The Los Angeles Dodgers are Walter White, and everyone else is Jesse Pinkman screaming, “They can’t keep getting away with it.”
But as Saturday neared a close, they got away with it again, acquiring two-time reigning American League Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers for three prospects: right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith, and outfielder Zyhir Hope.
Evaluating who won and lost trades in the immediate aftermath of the deadline is usually a fool’s errand. Many prospects moved for short-term impact bust, but sometimes two months of Javier Baez turns into Pete Crow-Armstrong.
Still, the Dodgers are an exception. Calling them anything other than winners would be categorically wrong. And while the rest of the teams might be more difficult to label, that won’t stop us from trying.
Winner: Los Angeles Dodgers
Back-to-back World Series Champions add a back-to-back Cy Young winner. A trade-deadline winner doesn’t get more obvious than that.
The Dodgers did it again, moving a considerable package for a rental, except the rental was Tarik Skubal, and their FanGraphs World Series odds peaked at a ludicrous 31.4 per cent on Saturday.
Their rotation now projects as: Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki. And that’s barring Shohei Ohtani returning to the mound.
More, they added flamethrower Seth Halvorsen to their bullpen, supplemented their ailing catching depth with Ben Rortvedt and Hunter Feduccia, and traded for currently injured lefty Kris Bubic, who successfully transitioned to starting last season and had his strong results backed up by sterling underlying numbers.
Maybe River Ryan will ascend to stardom when he sheds his prospect status at age-28, but it’s hard to see the Dodgers losing much sleep after setting themselves up as the odds-on favourite to three-peat.
Losers: NL Contenders that failed to meaningfully add
The Dodgers’ might has grown; meanwhile, their National League division-leading counterparts withered.
After being dominated by the Dodgers in a humiliating sweep in last season’s NLCS, the Milwaukee Brewers were reportedly ready to break their usual pattern of passivity and make a big splash. That turned out to be nothing but hot air as Milwaukee failed to meaningfully add despite holding the best record in MLB and having an abundance of top 100 prospects. Dustin May, JoJo Romero and Antonio Senzatela are all mildly intriguing arms, but none offer the kind of high-end impact the Brewers need to get over the post-season hump.
The NL East-leading Braves are in the same boat, trading for plenty of floor-raisers and making moves around the margins, but falling behind the Dodgers’ daunting strides. Lane Thomas has been a below-league-average hitter over the last three seasons. Tyler Mahle and Brent Suter can log innings but aren’t exactly the kind of game-changers a contender is looking to start a post-season game or enter a high-leverage situation in October. When competing with the likes of the Dodgers, it’s evolve or expire, and neither of these teams did enough to keep pace.
The small-market Brewers failed to step up, but the even-smaller-market Rays did their part to stay atop the AL East arms race.
Holding on to first place in the notoriously tough division by 2.5 games, Tampa Bay put together a well-rounded deadline. They added Canadian catcher Liam Hicks, augmenting a position of weakness with a player in the midst of a breakout year. And while the Boston Red Sox’s trade for Adley Rutschman stole the headlines, Hicks has been more productive over the last two seasons in almost every major offensive category, including home runs, RBIs and OPS. More, the Rays pulled off all of their moves without surrendering a top-14-ranked prospect in their system. The Red Sox moved three of their top five for Rutschman alone.
As for the pitching additions, Freddy Peralta was an enticing buy-low candidate with a strong previous track record, and Tyler Wells has been lights-out in the Orioles bullpen. Tampa Bay’s rotation was already in good stead. But you can never have enough pitching.
As the AL East geared up around them, the Orioles took a step back.
Rutschman was once the face of an Orioles rebuild six years in the making. And it was only a few short years ago that he led a group of prospects that included Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Jordan Westburg, Kyle Stowers, Grayson Rodriguez and more, that ranked among the best in baseball and appeared poised to take over MLB’s toughest division.
Fast forward to the present, and they’re the only team in the East that didn’t do some kind of buying at the deadline, retreating as the gauntlet around them grew more fierce.
The Red Sox got Rutschman, the New York Yankees didn’t get the catcher they sought, but added a pair of bats in Luis Garcia Jr. and Heliot Ramos, the Blue Jays bought Jose Soriano amid their selling, and we already covered the first-placed Rays.
Baltimore’s only silver lining is the prospect haul it got back from Boston: Pitchers Anthony Eyanson and Kyson Witherspoon, and outfielder Enddy Azocar. Now the Orioles have another promising young group to dream on.
Winner: Fringe teams that filled specific needs
The Seattle Mariners and Pittsburgh Pirates each sit just outside the post-season picture in their respective leagues. However, both squads have plenty of reason to be optimistic for the stretch run and behaved accordingly.
With positive run differentials, strong rosters on paper that have underperformed, and their own separate forms of playoff demons to exorcise, there was no shortage of motivation for these teams to address needs and try to make a run.
Entering the deadline with the 29th-ranked OPS in MLB against left-handed pitching, the Mariners added a lefty-masher in Taylor Ward. He’s OPS-ed .827 against southpaws in his career compared to .739 against righties. Plus, they shed Luis Castillo’s bloated salary from their rotation surplus in exchange for leverage arm Seranthony Domínguez.
The Pirates have scored the second-most runs in MLB, have the third-highest OPS, and their top three starters, Paul Skenes, Braxton Ashcraft and Jared Jones, are fearsome. Pittsburgh’s greatest area of weakness has been its bullpen, and they’ve attempted to remedy that by acquiring high-leverage relievers Luke Weaver and Camilo Doval. Both are proven strikeout artists with bat-missing stuff and post-season experience. Maybe the remnants of the Yankees’ 2025 super bullpen will come through for the Steel City.
Losers: Teams that stood pat
The trade deadline is one of the rare times all 30 MLB front offices are engaged in making transactions to improve their organization. Failing to take full advantage of that leverage point is a blunder.
That’s why MLB’s least active teams, whether they were positioned as buyers or sellers, lost out on Monday.
Every team in MLB made at least one trade from July 15 onward. One team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, just crossed that threshold, making a last-minute deal to add underperforming outfielder Lars Nootbaar that did little to bolster their position in the final NL wild-card spot.
Three other clubs, the Texas Rangers, Oakland Athletics, and Cincinnati Reds, all made only two trades.
Their division mates, the Athletics, who were surely in a position to sell, as were the Cincinnati Reds, also each made only a couple of small deals. The three teams combined to hold onto nine players on expiring contracts.
Detroit Tigers (loser): This isn’t just because they lost Skubal, but also because they have a plus-63 run differential, are 2.5 games out of a wild-card spot, had the best FanGraphs World Series odds in the AL Central the day before the trade, and are reportedly still looking to compete. But they also traded Casey Mize and failed to recoup any players that project to impact the team presently.