ZiPSing Up the Trade Deadline: 2025 Edition
And so ends another action-packed trade deadline. It came in with a whimper, with a quiet Adam Frazier trade to the Royals, but it ended in an exciting crescendo during which seemingly every reliever in baseball moved to a new team in a 45-minute period. Whoever said comparison is the thief of joy had never heard of the ZiPS projections, here to distill that bullpen beauty pageant (and the rest of deadline period’s action) into some cold hard numbers estimating what all these moves actually mean in the big picture.
Deciding who “won” or “lost” the trade deadline is a fairly tricky philosophical question, since different teams come into deadline day with different goals. So instead, I’ll focus on a simpler question: Who helped their 2025 chances the most? That’s a more straightforward inquiry, one a projection system can assess. For this, I used my usual methodology, first projecting the league as it currently stands using the full-fat ZiPS projections, and then re-projecting the league as it stands, but having unwound every transaction made since the Frazier trade on July 16.
As a reminder, just because a team is low in the table doesn’t mean they failed in their goals, just that they’re worse for the rest of the 2025 season than they would have been without making any moves. The table below is sorted by change in playoff probability by default, but you can sort it however you’d like by clicking on the header of any column:
| Team | Div% | Before | Diff | Playoff% | Before | Diff | WS Win% | Before | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Diego Padres | 20.8% | 11.9% | 8.9% | 88.1% | 75.9% | 12.2% | 7.3% | 3.9% | 3.4% |
| Seattle Mariners | 17.2% | 15.5% | 1.7% | 71.7% | 65.5% | 6.2% | 5.7% | 4.6% | 1.1% |
| Boston Red Sox | 8.7% | 8.4% | 0.3% | 60.2% | 56.5% | 3.7% | 2.4% | 2.2% | 0.2% |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 51.7% | 50.5% | 1.2% | 96.0% | 94.0% | 2.1% | 9.8% | 8.8% | 1.0% |
| New York Yankees | 48.6% | 46.2% | 2.4% | 93.0% | 91.3% | 1.7% | 12.2% | 11.3% | 0.9% |
| New York Mets | 48.3% | 49.5% | -1.2% | 95.4% | 93.8% | 1.6% | 8.0% | 7.6% | 0.4% |
| Chicago Cubs | 49.0% | 46.5% | 2.6% | 97.3% | 96.7% | 0.7% | 7.5% | 7.9% | -0.3% |
| Houston Astros | 78.1% | 79.2% | -1.1% | 96.2% | 95.6% | 0.5% | 12.4% | 12.2% | 0.2% |
| Texas Rangers | 4.7% | 5.3% | -0.6% | 37.9% | 37.4% | 0.5% | 1.5% | 1.6% | -0.1% |
| Detroit Tigers | 92.2% | 90.6% | 1.7% | 96.1% | 95.7% | 0.4% | 5.9% | 6.5% | -0.6% |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 42.2% | 44.6% | -2.4% | 91.4% | 91.0% | 0.4% | 4.2% | 4.4% | -0.3% |
| Chicago White Sox | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Washington Nationals | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Colorado Rockies | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Athletics | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 50.4% | 52.8% | -2.4% | 97.3% | 97.3% | 0.0% | 6.1% | 7.4% | -1.3% |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 79.1% | 87.8% | -8.7% | 99.0% | 99.1% | -0.1% | 14.7% | 17.4% | -2.7% |
| Atlanta Braves | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.2% | -0.1% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Kansas City Royals | 2.6% | 2.5% | 0.1% | 13.3% | 13.5% | -0.2% | 0.4% | 0.5% | 0.0% |
| Los Angeles Angels | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.9% | 1.1% | -0.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Miami Marlins | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.6% | 1.0% | -0.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 0.4% | 0.7% | -0.2% | 10.4% | 12.2% | -1.8% | 0.3% | 0.4% | -0.1% |
| Baltimore Orioles | 0.1% | 0.1% | -0.1% | 2.6% | 4.6% | -2.0% | 0.1% | 0.2% | -0.1% |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 0.0% | 0.1% | -0.1% | 0.9% | 3.9% | -3.0% | 0.0% | 0.2% | -0.1% |
| Cincinnati Reds | 0.4% | 0.4% | -0.1% | 12.5% | 15.7% | -3.2% | 0.2% | 0.3% | -0.1% |
| Minnesota Twins | 0.9% | 1.4% | -0.5% | 5.7% | 9.1% | -3.4% | 0.2% | 0.5% | -0.3% |
| San Francisco Giants | 0.1% | 0.3% | -0.2% | 4.5% | 8.9% | -4.3% | 0.1% | 0.2% | -0.2% |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 0.2% | 0.3% | -0.1% | 8.2% | 13.6% | -5.4% | 0.2% | 0.4% | -0.3% |
| Cleveland Guardians | 4.3% | 5.5% | -1.2% | 20.8% | 26.4% | -5.7% | 0.8% | 1.3% | -0.5% |
In terms of sheer impact, it was a surprisingly peaceful deadline. While a lot of relievers changed teams, top relievers just don’t have the same value as top starting pitchers or top position players, and relatively few of the latter two categories were traded this July. The trades of Merrill Kelly and Shane Bieber, who I’d argue were the two likely most valuable rest-of-season starters traded, aren’t exactly going to set off a panic in the streets.
