The trade deadline has come and gone. While trade season was slow to get started this year, when all was said and done, there were several dozen trades made in a flurry of movement over the final few days before the deadline arrived. The full impact of these trades won’t be known for years to come, but that doesn’t mean we can’t analyze the deals and decide whose haul looks the best right now. Over the next week-plus, MLBTR will be running a series of polls asking which club in each division had the best deadline. So far, the Phillies, Reds, Padres, and Mariners have each come out on top in their respective divisions. Today, we’ll be continuing on with the American League with the AL Central. A look at each of the five clubs, listed from best to worst record in 2025:
Detroit Tigers
The Tigers have the biggest lead in their division in all of baseball, and that might have led them to a much more cautious deadline than previously expected. Aside from a handful of minor trades of players (Matt Manning, Dietrich Enns, Brewer Hicklen) who had been squeezed off of the 40-man roster, the Tigers acquired seven pitchers across six trades. It was clearly a quantity over quality approach, however, as the rotation was deepened by adding Charlie Morton (5.42 ERA at the time of the trade) and Chris Paddack (4.95 ERA at the time of the trade) to the back of the staff.
That pair of starters was joined by five relievers: Randy Dobnak, Codi Heuer, Rafael Montero, Paul Sewald, and Kyle Finnegan. Dobnak and Heuer have both made just one MLB appearance this year. Montero carried a 5.40 ERA when he arrived in Detroit, and Sewald won’t pitch again until September due to injury. That leaves Finnegan and his 95 ERA+ in a Nationals uniform this year as the most impactful addition of the Tigers’ deadline this year, at least on paper. While Detroit added plenty of pitching depth to the roster without surrendering any of the prospects within their Top 15 according to Baseball America, it’s hard not to see a quiet deadline in what could be Tarik Skubal’s penultimate season with the club as a potential missed opportunity.
Cleveland Guardians
The Guardians’ performance this trade season must be viewed in the context of the potentially franchise-altering reality that struck just days before the deadline: superstar closer Emmanuel Clase, a potential trade candidate and foundational piece of the Guardians’ roster, was placed on administrative leave as part of a sports betting investigation. That news not only severely damaged whatever hopes the Guardians may have had of making it to the playoffs this year, but also took one of their most valuable trade chips off the market.
That led the Guards to make just two trades this summer: one that shipped Sewald to the Tigers for a player to be named later or cash, and a second one that sent Shane Bieber to Toronto for right-hander Khal Stephen. Both trades were sensible moves. Stephen is a particularly well-regarded prospect to receive for a pitcher who hasn’t thrown at the big league level this year, and the Sewald trade cleared the remainder of a currently injured rental reliever’s $7MM salary. Bigger than the moves they did make, arguably, is the ones they did not: outfielder Steven Kwan and star reliever Cade Smith, among other rumored trade candidates, remain in Cleveland as controllable building blocks for the future.
Kansas City Royals
Despite sitting around .500 for the majority of the year, the Royals were actually the most aggressive buyer in their division. They made their intention to eschew selling clear when they extended Seth Lugo on a deal that could keep him in town through the end of the 2028 season. Aside from locking up Lugo, the Royals deepened their lineup and pitching staff.
A trio of controllable, starting-caliber arms were brought in to join Lugo and Michael Wacha in the short-term while providing depth behind Cole Ragans and Kris Bubic for the future. Bailey Falter was acquired from the Pirates, while the Royals surrendered backup catcher Freddy Fermin to the Padres in a deal that netted both Stephen Kolek and Ryan Bergert. Aside from those rotation additions, the club made a trio of rental acquisitions to try and boost the offense. Adam Frazier is unlikely to be a needle-mover, but both Mike Yastrzemski and Randal Grichuk have been impactful complementary pieces for playoff clubs in the past.
Even if the Royals end up missing the postseason, they won’t have lost much by pushing in this year; their best trade chip (Bubic) suffered a season-ending injury shortly before the deadline, and No. 15 prospect (per Baseball America) Yunior Marte was the top young talent they surrendered (in return for Yastrzemski).
