywhere on the infield is a useful role-player archetype to have. Kent’s ZiPS:

The Giants’ return for Ramos is less than what they got for Miller, but truth be told, there’s a good chance that Ramos was going to be a non-tender candidate before he hit free agency, barring a turnaround in his game.

Taken together, these trades form a tidy summary of the kind of move we typically see at the deadline. The days when you’d frequently see superstars with two months remaining on their deals fetch half a team’s farm system are now far off in the rearview mirror. Most deadline swaps make quiet-but-real incremental improvements, and that’s exactly what happened here. The Yankees get a useful outfielder who addresses a specific need. The Red Sox get a reliever who will be on their 2026 playoff roster in return for a player who was unlikely to be. And the Giants go about the yeoman’s work of converting a disappointing roster into younger players with plausible upside. None of the players acquired by the Giants are franchise-altering, but they didn’t have franchise-altering players on offer here. They accepted reality and acted accordingly, which is far better than sticking a giant inflatable gorilla on the roof and insisting that Ramos and Miller were only available at the dealership manager’s special price.

The Padres got the second-best pitcher traded by the Tigers at the deadline.

On Monday, Casey Mize was traded from Detroit to San Diego in exchange for pitching prospects Kash Mayfield and Jackson Wolf. The Padres also got minor league infielder Gage Workman in the deal.

Mize has been exceptional in 2026… when healthy. He’s posted a 2.70 ERA and 2.58 FIP in 86 2/3 innings. His 2.9 WAR is already a career best. He’s thrown strikes, missed bats, and kept the ball in the ballpark. He looks very much like the pitcher the Tigers were hoping to get when they drafted him first overall way back in 2018.

Unfortunately, Mize has also looked like the pitcher the Tigers ultimately got — or didn’t get — since his debut. He missed a few weeks in May with an adductor strain, and a few more weeks in June with adductor inflammation. Those trips to the injured list were the fifth and sixth of his career. He missed most of 2022 and all of 2023 while recovering from Tommy John surgery, and missed time with less significant hamstring injuries in 2024 and 2025. Mize exits Detroit having thrown just 526 2/3 innings over 105 outings spread across seven years; he’ll be a free agent this offseason. Read the rest of this entry »