According to the ZiPS projections, the biggest winner here is the Padres. Mason Miller is terrific and JP Sears is a usable starter who the Padres really needed, and both Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Laureano are nearly custom fits in terms of addressing the worst parts of San Diego’s offense. Nestor Cortes and Will Wagner both have value as well. The team’s depth was a big worry in ZiPS, and that suddenly looks a lot better. Also helping out the Padres was the the Giants’ decision to throw in the towel on their quickly waning playoff chances, as well as the fact that the Dodgers, while picking up some good prospects, didn’t really improve their current roster significantly.
The Mariners also rank very highly with their acquisitions of Eugenio Suárez and Josh Naylor. ZiPS isn’t particularly bullish on either, but the computer certainly likes both of them better than the players they’re replacing. The Caleb Ferguson trade was a much smaller one, but it does marginally improve the bullpen. The swing would have been a little closer to the Padres if not for the Astros, who made a surprise reunion with Carlos Correa, and also added Jesús Sánchez and Ramón Urías. ZiPS thinks the Mariners’ additions are stronger, though I think fans — at least the ones on the internet — are a little too quick to dismiss Correa.
I was surprised that ZiPS was so positive about the Red Sox, since Dustin May and Steven Matz don’t feel like huge additions. But ZiPS thinks the Red Sox upgraded a larger weakness than the Yankees or Blue Jays did, as it was quite down on the back of Boston’s rotation. ZiPS also thinks that May still has a lot more upside than his 2025 ERA would suggest. Matz is tricky to use given his platoon splits and the fact that the pure LOOGY is dead as a thing, but he’s at least marginally useful to the team.
The Phillies/Mets battle looked like a stalemate and it still does. Both teams were active, but their additions were comparable, meaning neither really gained that much ground, though both get a slight bump in terms of World Series percentage.
Without a lot of top starters that teams felt they had to move, the starting pitcher market was extremely tight, so the Cubs were unable to address their biggest weakness in a significant way. While they did add Michael Soroka, ZiPS is a lot less impressed than Steamer is, though it does like the pickups of Andrew Kittredge, Willi Castro, and Taylor Rogers. The Reds had an unusual trade deadline in that they picked up a surprisingly large amount of money for them (at least $38 million or so) with the acquisition of Ke’Bryan Hayes, but actually saw their playoff probability go down. The projections are a lot more skeptical about Hayes after he has stayed healthy this year and still hasn’t hit.
The Rangers had a bit of an odd deadline in that they reinforced a team strength by bringing in pitching, but left the offense as is. The lineup has had a solid July after a miserable first half of the season, but ZiPS sees their group of hitters as middling at best.
So what were your favorite moves of the deadline? Which team do you think triumphed, even if the projections were unimpressed, and which rebuilding/retooling team did the best job of building for the future? Let us know in the comments!
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
I think your table has World Series win % reversed, but I could just be jet lagged
Oops, it does! Let me go fix that
Should be fixed now.
Thanks for this view!
One note: I think the last “Diff” column is doing Pre minus Post, instead of Post minus Pre like the Div and Playoff ones were.
Thanks Dan! I think the WS% and WS before columns may mislabeled. The diff column looks correct tho.
It looks like the Win WS now and before columns might have been switched, or else the negative signs on the last column are opposite of what those indicate they should be?
e.g. the Tigers are at 6.5% to win now and 5.9% to win before, but the difference says -0.6
Is it possible the “WS Win%” and “Before” columns are switched? As of now it shows the Padres, Mariners etc as taking big LOSSES in World Series odds, despite large gains in division and playoff odds. I’m aware that’s possible but it doesn’t seem to add up here
Lol. In the time I read the article it went from 0 comments to 5+ other people pointing this out
I think this is fairly obvious, but the odds changes for this exercise all exist on the same plane, right? Like a zero-sum game where your competitor’s moves affect your odds?