Minnesota Twins
The Twins completely changed the trajectory of the trade deadline when they kicked off a massive fire sale. The club made ten trades in total while moving 11 players out of the organization. Paddack and Dobnak were shipped to Detroit in a deal for catching/first base prospect Enrique Jimenez that also cleared the remainder of Dobnak’s low-cost but ill-fated $9.25MM extension off the books. Rentals Willi Castro, Harrison Bader, and Danny Coulombe were shipped out in deals that should help to fill out the middle ranks of the Minnesota farm system. Fellow rental Ty France was packaged with dominant young reliever Louis Varland to bring back a big league-ready outfielder, Alan Roden, and Triple-A southpaw Kendry Rojas (The new No. 7 prospect in the Twins’ revamped system, according to MLB Pipeline).
Varland wasn’t the only star reliever to move. The Twins traded both Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax to the Phillies and Rays, respectively. Duran netted a pair of top-100 prospects from the Phils, who surrendered catcher Eduardo Tait and right-hander Mick Abel to get the deal done. Jax was traded away in a one-for-one swap that brought back young starter Taj Bradley. A slightly less impactful bullpen arm with control remaining was also moved when Brock Stewart was shipped to the Dodgers in a deal for post-hype outfielder James Outman. Of course, the most shocking trade of the deadline was the Twins’ decision to deal Carlos Correa back to the Astros in what amounted to a salary dump. 26-year-old High-A southpaw Matt Mikulski was the only player who Correa brought back to Minnesota, even as the Twins ate $33MM of the $103.5MM Correa is owed going forward.
On the one hand, the Twins undeniably did well with the return for several of the players they moved. Abel, Bradley, and Rojas form a wave of young, upper-level starting pitching talent that could impact the team as soon as 2026. They should form an organizational strength in conjunction with young arms like Simeon Woods Richardson, Zebby Matthews, and David Festa going forward. On the other hand, dumping two-thirds of Correa’s salary for no prospect return and decimating a bullpen that has been a major strength are tough pills to swallow for fans.
Chicago White Sox
The White Sox had a surprisingly quiet deadline for one of the league’s most obvious sellers. They acquired Will Robertson and Blake Sabol while dealing away Tristan Gray in three separate cash deals with the AL East, though none of those moves is much of a needle-mover. Outside of those minor transactions, they added a rental veteran starter in Aaron Civale and change-of-scenery first baseman Andrew Vaughn to the Brewers in order to get the deal done. Vaughn has blossomed (albeit in a small sample) with Milwaukee, which would surely be easier for fans in Chicago to swallow had the White Sox managed to flip Civale for a prospect return. Civale is pitching well of late but remains on the South Side.
The White Sox made just two sell-side trades ahead of the deadline. Outfielder Austin Slater was shipped to the Yankees in a deal that brought back right-hander Gage Ziehl (the club’s new No. 14 prospect, per Pipeline), and the biggest deal of the club’s deadline sent righty Adrian Houser to Tampa. In return for Houser, the White Sox brought in infielder Curtis Mead, Triple-A reliever Ben Peoples, and Triple-A starter Duncan Davitt. Davitt seems likely to be a back-end starter or swingman in the mold of Houser. Peoples seems unlikely to be more than a middle reliever. Still, it’s a solid return for a rental arm signed in-season, particularly when considering that Mead was a consensus top-50 prospect in the sport just a few short years ago. Chicago didn’t make many trades for a selling club, but the ones they made look like strong ones.
Most surprising was the South Siders’ decision to hang onto Luis Robert Jr. The talented center fielder finally began to come alive at the plate in early June, and many thought the Sox would capitalize on his first productive stretch since 2023 to bring in some young talent, even if it meant paying down Robert’s contract. Instead, they held onto Robert and will now consider picking up the first of two $20MM club options for the 2026 season. If Robert keeps raking down the stretch, it may prove to bring a better return in the long run (assuming he eventually is traded), but there’s plenty of risk in this approach.
