Major League Baseball’s trade deadline was July 31, and with 50 trades made in the last day and a half, there have been multiple new faces to each franchise. With the players in new cities and a couple of weeks in the clubhouse, we finally have a look at which teams lost and won at the 2025 MLB trade deadline.
Winners (so far)
San Diego Padres:
The San Diego Padres made a splash play on the last day of the deadline by trading for star reliever pitcher Mason Miller from the Oakland Athletics, but the Padres had to send four of their top 20 prospects to Oakland in exchange for Miller, including MLB’s #3 prospect, shortstop Leo De Vries. Padres’ owner A.J. Preller has been one of the most aggressive owners with trades, which has worked sometimes but not other times. For instance, Preller traded 25-year-old Juan Soto to the Yankees in return for a five-player deal, of which only two of the five players are still on the Padres.
Adding to Juan Soto, a few notable players that Preller traded have been James Wood, C.J. Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, and Josh Naylor, who were all prospects at the time of their trade. Gore, Abrams and Wood were the three players that the Padres gave to the Washington Nationals for Juan Soto. If history has anything to say about this trade, the Padres gave up on their future starting shortstop but are sitting pretty, one game ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers at the top of the National League West Division. Mason Miller has pitched 5.1 innings and has let up 2 earned runs so far for the Padres as of Aug. 13. He has been a big reason why the Padres are 8-2 in their last 10 games.
Seattle Mariners
The Seattle Mariners reforged their corner infield and brought one of the league leaders in home runs and one of the best overall third basemen in all of baseball in Eugenio Suarez, from the Arizona Diamondbacks, but Suarez wouldn’t be alone in a new city.
Earlier in the week, the Mariners closed a first deal with Arizona; Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto pulled some strings, and the Mariners added Josh Naylor to the roster as well as Suarez to pair with All-Star Cal Raleigh and star outfielder Julio Rodriguez in hopes of making a playoff push in an open American League West.
Diving deeper into both trades, the Mariners kept all but one of their top 10 prospects. The Diamondbacks received first baseman Tyler Locklear (Mariners #9 Prospect), Right-Handed Pitcher (RHP) Hunter Cranton (#16), and RHP Juan Burgos (#17) for Suarez and also got Brandyn Garcia (Left-Handed Pitcher) and Ashton Izzi (RHP) for Naylor. Since the deadline, the Mariners are 9-2 and are a game back of the division-leading Houston Astros. If Seattle can keep moving with this momentum, they are going to give the Astros and the entire American League a run for their money.
Losers (so far)
Minnesota Twins
Before the bulk of trades during the deadline, fans categorize teams into two sections: sellers and buyers. Buyers are teams that pick up one or multiple players to help their shot at a playoff run, and sellers are teams that clean house and trade away current players for prospects, young players and/or draft picks to regroup and get ready to try it again next season. No one was a bigger seller than the Minnesota Twins. The Twins parted ways with a staggering 10 players off the 26-man roster.
The Twins acquired Eduardo Tait and Mick Abel from the Phillies for Jhoan Duran. They also acquired Taj Bradley from the Rays for Griffin Jax. They got Alan Roden and Kendry Rojas from the Blue Jays for Ty France and Louie Varland. Minnesota landed James Outman from the Dodgers for Brock Stewart. And the Twins traded Carlos Correa to the Astros for Matt Mikulski, and that’s not even all of the trades that the Twins made. A lot of players moving around, right? You probably think that the Twins were so far down in the standings that they had no chance to make a playoff run.
Well, that’s not totally right; the Twins were five and a half games back from the Wild Card at the time of the deadline, which wasn’t likely for them to make, but completely cleaning house in a season that wasn’t completely dead had a few heads turning and mixed emotions from fans in Minnesota.
Chicago Cubs
The Chicago Cubs, the hottest offense in the first half of the season, looked like they were in 2016 again, but instead of Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, and Anthony Rizzo, they have Kyle Tucker, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Seiya Suzuki. But they were in great need of pitching arms for their starting rotation and bullpen; fans speculated that the newly extended General Manager Jed Hoyer would go big this trade deadline and get one or two pieces to continue the incredible season they started. You can imagine fans’ reactions when they were pretty much completely let down by the front office when 6:00 EST came around and no big news came from 1060 W Addison St, Chicago, IL.
I mean, they weren’t completely inactive during the deadline and worked out three deals to bring utility man Willi Castro from the Twins and pitchers Michael Soroka from the Nationals and Andrew Kittredge from the Orioles to the North Side but no splash play that the fans wanted.
Out of the deadline, the Cubs’ offense as a whole, other than Matt Shaw, has been nonexistent. Crow-Armstrong, who was having an MVP-caliber first half, is 3-41 (.073) in August as of the writing of this article and hasn’t drawn a walk or gotten an RBI, and Tucker and Suzuki aren’t doing much better than Crow-Armstrong.
In the last 10 games, they are 5-6: not bad, but not where they have been. In the time that the Cubs have been struggling, their division rivals, the Milwaukee Brewers, have been on a 12-game win streak and are seven and a half games up on the Cubs, who were up six and half games last month.
All in all, things aren’t looking great for the Cubs right now. If Hoyer ends up messing it up so badly that the Cubs don’t make the playoffs at all, then Chicago fans will be wanting Hoyer out of the city.
