How the legend of the Four Horsemen was born — and why it lives on 100 years later
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
“Outlined against a blue, gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again.
In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.”
IT WAS A century ago today, in the early evening of Oct. 18, that Grantland Rice, the greatest sportswriter of his time or perhaps any time, rat-a-tat-tatted those words out from his typewriter high above the Polo Grounds. Barely one week earlier, the old ballpark had hosted the World Series between the New York Giants and the visiting Washington Senators. That’s why the red, white and blue bunting was still hanging from the rafters, flapping in the autumn breeze as the 44-year-old Rice pulled the final pages from the scroll of his instrument, having just authored what is still considered to be the greatest opening paragraph ever penned by an American sportswriter.
Even he, at the height of his powers, with a newspaper column that reached an astonishing 10 million readers per day, had no idea what he was about to unleash once those words began rolling off the printing presses of the New York Herald Tribune and beyond. The Tennessean-turned-New Yorker they called “Granny” was too preoccupied with processing what he had just witnessed, Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame foursome of running backs unleashing a ballet of shifts, blocks, rushes and passes upon the era’s golden college football standard, the Black Knights of West Point.
By morning, that quartet would be the United States’ most famous college athletes, with an overnight popularity that went on to rival even the most recognized faces of the 1920s, the decade that birthed the very idea of American celebrity, from Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey to Charles Lindbergh and Rudolph Valentino, with a sizable accidental assist from that last guy.
“I have often wondered what would have happened, how would I have spent all these years, had those words not been written about us,” confessed Four Horseman Elmer Layden during an interview in 1947, after retiring as the first commissioner of the NFL. “Do any of us become the coaches that we did? Do the four of us remain the great friends that we are? Does our beloved Notre Dame become the football team that it is and does Rock become the legend he was? I don’t know. And I am thankful to not know. All because of those words.”
Before they were Horsemen
OUTLINED AGAINST A very dark, aurora borealis-tinted sky, those who love the Four Horsemen rode again, in SUVs and Ubers to the Brown County Library in downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin. There, in an auditorium packed with, well, Packers, on Tuesday night, Oct. 8, 2024, the people of Titletown were learning about one of their own.
“Before he was Sleepy Jim Crowley, as Knute Rockne called him in jest, or a Four Horseman of Notre Dame, he was just Jimmy from Green Bay,” writer Jim Lefebvre, author of “Loyal Sons,” a book with a cover adorned with the famous Four Horsemen photograph, told the theater full of enthusiasts. Like Lefebvre himself, the room was mostly town natives. “Crowley learned the game of football in a city park that we all know, only a few blocks from where we are sitting right now.”
Crowley — he of the good looks, sharp wit and 162-pound frame — starred in every sport but was indoctrinated into the finer points of carrying the pigskin out of the T formation by his coach at Green Bay East High, Curly Lambeau. Yes, that Curly Lambeau, who in the early 1920s was holding down the dual head-coaching jobs at East and for a city-based semipro team he’d founded in 1919 and persuaded his meat-packing boss to sponsor. He called them the Green Bay Packers.
Lambeau learned the ways of the shifty Notre Dame Box offense from its originator, having played one season in the Fighting Irish backfield in 1918, Rockne’s first year at the helm in South Bend. Curly shared that backfield with George Gipp before health issues and homesickness sent Lambeau back home to Green Bay. When it was time for Crowley, a good Wisconsin Catholic boy, to attend college, Lambeau called his former coach and told him to give the kid a chance.
A similar call had come in from Davenport, Iowa. Walter Halas, brother of Chicago Bears godfather George, was Rockne’s top talent scout, joining the Notre Dame staff from Davenport Central High, and he told Rockne they had to bring in his star fullback, Elmer Layden. Layden stayed on at Notre Dame despite homesickness so awful that when Rockne said, “Don’t worry. I’ve never had a freshman quit,” teenage Layden replied, “Then I’m about to help you break another football record.”
He was joined by another bulldog of a back, but one who required no convincing to matriculate into northern Indiana. Don Miller’s three older brothers had already played for the Irish, including Harry “Red” Miller, Notre Dame’s first All-American. “I didn’t even know there were other places to go to college,” Miller joked years later.
The final future Horseman was also their anchor, athletically and spiritually. Harry Stuhldreher wasn’t big physically. During a Rockne-demanded weigh-in, Stuhldreher said of the smallish four-man backfield, “I don’t know who is more embarrassed, us or the scales.” He hailed from the only corner of the nation more football-crazy than Green Bay, having grown up watching and then playing on the vicious football field-turned-fighting rings of northeastern Ohio. That’s where the town teams of Canton and Stuhldreher’s hometown of Massillon held contests so infamously violent that Rice himself came from New York to cover them, writing: “But no fight ever fought before beneath the shining sun, will be like that when Canton’s team lines up with Massillon.”
In 1915, Rockne, fresh out of Notre Dame as a player, signed with the Massillon Tigers as an end. Over the next two seasons he went head to head with Jim Thorpe and his Canton Bulldogs. A local teenager took to Rockne and helped him carry his gear to and from the stadium. It was Harry Stuhldreher. A few years later, he was Rockne’s QB at Notre Dame.
As freshmen in 1921, the foursome never played together. As sophomores in 1922, Miller broke into the lineup, but the other three had to wait another year to become regulars. As juniors, they became a shape-shifting yardage machine. They lined up in the T formation, and, when the signal was given, they moved into the Notre Dame Shift. To the right, Crowley was left half (tailback), Miller was right (wingback), Stuhldreher would tuck in behind the guard and tackle, while Layden lined up behind the tackle. To the left, they’d do the same but to the other side. The snap could go directly to any of them, and they might run, pitch or pass, all while blocking to perfection.
“We don’t need big backs,” the always-clever Rockne would say, “because we don’t make big holes.”
They lost only two games together in two years, both to Nebraska, as they ran into 1924.
The fifth Horseman
OUTLINED AGAINST A perfectly cloudless Southern California blue sky, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery seems to go on indeed forever. There’s a statue of Johnny Ramone, a pyramid, a granite couch covered with bronze likenesses of the departed’s beloved dogs, and headstones for Cecil B. DeMille and Mickey Rooney. Hidden deep within a mausoleum is the crypt — No. 1,205 to be exact — of Rudolph Valentino, one of the biggest stars of silent film.