I’m specifically looking at the Reds. Like it feels like there’s zero chance that their moves made their ROS ZiPS projections worse, but the team in front of them (Padres) went bonkers, so it hurts the Reds’ odds pretty squarely, leading to an overall delta of -3.2% for playoff odds.
Yep. Zero sum game
Guardians obviously got put in a tough situation with the Clase suspension. Imagine if they traded him and then the news came out a week or two later.
Anyway, I think they made the right decision to basically do nothing. Their chances aren’t great so best to hold course. And trading Kran at this point didn’t make much sense unless they got a Godfather offer.
My main issue is that Carlos Santana is still on the team. I didn’t expect him to get traded since he has little value. But he can still be released.
Santana was such a puzzling signing for them.
38 year old out of nowhere puts up double (or more) WAR than he’d put up any year since 2019, and they sign him to a deal that’s more than 10% of their payroll when they have kids to audition/play. Weird because 2024 was so clearly a fluke, weird because of what they spent(given their frugal ways), and weird because of the internal options they had.
Just seems like it would have been so much better to take that $12M and give it to Kwan.
I hated the signing at the time. Though supposedly, there were teams that wanted to sign him for two years.
And although they managed to trade Bieber for a decent prospect, they could have used that money to re-sign Matthew Boyd. Who by all reports wanted to sign with them.
Forgot about Boyd. Also would have been a much better use of the money.
From the ROS projected standings, the Padres were at a .504 winning percentage before the deadline, now they’re at a .542. Mariners were at .534 and now are at .555. Both of those seem like pretty solid jumps, especially the Padres! To be fair, the Mariners got there with a little better value probably, but they’re projected to be the third-best team in baseball going forward. Pretty solid!
That Padres jump seems huge–credit to madman Preller.
Said like a computer who hasn’t watched the M’s bullpen flounder this year…. (I kid, but I also wonder if ZIPs is capturing the cost of sending away Garcia, Burgos, Cranton—one of whom might have played a longshot but critical role in stabilizing the M’s pen this summer.)
Ha, as an M’s fan I have watched each bullpen enflounderment with great distaste. Glad we got another lefty, wish we would have gotten another high leverage arm. But the prices were…Leo de Vries-high. So I’m fine with having a top-3 offense and a starting staff that can only go up from here, plus an average bullpen with a two-headed monster of Brash and Muñoz. Garcia hurts as our best bullpen prospect.
A little better value?
That is an understatement.
Twins fans are the biggest losers. That’s an easy one.
I dont know, the Bucs moved several controllable players to add $40M to Nutting’s pocket and no prospects over a 40 grade.
Alright, I offer you a draw.
Hey, hey, we can all be
winnerslosers here!At least your owners are selling.
True, true. No guarantees that new ownership will be better, but they can’t be much worse.
The only saving grace of the Twins’ deadline was the Correa deal, because this was probably their one chance to get out of a, for them, debilitating contract.
Now, that’s if they use that money elsewhere, and we’ve seen over and over how the Twins will announce a bonanza of payroll flexibility and then bring in J.A. Happ or something and call it good. But at least it’s an option now.
I think we all know this is about the Pohlads extracting as much cash as possible from the sale of the team.
Maybe the next owners will be better.
I disagree, actually. I think the Correa move has the least likelihood of resulting in a better on-field product, and was selling extremely low to try to save a buck in order to maximize returns in an upcoming sale of the team.
They could have easily sent more money Houston’s way to “buy” a better prospect in return, but they didn’t, and that tells me pretty much all I need to know.
I think that Correa’s contract was only going to get worse. When you have a chance to bail on a contract like that, you take it, because if you wait until the guy’s clearly not producing any value anymore, no one will take it from you. And especially so if you’re punting on next season, which they apparently are, because he’s not helping you win next season and, since there is a risk that this year is just the beginning of a decline, he’s weighing down your payroll when you do actually want to compete.
With the money sent to Houston, the Astros are essentially getting Correa on a 3/$60M deal. If Correa were a free agent after this season, I think multiple teams would be lining up to get Correa at that price. The lack of any type of return for facilitating that is highly suspect to me, especially given this blurb from Bob Nightengale’s trade deadline piece last night:
“The Astros told the Twins that they’d help them financially by taking Correa off their hands. The only catch is that they wanted the Twins to pay half of the remaining $103 million he is owed, and asked for an outfielder in return. The Twins hung up the phone, called the proposal laughable and figured that was the end of it.
