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 »
Opening weekend of the WPBL’s inaugural season is officially in the record books. Around 5,200 fans happily crowded into a wet and windy Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois on Saturday for the privilege of being able to say they were present for the league’s first pitch. A rain delay lasting just over an hour prolonged the suspense that had been building since the league was first announced early last year, but women are used to waiting their turn.
With the season now underway, I’ll be recapping each week’s action by highlighting the most notable players, moments, and anything else I deem worthy of further commentary. For each edition of the recap, I will re-license the naming rights to this list of highlights to whichever team I feel has won the week. And how does a team win the week? Well, unlike actual wins and losses in baseball, this type of win is purely subjective and will operate under the time-honored tradition of making it up as we go along.
Along with the list of highlights, the Unforced Errors list will discuss the more confounding aspects of the prior week because good faith criticism is a necessary component of continuing progress. And to round things out, we’ll touch on the Historic Firsts of Lesser Renown. The league’s momentous firsts will obviously get their shine, but there’s something to be said for the more strange and mundane firsts, the smaller day-to-day occurrences that make a new league feel familiar and complete. Think of these firsts as the knickknacks on a shelf that make a new house feel like a home. Baseball fans won’t really feel settled into their new league until the first time a player on their favorite team commits a TOOTBLAN. Read the rest of this entry »
Kevin Gausman has been a fan favorite for most of his 14 big league seasons, and for good reason. Now a Chicago Cub after Sunday’s swap with the Toronto Blue Jays, the 35-year-old right-hander has not only performed well on the field, he is widely regarded as both a good teammate and an all-around nice guy. With that reputation in mind, and the trade deadline fast approaching, I broached the subject of fandom with him at Fenway Park in the final week of July.
I began by asking about his boyhood allegiances.
“I was more a fan of players than teams,” replied Gausman, who was born and raised in the Denver area. “I wouldn’t say I was a huge Rockies fan — I was more fair-weather — although when I was in high school, they did go to the World Series. Even so, I was more a fan of the Cargos [Carlos González], the Tulos [Troy Tulowitzki], and guys like Todd Helton and Ubaldo Jiménez. It wasn’t so much, ‘This is my favorite team.’ I didn’t have that. I did have my favorite uniforms, which is kind of funny looking back. I always liked the old Blue Jays uniforms.” 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 »
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.
The first reaction to this deal can only be one of astonishment, on multiple levels. The trade itself is audacious, from both teams’ perspective. Even with his trade value and reputation at a low ebb, Rutschman’s talents are gigantic, and the return reflects that.
But this trade’s on-field impact pales in comparison to What It All Means. Rutschman, the no. 1 overall pick in the 2019 draft, was the Orioles’ franchise player as they emerged from nearly a decade in the wilderness to become (if only briefly) a power player in the AL East. Seeing Rutschman in any other team’s colors will be weird enough to inspire the heebie-jeebies. Read the rest of this entry »
Exercising your brain via puzzles and brain teasers is a good way to stay sharp. Studies repeatedly show that solving difficult problems and applying critical reasoning skills build patterns and help fight off some of the effects of aging. So congratulations to me and to the Phillies front office – and to you, since you’re reading this article. Philadelphia acquired Luis Arraez in a deadline deal on Monday, and now we all have to wrack our brains around where the team is going to play him.
The full trade, as reported by Bob Nightengale: The Giants send Arraez and reliever Caleb Kilian to the Phillies in exchange for pitchers Ramon Marquez and Marty Gair. The main attraction in this foursome is Arraez, who has rejuvenated his career in a Giants uniform after a few years in the wilderness. He signed with the Giants because they were one of the few teams who wanted him to play second base, as opposed to first base, the spot where he’d spent most of his time in recent years. That experiment has gone exceedingly well, and Arraez has also recaptured some of his offensive spark. The result is his best season, as measured by WAR, with two months left to go.