On a flawless day this past August, a religious tract was stuffed into one of the flower holders. It is a story taken from the Book of Revelation, Chapter 6, and had been the inspiration behind the million-dollar film that turned Valentino into a megastar, 1921’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
George Strickler, a devotee of that film, did not play football. He was also not raised in some Midwestern semipro-powered gridiron hotbed. He was from South Bend, having spent his entire life on the Notre Dame campus, where his father ran the college slaughterhouse. This feels like a good spot to illustrate exactly what that college was like at the time, and it wasn’t much.
The school was founded in 1842 by a 28-year-old French priest who had come into 524 frozen acres in the middle of what was known as the Indiana mission fields. Eight decades later, as the soon-to-be Four Horsemen ran their drills ahead of the 1924 season, literally beneath the shadow of the Golden Dome, the student body was around 2,500 and the campus was little more than a handful of buildings surrounded by farms and bordered by 15,000-seat Cartier Field.
The school continued to grow despite a seething national resistance to all things Irish Catholic. That very spring, on May 17, 1924, thousands of white-hooded Ku Klux Klansman had marched on tiny South Bend with the intent of sending a streak of fear through the de facto geographic center of the American Catholic church, particularly the young men being educated as future leaders of government and industry.
Rockne and his boss, Notre Dame president Father Matthew Walsh, worked together to keep the campus and town from coming unglued. They knew their community and Catholics in America as a whole needed a rallying point, some sort of inspiration. And they both knew their 1924 football team could be great enough to step into that role.
Rockne’s football mind was outmatched only by his promotional talents. And he realized early on that his little school with the little stadium in the little town in the Indiana wilderness would never have the press coverage of the big-city teams. So he took his players on the road to those big cities, and when they got there, he charmed those metropolitan writers and reporters, chief among them Grantland Rice.
As part of that push, Rockne invented what is now known as the sports information department. Each season he would hire a student publicist, a kid who would write for the local newspaper but also get stories and ideas about the Fighting Irish sent out over Western Union and Postal Telegraph lines. It was a sweet gig. It paid good money (but only per amazing story) and it included a coveted traveling spot with the team as it jumped on trains for Chicago; Pittsburgh; Princeton, New Jersey; Madison, Wisconsin; and New York.
In 1924, that job belonged to the 20-year-old Strickler. On Wednesday, Oct. 15, on the eve of a train ride to New York, where 2-0 Notre Dame would play 2-0 Army at the Polo Grounds, Strickler and a handful of Irish players slipped into Washington Hall, where the college would show second-run movies. On this night, the feature was Rudolph Valentino in “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
The 2½-hour film concluded with a mourning father standing graveside and looking to the sky, where he witnessed famine, pestilence, destruction and death ride off into the heavens. As he sees this, a man speaks to him, “Peace has come. But the Four Horsemen will still ravage humanity, stirring unrest in the world, until all hatred is dead and only love reigns in the heart of mankind.”
Strickler was flabbergasted. The next day, the college student thought about the film nonstop, throughout the entire 21-hour, 700-mile train ride to New York.
The power of suggestion
OUTLINED AGAINST A sunburst orange sky as day breaks through the Polo Grounds Towers, all that remains of the ballpark that a century ago had just been expanded is a rusted plaque affixed to the northwestern corner of the apartment buildings that overlook the Harlem River. It is the location of the home plate that was trotted upon by Giants, Yankees and Mets. There is no mention of the Oct. 18, 1924, football game between Notre Dame and Army. Only baseball.
And yet it must be noted that during that week, Rice chose not to travel to Washington, D.C., for Game 7 of the World Series. He was too excited for the upcoming football game. So was the entire city of New York, egged on by Rice and his fellow press box hype experts, and coverage of the game on the still-new commercial radio, which was a couple of weeks shy of its fourth birthday. By game day, 55,000 tickets were sold, thanks to the thousands of New Yorker Notre Dame devotees known as the “Subway Alumni,” Catholics who had latched onto the little college from Indiana as their flagship football team … exactly as Rockne and Father Walsh had hoped.
On the Army sideline stood head coach Cap McEwan, who had played against Rockne when the Knights faced off with Notre Dame in 1913, the first of the schools’ 51 meetings. Alongside McEwan was assistant coach Robert Neyland, aka the Legend Tennessee’s Stadium is Named For.
The game was a brawl. Notre Dame center Adam Walsh broke both hands but kept playing. Army failed to gain a first down in the first half. The Irish managed only one touchdown, a 1-yard dive from Layden, but Stuhldreher missed the PAT. Though they led only 6-0 at halftime, the Fighting Irish had thrilled the crowd with their running precision, routinely breaking off long runs that seemed to launch the ball carrier spring-loaded from out of a rugby scrum of bodies.
During the halftime break, the sportswriters of New York gathered in a corner to smoke, sip and discuss. As always, the center of gravity was Rice, who sang in his Murfreesboro, Tennessee, lilt about the scalpel precision of the Notre Dame Box and the four young men at the corners of that box. (Oh, by the way, these same young men were immediately turning around and playing the stonewall defense that had Army completely befuddled. Remember, platoon football and player substitutions were still two decades away.)
Eavesdropping on the beat writer breakdowns was George Strickler, doing just what Rockne had instructed. He listened, he took the temperature of the press box and then, if the moment seemed right, he would perhaps nudge that temperature up or down in the Irish’s favor.
“Yeah,” Strickler interjected after hearing yet another Grantland Rice mention of Notre Dame’s backfield foursome. “They’re just like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!”
‘Dad, I need four horses …’
OUTLINED AGAINST A very gray October Indiana sky, four ice truck tow horses had no idea they were about to become famous. But not nearly as famous as the kids climbing atop their bulky backs.
Notre Dame had won the day, beating Army by a score of 13-7, and won over a city in the process. Back in South Bend, where there was no radio coverage, thousands of fans packed gymnasiums to watch scoreboard operators move a light bulb along a “football field” as they tracked the game by newswire. The contest swallowed up so much energy that a second threatened Klan march scheduled to take place that day had fizzled out.
By the time their train made it back to Indiana to a greeting party of thousands complete with a marching band, the Fighting Irish were also winning over an increasingly celebrity-obsessed nation. Early Sunday morning, as the bandaged-up victors were headed for the train station, Strickler had stopped at a newsstand and snatched up copies of all the New York newspapers. There, on the very front page of the New York Herald Tribune, he saw the byline of Grantland Rice. Then he read the first paragraph. “Outlined against a blue, gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. …”
He did it! Granny actually did it!