Owner Jim Crane, knowing the Twins are more than $400 million in debt, took over. He called Twins chairman Joe Pohlad, and let him know that he could take a big financlal burden off his hand by moving Correa. In the meantime, Correa went to the front office and informed them that if they are selling, he’d gladly waive his no-trade clause for Houston. Crane and Pohlad talked, and talked, and talked some more. By the end of the day, the Twins agreed to send Correa to Houston, pay $33 million of his remaining contract and got only minor league lefty Matt Mikulsi in return.”
I just don’t buy Correa was incapable of returning any prospect of note to another team when they are getting him on essentially a 3/$60M deal with the money the Twins sent. There were zero baseball considerations made in this move.
I don’t know. If Correa were to hit the market right now, I’m not certain he would get 3/$60. I personally wouldn’t want to sign him for that much.
Well yeah, that would be a huge waste of $60m for you. It’s different if you own a baseball team.
Looking at this list, I have to say the runaway winner from the deadline (at least among the buyers) is the Mariners.
They traded away four reliever prospects and a post-prospect R/R first baseman and improved their playoff % by 6.2 points and World Series by 1.1 points.
That is a huge amount of value for barely giving anything up.
Going into this, I thought the Yankees were going to give them a run for their money, but apparently the computer already saw them as a 93% of making it. I would say that is probably too high, so I think I would put them second. Especially since Rafael Flores was probably the best prospect they traded, who is probably in the FV45 and FV45+ range.
The Dodgers were actually more like sellers than buyers. They’re the big losers based on WS%, but I’m not sure they’re actually buying right now. I think they could have done a lot better, but I think I’m harder on the Brewers and Tigers who didn’t get any difference makers and dropped by quite a meaningful amount. I would have really liked to see both of them be much, much more aggressive for bullpen help, especially with the ridiculous returns for Duran, Bednar, Helsley, and Bird (but also Matz, Maton, Stewart, and Coulombe). Trading within the division is hard, but there’s no reason the Brewers couldn’t have traded with the Twins and Rockies and the Tigers with the Cardinals and Pirates.
The Dodgers definitely seem to be betting on their current roster getting healthier/playing better the rest of the way, rather than emptying out the system for marginal upgrades.
They were looking for relievers, and they got one, but given how low the prices were on guys like Bednar, Duran, and Helsley they should have absolutely been more aggressive.
The Pirates traded with the Reds and Cubs (albeit the Cubs trade was so minor I can’t even remember who they sent off… oh yeah beloved Pirate Taylor Rogers), so the Brewers could’ve gone in the division there too.
Yeah although those teams were happy to do it because they didn’t send any prospects of value to the Pirates.
It’s never an issue of selling within the division, it’s the buying part…
But it’s true, a lot of teams just get over it.
26/30 teams don’t have the “let’s strip mine the Pirates for parts!” option within their own division unfortunately…
It’s the Dodgers, who seem to have stolen the Devil Magic from the Cards. Just watch. Alex Call – NLCS MVP is a thing coming soon to a theatre near you!
My internal monologue this deadline is why do teams keep letting them get away with it?!
Especially the Reds, who have been burned so many times by the Dodgers in the last decade they should just stop picking up the phone when they call.
They have repeatedly turned spare parts (like Outman) into useful upgrades or prospects, and this deadline they used their voodoo magic to send spare parts out to get real actual prospects from both the Reds and Red Sox. And they used their voodoo magic to get the Nationals to give them Call.
I would argue they should have set their sets a lot higher, but how do they keep doing this?
Whats kind of funny is, despite the negative reactions, you can make a case the Redsox had strong deadline, adding ~4% playoff odds while only giving up lower ceiling 45 and a 40 FV prospects. One of whom was rule 5 eligible they were likely not protecting too
But no, I don’t don’t they had a great deadline, but was surprised at how good the zips stuff looks
I think Dan says that ZiPS loves May, which is not my assessment. So I’m just not buying it.
I don’t think they got worse, at least.
Sometimes I think I don’t know anything about baseball.
The Cubs are my big loser. They have felt like the best team in the NL all year to me and they did basically nothing while the Brewers passed them in the standings
Willi Castro to play third base!
The other deals were good too but not terribly impactful. It’s plugging that hole at third base that makes them winners to me.