No division in baseball did less buying than the AL Central this year. While the Royals made some savvy additions and the Tigers at least bolstered their depth, no impact additions were made as the Guardians, Twins, and White Sox all focused on selling at varying levels. Who did the best of this quintet during trade season? Have your say in the poll below:
Royals improved their team the most imo
Twins polling well ahead…..simply for dumping payroll in advance of Armageddon, a/k/a the 2027 work stoppage. Salary cap!
Nobody wanted him, or they would have dumped him. Twins fans value their players more than delusional Vikings fans. Nuts.
Nobody wanted a 4.6 WAR, 2.79 ERA pitcher. Right…
Apparently the offers weren’t good enough!!
Twins sweep!!
I think Cleveland deserves a vote for NOT trading Kwan.
Cleveland is never truly down and out thanks to their perpetually stocked farm system. Now if they can just fix the hitting they’ll be back to challenging the Tigers for the division title in 2026.
They aren’t that far behind anymore in 2025
The Tigers deadline was atrocious and the team is paying for it now. That front office does not know how to make trades. They value their prospects way too highly. You hope that your prospects turn into major league players. But if you can trade some of them for already proven MLB talent, you have to do that to improve the team when they’re having a good year.
If their roster ain’t broke then don’t fix it
They probably thought all of the relievers were too expensive and were confident in their starting options
I’m a Tiger fan and I was saying all year that they weren’t as good as they were playing in the first half. There are multiple holes that needed to be filled: at least one quality SP, two quality relievers, at least one impact bat, preferably in CF or 3B. It would have been quite costly in prospect capital to address all or even most of these. Addressing just a few would have likely been a waste.
Even after eventually losing Skubal, their window will remain open for many years given the minor league talent they have and the ability to develop pitchers. I prefer the approach they took to the one taken by many other contenders who will be the real losers in the trade deadline by emptying their farm without making the World Series.
It’s a different Illitch holding the purse strings now. The current Illitch did not sign Fielder or Miggy.
Agree FLOTG. Having the highest rated farm system in baseball doesn’t mean having the best at every level. They have virtually nothing at the AAA level that anyone wants.
After the top 5 or 6 Tigers prospects, there’s a big drop-off. Other teams know Max Anderson can’t field and that Jace Jung and Hau-Yu Lee have flaws and aren’t ready. Detroit didn’t really have anyone available that anyone wanted. Depleting the system of what talent there is to try to patch a faulty big-league club — just because Skubal has one more year beyond this one — is not prudent.
Then you consider all the teams better than the Tigers that they’ll have to go through to get a WS trophy. How can anyone expect the Tigers to beat the Dodgers or San Diego, when they can’t even beat the Twins? They’ll be lucky to hold off Cleveland, whose Jose Ramirez is better than anyone on the Tigers roster.
I get Tigers fans expected more at the deadline, especially after the first half they had. I do get their frustrations. With the lead they had in the division leading up to the deadline there was no incentive to trade top prospects to go “all in.” Most of the trades at the deadline are rental players anyway.
From my perspective, say the tigers traded 5 of their top 10 prospects to fill the holes you mentioned, go on to lose in the ALDS again this year and Skubal walks after 26. What did you gain?
They didn’t need to trade 5 of their top ten prospects. No other team that is in the playoff race had to do that. Your perspective is way off.
@ bdmojo I was actually agreeing with another post above. While ackowledging some tigers fans frustrations that the team did not do as they wanted to go all in I raised a rhetorical question of what if they had done that?
There is nothing wrong in doing that.
The front office is doing just enough to get their fans in seats. If people stopped spending money Illitch would either sell the team or finally invest in it. The worst owner in all of sports, owns two dying franchises. lol. Way to go Detroit fans.
Tigers seemed to put quantity over quality. Twins might have shaved 2 years off a rebuild with their deadline because they exploited a wild market for relievers. They should be competing for a playoff spot next year.
bullpens are easy to build. they added starting pitching depth and got rid of a huge cancer
The obvious winners are the Twins, simply for heeding reality and finally selling. Now they need to complete this task in the off-season and add more young pitching (assuming that they ship out Ryan and Lopez).
The big losers? White Sox, by far. Their rebuild resembles that of the Athletics in so many ways, except that the teardown was initiated out of necessity. Getz has merely cleared the low bar set by Forst and his five disastrous trades. There was absolutely no excuse to set the loss record last season when they could have invested in more buy low veterans to also act as trade fodder.