Moments before the Irish train churned west, Strickler found a telegraph station and excitedly sent a message ahead to his father in South Bend. He needed four horses, with saddles, on the Notre Dame campus that Monday. Stop.
“I wasn’t so sure about that and none of us were,” Don Miller admitted in 1949, at a 25th anniversary celebration of the 1924 season. “George came and pulled us out of practice, Rock came with us, and there were four horses lined up next to the practice field. They were no thoroughbreds, either. These were workhorses and we weren’t so sure they wanted anyone on them, let alone four football players in helmets and pads.”
But there they were. College kids without any equestrian experience to speak of, except for Stuhldreher, who had handled a bridle while doing deliveries for his father’s store, all understandably nervous. A head coach who was all about publicity but was also all about not having his starting backfield suddenly on their backs, thrown off their mounts. The helmets. The chunky outfits. Holding onto footballs instead of holding onto the reins. The whole moment was so uneasy. That’s why it lasted only a few seconds, just long enough for a local commercial photographer to snap a couple of shots, before the Four Horsemen got the hell off their horses.
As they returned to practice, Strickler went to work sending his photo out onto the wires, eager to see if any papers might pick it up. Every pic published meant a little pocket money for the kid. He had no idea he had just conjured up perhaps the most famous publicity photograph in the history of college football.
When the team returned east the following weekend to face powerhouse Princeton, they immediately noticed a change in chatter whenever the train stopped for coal, water and passengers. Now there were people waiting at every station. And they weren’t asking, “Are you the Notre Dame football team?” They wanted to know where they could see the Four Horsemen.
Notre Dame beat the Tigers 12-0. Then they drubbed Georgia Tech, Wisconsin and finally exorcized their Nebraska demons. Everywhere they went, they won. And everywhere they went, different versions of the Subway Alumni were waiting. They finished the season undefeated, earning an invitation to the 1925 Rose Bowl, only the third edition of the game played in the still-new-at-the-time stadium that bears its name, to face Stanford.
Rockne, always promoting, took the Irish on the long route to Pasadena. Like, really, really long. The team traveled south to New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; Houston; El Paso, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; and, finally, Los Angeles. At every stop, people clamored to see the Horsemen, holding up newspapers featuring Strickler’s photo. Part joke, part tribute, the other members of Notre Dame’s 11 first-stringers began referring to themselves as the Seven Mules.
On New Year’s Day, the Irish ran past Pop Warner’s Stanford team 27-10. It was a big moment for a program that had been unable to schedule any California teams to that point. The official reason was “low academic standards.” To Rockne that was code for “We don’t play Catholics.”
In 1926, the rivalry with USC began.
The train ride home for Notre Dame’s first national championship team made the trip out west seem like a walk to the store. From Hollywood and San Francisco to Salt Lake City and Cheyenne, Wyoming, revelers in every city shouted cheers about the Four Horsemen, sang songs about the Four Horsemen and asked whether their favorite local college might one day play against the alma mater of the Four Horsemen. The team was gone so long, practically the entire month of January, that angry administrators declared Notre Dame would no longer participate in bowl games because it kept the players out of too many classes. That self-imposed ban lasted until 1970. But the team added seven more national titles during that span.
“As much as I wondered about how different life would have been without Mr. Rice’s story,” Layden continued in that 1947 radio interview, “I have also wondered what would have happened had we not held up our end of the bargain and won all of our games. Even one loss, and I wonder, would anyone know who the Four Horsemen are today?”
‘But the Four Horsemen will still ravage humanity…’
OUTLINED AGAINST A hard winter white sky, American GIs were pinned down somewhere in the forests of Western Europe. It was early 1945, and the troops were in particular danger because the Nazis had deciphered their latest codes and were infiltrating the confused U.S. platoons one at a time. So the officers devised a foolproof plan of friendly identification, a question that every single true-blooded American would be able to answer, even if they hadn’t been told of the new protocol.
What team did the Four Horsemen play for?
The story was told this summer in South Bend, where a Stuhldreher was once again quarterbacking activities at Notre Dame. But it wasn’t Harry. It was Mike, great-nephew of the Fighting Irish great and member of Notre Dame’s Class of 1991, bellied up to the bar at the Morris Inn, the on-campus hotel. He was in town with other parents of Notre Dame students as part of the annual family volunteer camp. Every year, the university bookstore sells an item titled “The Shirt” and every Irish fan scrambles to get one. This year it featured the Four Horsemen.
Mike’s time as a student coincided with the resurgence of modern Irish football success. Lou Holtz was the head coach. Tim Brown won the school’s seventh Heisman Trophy. Catholics vs. Convicts. A natty. Rudy. The nation was digging back into the echoes.
“I suppose there are a lot of Crowleys and Laydens who can claim they are related to a Four Horseman. If you’re a Miller, they may or may not believe you. But there’s no faking it when your name is Stuhldreher,” he said, laughing. “When people know, they know. When I was a student, people knew, and when I am on campus, like this summer, I get Four Horsemen questions. I love it. As the years go on, you get it less and less. But now, with the 100th anniversary, there’s definitely been an uptick.”
The descendants of Jim Crowley can be spotted frequently strolling through the freshly refurbished Crowley Park in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which features a monument and plaque commemorating its football ace namesake. Scranton is where Jim ultimately landed as a television station manager, following a long coaching career that included time as head coach at Michigan State and Fordham, where he and his right-hand assistant — and future Notre Dame head coach — Frank Leahy coached the legendary “Seven Blocks of Granite” line that included a youngster named Vince Lombardi. Crowley died in 1986.
Don Miller served as an assistant coach at Georgia Tech and Ohio State before practicing law in Cleveland. In 1925, his first year as a coach and first year out of South Bend, his Ramblin’ Wreck hosted Notre Dame in Atlanta and lost to Rockne’s team 13-0 at Grant Field. This Friday, only 1 mile away, the College Football Hall of Fame, into which all Four Horsemen were inducted, will host a ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Notre Dame-Army game. (On Saturday, the Irish play Tech in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.) Miller died in 1979.