More generally though the Cubs are kind of the new Mets, who were often good but usually less than the sum of their parts. The Cubs have had the most talented roster (and highest payroll by far) in the NL Central for several years now and the Brewers have pantsed them almost every year. Supposedly hiring their manager was going to fix that, but they lost out to the Brewers again last year.
And I don’t know that I can blame them when the only available starters are this mediocre. At least not for the deadline inactivity.
*points to the graph above*
The math disagrees with you. The brewers went on a heater at a great time, cubs have an easy end to the year, and that offense is still scary good (now with better bench offerings).
Winning the WS is always crap shoot, and who knows maybe the cubs have enough pitching to keep their offense in play.
I am happily shocked by ZIPS’s take on the Red Sox deadline. It still feels like they could have done more (and had promised to), but at least that’s a little good news for the day.
I think it’s due to May’s projections being surprising good. OOPSY has him for a 3.96 ERA, most projections have him as a solid 4th starter, and BOS really really needed a decent backend starter to replace Fitts/Criswell
It’s kind of funny bc simply looking at the numbers, May and Matz are a lot better than their reputations which I think explains the divide in what they did vs how little it seemed like they did
ZIPS has May at 5 GS, 25 IP, and 0.3 WAR the rest of the way. It must have really hated the other options that are already with the team.
It is pretty funny that they ended up resorting to trading for May after dealing Priester for prospects and a pick because of their starting pitching depth.
Priester thing is weird bc they actually did have like ~10 starters when they moved him, but most got hurt. I can’t be too upset with that because they have a lot of pitching depth building and the brewers are probably using him differently than the Sox would’ve, sometimes with these guys it’s all about a teams plan for them, so can’t just assume because he’s doing this with x team he’d be doing it with y team. Helps to pitch in a big park and elite defense too
What the Brewers did with Priester is nothing short of miraculous.
He’s a great fit for a team that runs out a great infield defense but that doesn’t explain the improved strikeout / walk ratio, especially since he became a full time starter.
Someone told me once that the Brewers love pitchers who tunnel well, and another person told me that is something Priester does well. I have to imagine that the Brewers have improved that. Maybe a lot.
Great points. The brewers are fantastic at developing certain things with pitchers, and Priester was such an odd target, I’d have to imagine they really zoned in on him with a plan.
A lot of times, teams are good at certain things w pitching development, and not great at others, it’s not always “this team is good, this team is bad”. But the brewers definitely seemed like they had a plan to fix Priester in a way the Pirates and Sox didn’t
Its a lot of small things with Priester. He started throwing his cutter more with Brewers and it makes both his sinker and slider more effective. There are also slight changes to his sinker and he changed position on the rubber.
I think it’s quite short of miraculous. Priester was a good pitching prospect who struggled initially in the Majors. They’ve done a very nice job helping him succeed this season, but that’s the job, right?
They did have a good amount of depth at the time. But a) they didn’t need to make the deal, and b) it seemed like the Brewers were desperate and instead of getting back something they really needed (like a catcher) they got a couple 40 FV prospects and a draft pick.
And I know we can’t assume that a player who does X with one team would do the same with another, but Priester wouldn’t have had to be as good as he is with the Brewers. A far less effective version of him is still better than having to trade for May. Also, yes, the Brewers do great things with pitchers, but that is supposed to be Breslow’s strength too.
I think the red sox did well in this analysis because TB and BAL decided to sell.
TB did some adding, some subtracting – it was a very Rays-like deadline for them
Seems almost impossible that there are teams that lowered their playoff odds more than the Twins did. I think they did the right thing, though, blowing it up, given their slim chances of doing anything this year.
They didn’t need to blow up 2026 and 2027, though. And they absolutely are not going to reinvest the money they saved in the team.
Yeah, I guess they kind of went a bit overboard. Dumping Correa, paying a big chunk of his money, and getting nothing back hurts.
The cold, hard reality is that the team is up for sale, and shedding as much as possible from the Balance Sheet/Long Term Liability will help immensely in that endeavor.
But, still…wow.
This is unanswerable, but I’m curious if they are really not feeling great about the next CBA and want to get out of as much money as they could. Otherwise, I have trouble making sense of pushing the window that far down the line for a team that was just in the playoffs, particularly given players of Correa’s caliber are tough to acquire for a team with their budget.
I don’t think anybody’s feeling great about the next CBA. If Manfred is going clubhouse to clubhouse preaching the gospel of salary caps, he’s setting up a lockout.
According to Roster Resource, the Twins right now have a one man bench, 3 man rotation, and 5 man bullpen. Those spots will get filled, of course, but I don’t see how they have playoff odds above zero.