Their deadline moves this year were equally puzzling. They acquired Civale, then refused to trade him. No attempt to trade standout relief pitchers Altavilla, Gilbert or Alexander. Benintendi inexplicably stayed despite a willingness from ownership to pay down contracts.
This has been a trade fueled rebuild from the onset, a fact that was only reinforced by restrictions on their position in this year’s draft. Yet the team has a grand total of 5 players in their system with a future value of 50 or higher according to higher. Their GM simply isn’t transacting enough to properly fuel the rebuild.
*According to MLB pipeline.
Assuming reinsdorf didnt impact their deadline direction I was surprised that the White Sox didnt sell more
Getz probably deserves to be fired for bungling the Robert situation and getting nothing in return for civale while Andrew Vaughn hits like an MVP
The point of a team competing in a sport is to win. This idea of a teardown as a good thing is bad for the sport, ESPECIALLY in an era where half the league gets into the real tournament. If the other half are expected to lose because of “rebuild!”, why play 162?
Just look what happened with the Phillies. Their “rebuild” under McFail was disastrous and a pain to watch. What got them back into contention was opening their wallet.
Baseball is a zero sum competition; one team’s win is another’s loss. I’d also argue the cost advantage of team controlled talent far outweighs any disparity in payroll. This is to say fans defend $8 million per WAR in free agency while the cost for ELDC is $200k.
And if we’re bringing up the Phillies, let’s acknowledge that they won their championship in 2008 on the strength on a homegrown core.
You really don’t watch baseball do you?
Oh boy… ‘every team should be competing to win’… This again….. The Sox had a large payroll (141M) and lost 121 last season.. 2023 171 M and lost 101 games…. So what? Throw more money into a losing formula? Yeah, OK… wow..Im not Reinsdorf fan, I mean he caused this with that LaRussa Fiasco, but it is what it was and now they are here. New GM, new vision, teardowns happen after this typically. Ask ANY White Sox insider, they were NOT competing this year, (even if Getz looks like he is over his head most times).
.
They were doing what most rebuilding teams do, buy fringe type’ players on 1 year deals hoping they are good and flip them all while dealing with guys too pricey to move away from and hoping some of these prospects turn out OK (though not sure how with a coaching staff whose half were around when they bombed last season). Heck, technically the Sox were trying to compete this first half of the season, how did that pan out exactly?
No one on this White Sox roster who is a FA at the end of the year should still be on the club all should have been moved for whatever fringe player they could have gotten. . PERIOD
Any thing else is people thinking with their hearts instead of their brains.
I rather have two not terrible trades than 5 bad trades everyday of the week. Less trades doesn’t equal bad. Most of their players from the Rick Hahn era are gone/traded.
I think the White Sox were winners. They kept all their bullpen pieces and will have everybody back with a year of seasoning. That is going to gel and they are going to have a good bullpen because of it.
They kept Mike Tauchmann, who had a great season and has a year of ARB. Tauchmann and Benintendi are both nice in the OF in ’26. They kept all their young starters, Smith and Burke, Cannon and Davis. All have potential to improve.
They added a good prospect in the Hauser deal, a mid season acquisition that cashed.
They traded Vaughn who didn’t fit at first base. They couldn’t unload Civale but cutting Vaughn loose gets rid of Hahn’s baggage.
They didn’t ship Robert for peanuts. I am all for moving on from Robert despite his strong July. If he didn’t want to be traded and that affected his play, then good on the Sox for keeping him in the fold. Sox can close his option and offer him a QO. Ball is in Roberts court on that one. If he gets signed, Sox get a comp pick.
Twins are the big winners, got two nice starters in Bradley and Abel. That’s what they needed most. Cut big payroll. Rule five some bullpen arms, lineup is pretty solid with Keaschell and Jenkins.
Detroit flopped. Cleveland flopped. Royals made a good effort to make a run at it this season and extended Lugo on a team friendly deal, Royals also winners.