Elmer Layden was head coach at three schools, including Notre Dame, where he posted 47 wins in seven seasons. He was asked to serve as the first NFL commissioner in 1941, and among his first hires was a publicity director for the burgeoning league, George Strickler. Among his challenges was navigating the formation of a rival professional football organization, the All-American Football League. The AAFL’s commissioner? Sleepy Jim Crowley. Layden died in 1973.
The Four Horsemen gathered whenever they could over the years. In 1926, Stuhldreher and Layden were teammates on the short-lived Brooklyn Horsemen of the American Football League. All four played together one last time on Dec. 14, 1930, at the Polo Grounds, as part of a Notre Dame alumni team organized to play a charity exhibition against the New York Giants. More than 50,000 tickets were sold, with newspaper ads declaring: SEE THE FOUR HORSEMEN RIDE AGAIN.
They were back together only four months later, at Rockne’s funeral after he was killed in a Kansas plane crash, and they also served as honorary pallbearers for Grantland Rice in 1954. They reunited for anniversaries of the 1924 season, various speaking engagements and private dinners. In 1965, when Harry Stuhldreher became the first of them to die, it was Layden who wrote that the Horsemen had been “left without a quarterback in every sense of the word.”
Next month, the families of the Four Horsemen will ride again, into New York and into another ballpark. On Nov. 23, Notre Dame and Army will square off at Yankee Stadium, just over the Harlem River and within view of the Polo Grounds site. The Black Knights are currently undefeated. The Irish and their lone loss are knocking on the door of the top 10. That means their late-season contest might not merely be for bragging rights or Horsemen nostalgia but for a spot in the College Football Playoff.
“The Stuhldrehers will be there, coming into town 39 strong, multiple generations,” reports Mike, quarterback of the invasion. He’s hoping his family can meet up with the extended families of the other three Horsemen. “It’s always amazing to watch the Irish play, to see what the program has become. But it will be particularly emotional to see them in New York that night, in a huge game, thinking about how it all started. Not just Notre Dame or football, but Catholics in America. I can’t speak to whether or not people will always remember the Four Horsemen. But it’s been 100 years and here we are talking about them. But what they started? I don’t think that’s ever stopping.”
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — NASCAR will hold a street race on Naval Base Coronado in Southern California next June as a replacement for its downtown Chicago event that ran the past three years.
The shift next year will allow NASCAR to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Navy by hosting all three of its national series over a three-day weekend from June 19 to June 21.
“As part of our nation’s 250th anniversary, we are honored for NASCAR to join the celebration as we host our first street race at a military base, Naval Base Coronado,” Ben Kennedy, NASCAR executive vice president and chief venue and racing innovations officer, said in a statement Wednesday. “NASCAR San Diego Weekend will honor the Navy’s history and the men and women who serve as we take the best motorsports in the world to the streets of Naval Base Coronado.”
Project: Race the Base.
We’re bringing a different kind of speed to @USNavy Base Coronado in 2026. pic.twitter.com/A3mRh2x8bN
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 23, 2025
It will be NASCAR’s second street race in the sport’s history, following the three-year run in Chicago, and first on an active military base. The course layout is not complete but is expected to be around 3 miles.
The move to the San Diego area does not eliminate a return to Chicago, where NASCAR will still maintain an office and attempt an eventual return, perhaps as early as 2027.
NASCAR has seen Auto Club Speedway close after the 2023 race. It built a temporary short track inside Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum from 2022 through 2024 but moved that event to North Carolina.
Kennedy, who has been bullish on new endeavors for his family business, was the brains of the races at the Coliseum, Chicago, this year’s visit to Mexico City and now next year in San Diego, a venture the Navy is excited about.
“NASCAR embodies the very best of the American spirit through speed, precision and an unyielding pursuit of excellence,” Navy Secretary John C. Phelan said. “Hosting a race aboard Naval Air Station North Island, the birthplace of naval aviation, it’s not just a historic first, it’s a powerful tribute to the values we share: grit, teamwork and love of country.
“From the flight deck to the finish line, this collaboration reflects the operational intensity and unity of purpose that define both the United States Navy and NASCAR.”
The base is known as the “West Coast Quarterdeck” and is a consortium of nine Navy installations that stretch from San Clemente Island 50 miles off the coast of Long Beach to the Mountain Warfare Training Center 50 miles east of San Diego.
NASCAR named Amy Lupo, who has been with the series since 2021 and helped launch the Coliseum event, as president of the race. She spent more than 20 years at ESPN expanding the X Games when she lived in San Diego early in her career. She still lives in Southern California.
Sports
Passan’s ultimate MLB trade deadline preview: Where all 30 teams stand, best fits and latest intel
Eight days out from the 2025 MLB trade deadline, nearly three-quarters major league baseball teams reside within 5½ games of a playoff spot. The downstream effect of expanding the postseason to a dozen teams becomes abundantly apparent every July, when the teams looking to offload players survey the landscape and see a market tilted decidedly in their favor.
This is a moment of discomfort for nearly every team in baseball. Getting talent in a trade can help win a World Series. It can also cost players who might have helped win one in the future. Trading players can revitalize a farm system. It can also go sideways with the talent acquired not panning out. Front offices are evermore trying to bend their organizations toward the most certain thing. The trade deadline is uncertainty personified.
At the same time, with the 6 p.m. ET deadline on July 31 rapidly approaching, teams need to become comfortable with that discomfort. Those planning to move big league talent are starting to make concrete asks. While the lion’s share of trades will take place over the final 72 hours before the deadline, the deal-making zone has arrived.
And while this is not a deadline with a truly great player available, there is enough talent out there — and enough that can be had for the right price — to bring intrigue to the week-plus ahead. Here, in broad strokes, is how one of the most fundamental stretches on the baseball calendar is shaping up, with teams tiered by their expected levels of activity.
Jump to team:
American League
ATH | BAL | BOS | CHW | CLE
DET | HOU | KC | LAA | MIN
NYY | SEA | TB | TEX | TOR
National League
ARI | ATL | CHC | CIN | COL
LAD | MIA | MIL | NYM | PHI
PIT | SD | SF | STL | WSH
Teams going big
Biggest needs: 3B, SP, RP
Best fit: Eugenio Suárez, 3B
The latest: The good news for the Yankees is that they line up very well with what the Arizona Diamondbacks are seeking as they consider moving Suárez, the most coveted player on the market. New York’s ability to develop starting pitchers with excellent minor league numbers is near unmatched in the industry. What worries some front offices is the rarity with which those arms have turned into quality big leaguers. Still, it’s the sort of thing that allows the Yankees to rebuff interest in Spencer Jones, who has been the hottest hitter in the minor leagues since his promotion to Triple-A and looks like an impactful bat despite his strikeout issues.