His appeal to the Phillies is straightforward at a base level: They need to add some good hitters, basically. Their lineup has a lot of big names, but it also has a depth issue. Prior to the Arraez trade, five of their everyday starters had below-average offensive lines on the season, and that doesn’t count Bryan De La Cruz, who has hit well in eight games with the team. Philadelphia is on course to score its fewest runs per game (by a lot) since before Bryce Harper signed with the team in 2019; in other words, this is the worst Phillies offense of the current era. Read the rest of this entry »
The Blue Jays are eight games under .500, 13.5 games out of the division lead and 4.5 games out of the second AL Wild Card, with five teams to climb over before they reach the Guardians. They came into Deadline Day with a 5.2% chance of making the playoffs. I’m as gung ho about going for it as the next guy, but that’s not a position from which you want to be trading prospects for big league talent. Read the rest of this entry »
Given the slew of injuries they’ve sustained within their rotation while running up the National League’s fourth-best record (63-49) — not to mention their lack of an obvious Game 1 starter — the Cubs had as much reason to trade for Tarik Skubal as any contender. Reportedly, they at least considered the possibility of dealing for the two-time Cy Young winner, yet like every World Series hopeful besides the Dodgers, they yielded to the two-time defending champions. On Sunday, however, the Cubs did land a substantial reinforcement for their rotation, acquiring 35-year-old righty Kevin Gausman from the Blue Jays in exchange for a pair of prospects, infielder Ty Southisene and outfielder Brett Bateman.
The connection between Toronto and Chicago made particular sense when I highlighted the likelihood that the Blue Jays would approach Monday’s trade deadline as sellers. Gausman, who is making $23 million in the final season of a five-year, $110 million contract, has a limited no-trade clause that allows him to block deals to eight teams, a list that reportedly includes the Brewers, Mariners, Pirates, and White Sox, all of whom are in the hunt for a playoff spot — but notably not the Cubs. As I noted in late June, at the time they traded for then-struggling Mets lefty David Peterson, five of the six pitchers forecast to throw the most innings for Chicago in our preseason Positional Power Rankings were on the injured list, and seven of the 11 pitchers who had made at least one start for the team (including openers) had landed on the IL at least once. The Cubs’ climb to the top of the NL Wild Card scrum since then justified further investment, and to their credit, less than 24 hours after Skubal was dealt, they made their move.
The trade was actually the second between the Cubs and Blue Jays on Sunday. Earlier in the day, Chicago sent 34-year-old righty Jameson Taillon, whom it had designated for assignment last Monday, to Toronto in exchange for cash or a player to be named later. More on him below, but first Gausman, who has not pitched as badly as either his 5-10 record or 4.38 ERA indicate. Though the latter mark is his highest since 2019, his 3.51 FIP is just one-tenth of a point higher than last season’s mark. His peripherals are only a hair or two worse than they were last year; the big issue is a 51-point spike in BABIP: Read the rest of this entry »
Something about the the gut-wrenching way Tarik Skubal’s final Tigers start ended — with Detroit coughing up a big lead as it desperately clung to its playoff hopes — made it easier both to accept that he’d be traded and to understand that dealing him would probably be the right move.
Indeed, it was a sobering microcosm of the team’s season for Skubal’s final inning to end awkwardly rather than in triumph, and then for things to go sideways in unexpected fashion. Like a lot of us, I picked the Tigers to make a deep postseason run. For several reasons, including so that I might look smart (not dumb, like they say, but smart), I hoped during the last several weeks that the Tigers would stay hot enough for it to make sense for them to keep Skubal. As the schedule reached this weekend’s checkpoint, and Detroit stumbled deeper into a very crowded AL Wild Card field, it became clearer what the front office had to do. Late on Saturday night, the Tigers traded Skubal to the Dodgers for Triple-A starting pitcher River Ryan, Double-A outfielder Zyhir Hope, and Low-A pitcher Brady Smith. Read the rest of this entry »