I laughed and then cried and then laughed at the Pirates row in the graph.
At last they joined the A’s, Rockies, Nationals, and White Sox in the “land of all zeroes”
I’m really having trouble why ZiPS is so bullish on the yankees moves. I like the relievers they got fine, but missing out on a more plausible 3b bat feels like a huge missed opportunity. I guess it’s some kind of combination of addition by subtraction where the platoon gets them to league average or thereabouts plus the Orioles and more importantly Rays both being sellers.
Their regular season % didn’t move much but their WS % did. That’s where relievers matter.
Yeah, I guess that makes some sense. I just wouldn’t have thought they’d be one of the biggest movers. I guess when everyone in their division except the red sox loses ground, that difference has to go somewhere. I guess I’m just not nearly as low as ZiPS on the blue jays and not nearly as high on the yankees.
How did the Royals playoff odds get worse? They needed two starters at least and could benefit from a hitter or two. Sure, maybe you want a better hitter and better starters, but they seem like a noticeably better team than before yesterday?
Improved less than the teams ahead of them?
ZiPS isn’t crazy about the additions and it thinks the other wild card plausible teams got better.
Take a look at what happened to the Mariners’ playoff %. That’s came from somewhere, and it didn’t come from the Rangers, Yankees, or Red Sox (although it probably should have come from the Red Sox).
The Royals have to catch up to at least one of the Mariners, Red Sox, or Yankees, who all got more better than they did.
Given how old their core is and the fact that Schwarber and Suarez are FAs this offseason, I can’t wait for the inevitable Philly flameout in the postseason.
I was just gonna say that the Phils’ moves were very nice, addressing their two biggest weaknesses, and their roster looks as strong as anyone in baseball. Doesn’t mean that they will win the WS because playoff baseball is a lot of random, but they have a heck of a good team right now.
How does Matt Mikulski even end up in that trade? Is there some advantage to including a warm body in the deal for Correa rather than just trading him for cash considerations?
Well, the Twins are down to one reliever and somebody has to pitch.
Mostly optics I think. Most people will see “Oh, we got a pitcher back” and not observe said pitcher is 26 and putting up a 7 ERA in high A ball
They had to get something back. Pretty sure you can’t just give someone away. It’s functionally a PTBNL who was named now.
You don’t, tho. You can just trade for Cash Considerations, which is essentially what they did.
Except the Twins were the ones sending cash. I don’t know if there’s a rule saying you can’t just give another team your players and also the money to pay them, but I’d guess it’s frowned upon.
Marlins demanded Starlin Castro as part of the Stanton salary dump instead of who the Yankees offered originally (Chase Headley)
How does zips even go about calculating the Twins’ projections? I’ll be damned if I know who half of their bullpen is going to be…I assume Keaschall is coming up, and McCusker, but it’s hard to even know how ABs are going to be distributed at SS, 2B, 1B for the rest of the season.
You know what, I found buyers that had a worse deadline than the Brewers, Dodgers, and Tigers. It’s the Blue Jays.
Let me present to you a team that improved its playoff % by 0.4 points and dropped 0.3 points in their World Series %. What did they trade for that roughly no-change outcome?
Khal Stephen (FV50)
Kendry Rojas (FV45, but I would argue he should be a 50)
Alan Roden (FV45, was an FV50 before but Eric downgraded him today)
Juaron Watts-Brown (FV40, but he is striking out 11.63 per nine without big walk rates this year, so how bad can he really be?)
That’s a ton of value to ship out to be in the same place you were before.
True but if they hadn’t done it they might have fallen further behind the Yankees and Tigers
The percentages are also affected by other teams’ changes that are out of their control.
It’s probably not relevant to this year’s playoff race, but I really liked the Phillies’ pickup of Matt Manning. I never liked him as a SP, even as a prospect, but I think he could be an exceptional RP. He’s in a tough spot options-wise but hopefully he gets the time to develop for that role.
The Reds moves were some of the worst I have ever seen at a deadline. You trade for a light hitting defensive guy (why not sign Nicky Lopez) at 38 million and then you trade for a starting pitcher that leads the American League in homeruns.
If I didn’t know better, I would think they were trying to tank.
Do I know better? Not sure.
Would you be willing to report the statistical error in the calculations? Sure, with enough simulations, the error of the mean can be sub 0.1%, but if the standard deviation due to randomness is 6%, how much confidence can we have that any of these moves will make any difference?