Should New York whiff on Suárez, third-base options abound — Ryan McMahon, Willi Castro, any of the available Mets youngsters (Mark Vientos, Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio, Luisangel Acuña), Ke’Bryan Hayes, Yoan Moncada, Jonathan India, Luis Urías — and the Yankees can turn their prospect capital toward pitching. Enough arms are available that the Yankees will get help. And they need it, because wasting another historically great Aaron Judge season would be a shame.
Biggest need: SP, 3B
Best fit: MacKenzie Gore, SP
The latest: The prospect of the Cubs getting a starter such as Gore from Washington or Joe Ryan from the Minnesota Twins is unlikely because of the exorbitant cost landing those players would demand and Chicago’s propensity to play things safe amid budgetary constraints. At the same time, the Cubs have been one of the best clubs in baseball this season, with an offense that’s the envy of teams around the game, and their desire for a top-of-the-rotation-type arm is perhaps the most acute need of any team at this deadline. The Cubs can win the World Series without one, sure, but adding to Shota Imanaga and Matthew Boyd would give them the sort of comfort legitimate contenders seek at this point in the season.
In outfielder Owen Caissie, Chicago has the sort of prospect around which a package for a controllable arm can be built. If not Gore or Ryan, perhaps it’s Mitch Keller from Pittsburgh. Regardless, the motivation for the Cubs is there. They want to win the division, yes, but most of all they want to win a ring. Now is not the time to let what a model says about lost surplus value in a deal get in the way of that. The Cubs want to be all-in. We’ll see if they are when it matters.
Biggest needs: SP, RP
Best fit: Mitch Keller, SP
The latest: The Blue Jays’ magical run this season has warranted an aggressive tack and if they don’t wake up Aug. 1 with at least one impact arm acquired, the disappointment will be palpable.
With Chris Bassitt and Max Scherzer headed to free agency after this season and Kevin Gausman following 2026, getting an under-control starter — such as Keller, who has three years at around $55 million remaining on his deal after this season — is a priority. If they can’t swing that, there’s plenty of good pitching among free agents-to-be. And the relief market is flush enough that they can complement Jeff Hoffman, Yariel Rodriguez, Brendon Little, Chad Green, Braydon Fisher and Yimi Garcia with one more arm to make some kind of nasty bullpen.
Toronto’s farm system, though improved, doesn’t have quite the heft of others that are going after top-end talent. If that means dealing from a surplus of big league position players instead, it’s an option.
There’s still some skepticism about the Blue Jays’ ability to replicate the first 100 games over the final 62. The deadline offers the opportunity to show they’re more than worthy of carrying first place in baseball’s most competitive division.
Biggest needs: RP, OF
Best fit: Emmanuel Clase, RP
The latest: The Phillies have quietly built up one of the best farm systems in baseball, and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski’s history of trading prospects for impact talent is unmatched. Still, with the Phillies entering a transition phase over the next few years, they aren’t likely to sacrifice all of their depth. That complicates their tack at this deadline, because they are among the few teams with the need and capacity to acquire a pitcher of Clase’s talent. Same goes for Cade Smith, another Guardian, and the Twins’ two frontline relievers, Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax.
Getting David Robertson for $6 million certainly helps matters and serves as insurance against objectionable demands on high-end relief pitchers. And yet adding Robertson plus a high-octane relief arm alongside Orion Kerkering and Matt Strahm gives the Phillies a representative back end.
If they can also add a right-handed-hitting outfielder with power — Adolis Garcia is in the mix, and Luis Robert Jr. would play, too — it will be a successful deadline for a team whose starting pitching is good enough to carry it deep into October.
Biggest needs: 3B, 1B, RP
Best fit: Josh Naylor, 1B
The latest: The Mariners are in the position they are — a playoff berth if the season ended today alongside perhaps the best farm system in all of baseball — because they’ve been judicious and disciplined. Now is not the time for that. The market is flush with opportunity for them to use some of their prospect depth and add to a team that has ridden Cal Raleigh to the cusp of something special.
If the Mariners’ starters are healthy and they can focus on adding a reliever to the trio of nasty that is Andrés Muñoz, Matt Brash and Gabe Speier. Seattle’s pitching alone will make the team good. Another bat or two on top of that can help them evolve from Bulbasaur to Venusaur. Naylor makes sense at first. Eugenio Suárez makes sense at third. Both together would be a home run. Willi Castro and Ryan O’Hearn are solid backup plans.
Though the Mariners won’t be dealing Colt Emerson or Jonny Farmelo, catcher Harry Ford could be in play. The costs are high. The Mariners are in as good a spot as any to pay without causing significant damage to their long-term prospects.
Biggest need: Talent
Best asset: Seth Halvorsen, RP
The latest: The Rockies, habitually somnambulant at the trade deadline, have indicated to teams they’re far more open to making deals this July. It would help if they had better players, but their openness on Ryan McMahon — who has two years and $32 million remaining on his contract — is a start.
Even as reliever Jake Bird‘s ERA has ballooned by nearly a run and a half since July started, he’ll draw interest. The real opportunity will come from Colorado’s willingness to move its flamethrowing relief arms, Halvorsen (100.2-mph average fastball) and Victor Vodnik (98.5 mph). As much as a team will be happy to add Jimmy Herget for a lottery-ticket prospect, Halvorsen in particular represents the Rockies’ best bet to bring back something substantive.
Biggest need: Pretty much everything
Best asset: Luis Robert Jr., CF
The latest: Robert’s surge over the last week has impressed scouts and defibrillated his trade value, which for most of the season had cratered. The White Sox don’t want to move him for a reduced return, though, which leaves the outfielder in trade limbo. He won’t fetch what he would have two years ago; he also isn’t the sort of player a team deals for a middling prospect. The upside is too palpable.
Right-hander Adrian Houser has been a bonanza of a signing by Chicago and will be a nice fallback plan for teams that whiff on higher-end starting pitching. Right-handers Steven Wilson and Dan Altavilla have performed well enough for teams to have an interest, though neither’s FIP matches his ERA, which tempers the enthusiasm. Cam Booser has excellent stuff and would be a nice under-the-radar addition — particularly in a market lacking left-handed relief help.