We can agree on not trading Robert Jr, but not the bullpen. This is literally the most replaceable part of the team and the White Sox have demonstrated an ability to churn out quality arms. Add this to the fact that teams have historically been willing to overpay at the trade deadline and it all adds up to a missed opportunity.
Simply unloading the players from the previous regime won’t be enough given how barren the team was at the end of 2023. Since they’ve now squandered numerous buy low/ sell high opportunities, the only course of action left is a major investment in analytics and player development.
Check the numbers on the bullpen since June 1st, pretty good across the board.
Last night, 5.1IP 2H 0ER 8K 4BB – pretty good night despite the loss in extra innings.
Wednesday: 6.1IP 3H 1ER 8K 3BB
Two pretty solid efforts in August. Bullpen looks good to me.
Id also clarify one thing regarding Robert. I think the Sox were honorable to not trade a player who went out of his way to avoid being traded. That’s my impression of Robert. There is there no way I would extend him a QO in that there is a possibility that he will pick it up and be back with the team next season. I’ll pass on the draft pick.
The White Sox blew it, no one who is a FA on this roster at the end of the year should be here now. They should have been moved for whatever fringe player they could get and hoped the scouts did their jobs and find some diamonds. Getz dropped the ball, as usual as how most regimes in Jerry team turn out. Anything else is people thinking with hearts instead of brains.
Heck move them, and the just resign them if they are beloved by you guys..
Robert is different, the Sox have no payroll so taking a chance on him getting better enough to move after a pickup up his option is one way, another thought is that somehow the Kids pick it up and get better as this season ends and they continue next, in which case Robert is a nice piece to have for a longshot at a WC birth.
They moved both Slater and Houser both are FA. Civale, Rojas, Michael A Taylor are the only players that will be a FA at the end of the season. Most guys in the bullpen are under cheap control thru the rest of the decade along with the SP as well.
If the Sox aren’t going to pick up Robert’s option why on earth would they offer him a QO? Just to hope and pray that he doesn’t accept it?
He has a 2M buy out on his deal so it’s unlikely, that would make the cost of the comp pick around 3M + the slot value. It doesn’t make sense.
I thought it made sense at first but didn’t think it through.
They could negotiate a sign and trade in the off season if a team wanted to give Robert a 1 yr / 20M deal. That could work out. Could have Robert in CF for the next team seasons. I won’t be a Sox fan anymore. I’m sure they won’t miss me.
Easily the Twins. No one else did enough, whether that mean buying or selling. Sox overplayed their hand regarding Robert about 2 years ago.
LOL they didn’t? They are literally the worst team in baseball right now. Look at their record over that last month and a half. LOL.
Twins simply because they picked up legitimate prospects and young starting pitching in their great sell off.
Dombrowski wins wherever he goes. He knows prospects almost never turn out to do anything special and trades them at their peak. I don’t understand how other GMs haven’t figured that out yet.
I understand Harris coming out saying he wants to build a sustainable winner. They have sooo many middle infielders in their system it’s sickening. Decent ones with trade value I’m sure.
Lee and Anderson come to mind. Sad deadline.
Just sad.
According to Fangraphs, Guards got the second best prospect at the deadline. That and keeping Kwan is why I voted for them
I’d say both the Twins and Guards won, the Twins for their fire sale and the Guards for holding on to Kwan.
That Clase gambling suspension and the fact that he’s still suspended has me looking back at last season’s ALDS and wondering if gambling was why he went from having a historical season to a historical crash.
Hmmm. Makes me go hmmm.
The biggest winners appear to be the sellers. Try an article on the resurgence of the Giants, Guardians, Pirates and others after supposedly giving up.
The Twins win simply by getting rid of the over paid, oft injured, clubhouse virus Carlos Correa.
More shoddy writing from Deeds. “Bigger than the moves they did make, arguably, is the ones they did not” come ON. First of all, arguably should begin the sentence and should not have a comma after it. But my god, the grammar. “Bigger than the moves they did make is the ones they did not.” How do you screw this up, and how does an editor miss this? It’s “ARE the ones they did not.” A professional writer making this 4 year old grammatical error is a travesty.
Please fire this dude. He’s awful.