All Quiet on the Deadline Front

It doesn’t really feel like the day before the trade deadline, does it? The recent history of the week before the last, best chance to improve a team has generally been frenetic, with a crescendo towards the month’s final day, and hours. Even if big deals aren’t always consummated by this point in time, we’ve usually gotten some sense that they might be. Or at least which players are, well, in play to be moved.

This year’s been a little bit different, while still fitting something of a trend. To understand why, one has to look at the larger dynamics at play within Major League Baseball. Last year’s deadline had a tremendous amount of volume, but relatively little impact—no disrespect to Jazz Chisholm, Erick Fedde (yes, really), Jack Flaherty, Tanner Scott, and so on. Only one prospect from our 2024 Midseason 50 was dealt (Agustín Ramírez), and it wasn’t just us; Baseball America noted none of their Top 100 swapped jerseys.

It’s reasonable to expect more of the same from this year’s deadline, because many of the forces that shaped last year’s deadline are present for 2025 as well. The standings (and projected standings) are as good a place to start as any: As of July 29, only 11 of the 30 teams had playoff odds under 10%, per our PECOTA projections. That creates a relatively small group of firm sellers to begin with. The addition of extra playoff spots has meant that mediocrity can grant teams a trip, however short, to October. More teams “in the hunt” was part of what MLB wanted when they drew up extra Wild Card slot—television money was the vast majority, if we’re keeping it real—but a knock-on effect of so many teams in contention is that the normally vigorous trade deadline suddenly has become a more delicate dance in terms of balancing short- and long-term goals.

That recent nuance to a deadline approach is only emphasized in a season like the current one, where there is no dominant team. As things currently stand, there is no team with even a .600 winning percentage—the last time that happened over a full season was 2013—and while it’d be logical to think that a lack of teams that are a cut above would mean that everyone has space to improve, it also can mean fewer available players to choose from to attempt that leap. It creates a situation where the most effective policy for teams might be to both buy and sell, trading from strengths to shore up weaknesses, or perhaps a straight-up challenge trade. Few teams are particularly adept at executing such maneuvers, though the Rays provided a clear example already this year, shipping Danny Jansen to Milwaukee and then turning around and acquiring Nick Fortes—a clear downgrade on balance, but not an obvious punt.

Perhaps more relevant than whether clubs are good at pulling off that type of high-wire act, is that generally speaking, they don’t like to do it. It invites a lot of second guessing, especially after the season plays out. If it doesn’t work, then it’s clear they should have bought or sold harder, whichever fits the post-hoc narrative best. That’s an uncomfortable place for a front office to be, and while it’s understandable why they avoid such situations if they can, one could argue those are also the difficult choices they’re employed to make and not just kick the can on.

The other factor at play here, and perhaps the most pertinent of all of them is this: Despite a lack of elite teams at the top end, there have been a number of clubs whose seasons have been over for months now. But these sellers are particularly threadbare when it comes to relevant talent to move. It’s not that they’re completely devoid of quality players—the White Sox have gotten quality production from recent call-ups like Colson Montgomery, Kyle Teel, and Edgar Quero, for example—but the most intriguing players on these clubs are also expected to be part of the Next Good Version. This applies to Paul Skenes in Pittsburgh or Ezequiel Tovar in Colorado or MacKenzie Gore in Washington or Brent Rooker in Sacramento. There are also teams like Atlanta or Baltimore or were expected to contend and could find parting with anything other than a pure rental to be detrimental to their short-term interests, as they’re going to plan on contending again next season.

Relatedly, these orgs are so threadbare—or alternatively, stocked with players they consider part of their potential future—for a smaller (as it pertains to the deadline) but more pernicious reason. How organizations have gone about putting together rosters has shifted over time; veterans aren’t the lifeblood of 26- or 40-man rosters anymore. Prior to the 2022-2026 CBA, The Score’s Travis Sawchik produced some incredibly important data:

Consider that 63.2% of all players to step on the field in 2019 (the most recent year we have complete, full-season data from the MLBPA) had less than three years of service time. They accounted for 53.6% of days of service time accumulated, but they combined for only 9.8% of player pay.

While the minimum salary did bump up as part of the most recent CBA, it’s still considerably cheaper to cycle through 0-3 year service time guys than it is to ink a veteran to even a relatively inexpensive deal. The downstream impact of that is that you don’t have a veteran to flip at the deadline, and that even though your team is an also-ran, there just aren’t that many levers to pull once you get there.

There’s no silver bullet explanation for why a deadline might be quiet, but rather a mélange of factors, any and all of which can prevent two (or more) teams from finding the right matchup to execute a deal. While there are other undercurrents at play (the looming 2027 lockout, television/streaming deals up in the air), the above represent the bulk of the blame for the lackluster deadline so far.