And as much as the White Sox would love to move Andrew Benintendi, he’s owed another $5 million-plus this year and $31 million more for the next two seasons. The only way he moves is via a massive pay-down.
Biggest need: Offense. For everyone’s sake, please, just a little offense.
Best asset: Mitch Keller, SP
The latest: Paul Skenes is not going anywhere. Neither is Oneil Cruz. But pretty much everyone else is there for the taking. Keller, 29, could wind up the best controllable starting pitcher to move. He has three years and around $55 million left on his deal, and despite his 3-10 record this season, Keller is a No. 3-caliber starter on a team with big league-quality bats. (Not a single Pirates regular has a league-average OPS+ this season.)
As much as Keller could bring a boffo return, the real work could be done with Pittsburgh’s bullpen. Closer David Bednar is a solid alternative if Cleveland and Minnesota hold their relievers. Right-handed reliever Dennis Santana has been practically unhittable this season, with his exceptional command and weak contact induced making up for a lack of strikeouts. Caleb Ferguson‘s hard-hit rate is in the 100th percentile, and his expected numbers are similarly gaudy.
Among Skenes, Bubba Chandler and 2024 first-rounder Konnor Griffin — who at 19 looks like a future superstar — the Pirates still have some prospect depth. They Pirates have shown the capacity to develop good big league arms. But this deadline offers an opportunity to add the sort of hitting they need to dream of being competitive again.
Biggest need: Pitching
Best asset: MacKenzie Gore, SP
The latest: Trading Gore is a long shot, yes, but interim GM Mike DeBartolo at very least is listening because A) that’s what good organizations do and B) the Nationals need a lot of help. It also would be something of a white flag for the immediate future unless owner Mark Lerner suddenly decides he wants to return the Nationals to their 2010s heyday, when they were regularly among the top 10 spending teams in MLB. And considering there’s no sign of that, any hope of contention in the near future rests disproportionately on Gore, a 26-year-old strikeout maestro.
They’re also not even thinking of moving star outfielder James Wood, and trading shortstop CJ Abrams is only fractionally likelier to happen
Absent a Gore deal, the Nationals could trade away their excess arms: closer Kyle Finnegan and right-hander Michael Soroka, who has spent the year in the rotation but was among the game’s best relievers when moved to the bullpen last season.
Utilityman Amed Rosario should find a new home, and teams could take a shot with first baseman Nathaniel Lowe (as long as Washington pays down the $3 million-plus left on his one-year deal).
Since winning the World Series in 2019, the Nationals have finished in last place four of five years. With their rebuild stalling, now might be the time for bold moves, even in the hands of a GM whose future, like the franchise he’s shepherding, is unclear.
Teams with questions that will shape the deadline
Biggest need: Pitching
Best asset: Eugenio Suárez, 3B
The latest: The Diamondbacks are in posturing mode, which is exactly what GM Mike Hazen should be doing — because nobody has more leverage than him at this deadline. He has the best bat in Suárez and arguably the next best in Josh Naylor. He has right-handers Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly, both of whom would slot into almost every playoff rotation. And all of them are free agents after this season. So as much as the Diamondbacks have the talent to get hot and claw into a postseason berth, they have a rare opportunity to take a decent farm system and turn it into one of the best in baseball overnight.
Among the Yankees, Mariners, Cubs and even the Mets, Suárez has suitors galore and will procure a premium of players in return. Naylor is no sure thing to go, but teams expect him to move nonetheless.
How Arizona handles its pitching will be among the more fascinating subplots of the deadline. The Diamondbacks could trade Gallen, who’s having a down year, and try to re-sign Kelly. Or they could move Kelly and attempt to bring him back over the winter while giving the qualifying offer to Gallen, who’s likelier to receive $50 million-plus in free agency — and the superior draft pick that comes with that — than Kelly.
Though the Diamondbacks have told teams they don’t intend to deal both, Arizona’s options don’t end there. Randal Grichuk is a lefty-killing outfielder. Closer Shelby Miller could come back from the injured list soon. Alek Thomas is available and has three years of control beyond this season.
Minnesota Twins: Just how much will they subtract?
Biggest need: Infielders
Best asset: Jhoan Duran, RP
The latest: The Twins are among the most frustrating teams in baseball because they have plenty of talent. Teams adore Joe Ryan, and while he is perhaps the best arm available of any in the mix at the deadline, teams look at what the Twins are asking for to acquire Duran or Jax — at least two top-100-caliber prospects — and aren’t inclined to spend a whole lot of time workshopping deals for a top-10 starter this season with two more years of club control.
Perhaps the ask on Duran and Jax deflates between now and the deadline, but Minnesota is historically a team that sets a high bar on returns and doesn’t deviate. For a team with championship aspirations, either of them would register as a monumental addition, so it’s not an entirely unreasonable position for the Twins to take. But if they do try to cash in on a relief arm, deal Brock Stewart as well, move Castro — a free-agent-to-be who since mid-May is slashing .280/.379/.495 while playing second base, third base, left field and right field — and get something for Edouard Julien or Jose Miranda, the future could look a whole lot brighter.
Add the deadline returns to a near-ready group of position-playing prospects (center fielder Emmanuel Rodriguez, corner outfielder Walker Jenkins, infielder Luke Keaschall) and the Twins could be primed to contend in the American League Central next year. A mild reset could be just what the Twins need as the team is sold.
Biggest need: Offense. For everyone’s sake, please, just a little offense.
Best asset: Steven Kwan, OF
The latest: The Guardians have made it abundantly clear to teams that to move Kwan, Emmanuel Clase or Cade Smith, they’ll need to be blown away. Cleveland’s sustained success over the past decade with paltry payrolls stems from its fealty to restraint. The Guardians don’t make moves to make moves. They make moves to get better. So as up in arms as Cleveland fans might be about the organization’s openness to trade quality players, understand: It’s a feature, not a bug.
The Guardians are who they are because they are willing to consider the uncomfortable thing without actively seeking it. Sometimes they make mistakes, yes — Junior Caminero is a painful one, just as Yordan Alvarez is for the Dodgers and Joe Ryan for the Rays — but by and large the Guardians excel in this sort of scenario.
If Cleveland senses the opportunity for value, it will jump. If not, its impending free agents — Carlos Santana, Lane Thomas, Paul Sewald, Jakob Junis — will be the focus. One player to keep an eye on: Former AL Cy Young winner Shane Bieber, who is coming back from Tommy John surgery, made his first start Tuesday at High-A Lake County and is available. Bieber’s $16 million player option for next year is an impediment, certainly, but if his stuff is good enough, high-payroll teams could see him as a risk worth taking.
San Diego Padres: Will they deal from the MLB roster to improve?
Biggest need: C, OF, SP
Best asset: Robert Suárez, RP
Best fit: Luis Robert Jr., OF
The latest: The Padres could be the add-and-subtract kings of this deadline. With a farm system that beyond shortstop Leo De Vries isn’t teeming with desirable talent, San Diego could dip into its exceptional bullpen for help. Suárez, a potential free agent and the major league leader in saves, is the likeliest option, though teams that have inquired about Dylan Cease haven’t been told no.
The available number of catchers is thin, leaving outfield as a potential spot for improvement, and president of baseball operations A.J. Preller never lacks creativity when looking to better his team, happily staying up all hours to pore over video of back-end starting pitchers — or dream up three-way trade scenarios to make up for the lack of near big league-ready prospects.
Ultimately, the Padres just want to win, and while they’ve done so enough to find themselves in second place in the NL West and occupying the third wild-card slot at the moment, San Diego needs to deepen a top-heavy roster and do so while staying within budget. It won’t be easy.
Biggest need: SP, 2B
Best asset: Tyler Rogers, RP
Best fit: Zack Littell, SP
The latest: The Giants have been a patently mediocre team since a 24-14 start. Rafael Devers‘ arrival has done nothing to jolt the offense. As excellent as Logan Webb, Robbie Ray and Landen Roupp have been, the back end of the rotation is a mess. San Francisco is where it is because of a dynamite bullpen — one that, based on its peripherals, is due to regress.
So as much as new president of baseball operations Buster Posey’s instinct is to push and win, the Giants are being open-minded. If they turn around from an ugly post-All-Star-break swoon, Posey can add on the fringes — perhaps an arm such as Littell, who is not a standout name but throws strikes, gobbles innings and, with his propensity to give up home runs, would benefit strongly from playing in the cavernous Oracle Park.
Posey could also pivot the other way and do a soft-offload, starting with Rogers, a prolific sidearmer — he leads MLB with 49 appearances — who has walked only four hitters and is a free agent this winter. Others who could move include infielder Wilmer Flores, outfielder Mike Yastrzemski and right-hander Justin Verlander, who, at 42, is allowing more than a baserunner and a half per inning.
Biggest need: High-end SP
Best asset: Jarren Duran, OF
Best fit: Joe Ryan, SP
The latest: At this moment, the Red Sox are not inclined to engage in any large-scale deadline moves. Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow has said the team wants to add after trading Devers, and while it would surprise no one if they did, Boston is an organization that deeply values operating efficiently, and a market like this is the epitome of inefficient. Holding now would speak to the Red Sox’s comfort with their current roster and the exceptional price to bolster it.
Boston’s everyday lineup is strong enough all the way around the diamond to chase upgrades. The Red Sox have a glut of outfielders — the reason Duran is even being talked about — but manager Alex Cora has done yeoman’s work to keep them all happy and in the lineup regularly. Their starting pitching behind Garrett Crochet has stabilized enough to keep them in contention for the postseason without sacrificing the prospect capital it would take to land Ryan.
At the same time, the Red Sox are weak enough in spots — non-Ceddanne Rafaela-and-Carlos Narvaez defense, baserunning — to acknowledge that this might not be the year to chase a player on an expiring contract such as Seth Lugo.
When the Red Sox are playing well, they look like world beaters, and when they’re not, they just look beat. Maybe they pony up to get Ryan, seeing it the same way they did in the four-prospect haul it took to land Crochet, but for now, at least, they simply haven’t been willing to go there.
Biggest need: Pitching
Best asset: Reid Detmers, SP/RP
Best fit: Sandy Alcantara, SP
The latest: The Angels are acting as if they’re going to add, which has the feel of 2023, when in an effort to show Shohei Ohtani they were serious about winning they acquired Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez, only to let them go via waivers a month later.
It’s easy to like Los Angeles’ lineup. Shortstop Zach Neto is a power-and-speed leading man, and with Taylor Ward, Jo Adell, Logan O’Hoppe and a healthy Mike Trout, they mash home runs — the fourth most in MLB. But the pitching. Man, the pitching. It’s bad. And the defense. Yikes. It’s bad, too.
As much as Alcantara is the sort who would appeal to a lover of brand names like Angels owner Arte Moreno, adding him alone wouldn’t solve Los Angeles’ problems. To put together a representative staff that would allow them to leap four teams ahead of them for the third wild-card slot, the Angels would need, at minimum, three quality arms — and probably more like four or five. Perhaps the arrival of the hard-throwing George Klassen and the return of right-hander Caden Dana help, but even then, the Angels’ strength in putting runs on the board is mitigated by their ability to give up even more.
This is a better team than many expected. It’s just one that should train its attention more on 2026 and beyond than 2025.
Biggest need: C, RP
Best asset: Taj Bradley, SP
The latest: The Rays jumped the market in acquiring right-handed reliever Bryan Baker from Baltimore, and as much as they’ve earned the reputation as some of the foremost wheelers and dealers in baseball, this could wind up a relatively quiet deadline for them.
At times, Tampa Bay looks like a legitimate threat. Junior Caminero is a star-in-the-making, Jonathan Aranda‘s bat is real, Yandy Diaz finally has tapped into his power, Chandler Simpson is a menace and Brandon Lowe — before being put on the injured list Tuesday — was his typical thumping self. They also have rotation depth, enough that Zack Littell could move and Bradley, despite four more years of control after this season, is available.
Absent a big winning streak before the deadline, though, the Rays might just stick with what they have, hopeful that the returns of ace Shane McClahanan and underappreciated reliever Manuel Rodriguez serve as their big deadline additions.
Biggest need: SP
Best asset: Felix Bautista, RP
The latest: No team will look as different as the Orioles after the deadline. The list of players available is profound.
On the offensive side: Ryan O’Hearn, Cedric Mullins, outfielder Ramon Laureano, infielders Ryan Mountcastle (who’s starting a rehab assignment this week), Jorge Mateo (same) and Ramon Urias. Among the pitchers: Starters Charlie Morton, Zach Eflin and Tomoyuki Sugano, and relievers Gregory Soto, Seranthony Dominguez, Andrew Kittredge and Keegan Akin. That’s to say nothing of Bautista, who will cost a king’s ransom, and Trevor Rogers, who has been tremendous in his seven starts this season.
The Orioles have so many free agents-to-be and players entering their final year of arbitration that the prospect of dealing from their glut of young position players is likelier a priority for the winter than now. Which is what places them in this category rather than all-out.
Regardless of the designation, the 2025 Orioles have been a profound disappointment, though by no means a lost cause. A good deadline can go a long way, and while they’ll need to rebuild their bullpen from scratch, Texas showed that it’s possible to do it on the cheap, leaving room for new owner David Rubenstein to start spending money on pitching to complement whatever they can muster by the deadline.
Teams looking to capitalize
Biggest need: RP, SP
Best fit: David Bednar, RP
The latest: The Tigers have been among the two or three best teams in MLB all season, and if they had an area of distinct weakness, they could dip into an excellent farm system to address it. They don’t, though, which leaves them in a position to pick and choose their upgrades.
While a depth starter is on the list, a swing-and-miss relief pitcher is at the top, and Bednar offers three well-above-average pitches in his fastball, curveball and splitter. Any of the Cleveland/Minnesota arms would make Detroit better, but intradivision trades often come with an upcharge owed to the concern of losing games at the hands of someone who once wore your uniform.
The Tigers pulled off the rare trick of trading players at the deadline and still making the playoffs last season. This season is the first in what the Tigers hope will be an extended run of excellence, and with manager A.J. Hinch in a groove writing the lineup every day, Tarik Skubal making his case for the best pitcher in baseball and the whole of the Tigers better than the sum of their parts, Detroit doesn’t need to do much to be favored for its first pennant since 2012.
Biggest need: OF, SS
Best fit: Maikel Garcia, IF
The latest: To be clear: Kansas City has shown no inclination to move Garcia, who can play all around the diamond but is a very good shortstop, and the Brewers aren’t actively seeking a replacement for Joey Ortiz at short. This is more a reflection of how deep the Brewers are — and why they own the best record in baseball: There are no clear holes on this roster. The Brewers are inveterate practitioners of common-sense systems that produce good players. They do everything very well: draft, sign international players, develop, trade and sign free agents on a limited budget.
Unlike past years, they are not going to try to thread the add-subtract needle. Their starting pitching depth is envious and their bullpen much, much better than it gets credit for. Perhaps they could snag a corner outfielder or a super-utility man (if Texas were to move Josh Smith, he’d fit perfectly). As much as Josh Naylor or Ryan O’Hearn would fit the bill at first base and balance their lineup, the Brewers tend not to make lavish moves at the deadline, which is why adding Eugenio Suárez to play third — over Caleb Durbin, who’s hitting .318/.398/.465 since May 21 — is not in the cards.
Like the Tigers, Milwaukee is understandably at ease with what it has and sees its excellent farm system as the fuel to power this unlikely rocket ship. The Brewers are content to keep doing what they almost always do: win.
Biggest need: RP, OF
Best fit: Cade Smith, RP
The latest: Despite their struggles of late, the Dodgers are understandably impervious to concerns. They are too talented to collapse before the postseason. They’re most focused on what they look like when they get there, which is the purpose of any movement at this deadline: to reinforce themselves with high-level talent.
That brings us to Smith. The 26-year-old right-hander’s 3.21 ERA is misleading; he has struck out 63 in 42 innings and given up only two home runs. He is a throwback, hurling almost 70% fastballs and not just getting away with it but thriving because of it. And with the Dodgers’ bullpen full of unknowns, he is the sort manager Dave Roberts can deploy at any point in the game with great efficacy. Added bonus: He comes with an additional four years of club control.
And yet as a wise man once said, relievers are the ultimate midlife crisis car. They sound fun. They look great. And then they break down and you wonder why you didn’t just go with something cheaper and more reliable. But these are the Dodgers. If any team can afford to part with high-end prospects in search of excellence, it’s them. And whether it’s Smith or Jax or Clase or Duran or Bautista or Bednar or Ryan Helsley or someone else, the Dodgers will go into August with a better bullpen than they had in July.
Biggest need: Left-handed bat
Best fit: Cedric Mullins, OF
The latest: The Astros are running out lineups with Victor Caratini hitting third. It’s one thing to have moved on from Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman over the winter, and it’s another to have essentially not had Yordan Alvarez for the entire season, but the Astros continuing to win without Jeremy Pena, Isaac Paredes and Jake Meyers, too, is just ridiculous.
This looked to be the year Houston would exit orbit and return to normalcy, and the Astros — the winningest team in the AL over the past decade — never stop, injuries and defections and trades be damned.
For years, the Astros struggled to find an effective left-hander, and now, with Bennett Sousa, Bryan King and Steven Okert, they have three to complement lefty closer Josh Hader and lockdown setup man Bryan Abreu. Their rotation has been in a shambles all year, but their system has produced effective fill-ins and now Cristian Javier and Spencer Arrighetti are on rehab assignments. Once the left side of the infield gets healthy, the Astros won’t need much, but Mullins — who, since a scorching April, has hit .184/.230/.342 — is more of a complementary upgrade than a game changer. Then again, like so many others, he could get to Houston and suddenly be the best version of himself.
Biggest need: RP, CF, 3B, SP
Best fit: Griffin Jax, RP
The latest: Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns is an expert at trying to solve multiple problems at once, and getting a lockdown reliever — whether it’s Jax or any of the other monster arms who come with multiple years of club control — serves two purposes.
The first is easy: The Mets need relief help. Getting Brooks Raley back helps, but the majority of Mets relievers struggle with control. Jax is all about command and his ability to spot his wicked off-speed pitches, especially, is as good as any reliever in the game. The second is more nuanced: Edwin Díaz can opt out of his contract following the season, and he’s almost certain to do so with the sort of numbers he’s putting up. Having a ready-made replacement in case Díaz leaves — and one whose salary is going to be exceptionally low because he has not racked up saves, the way relievers get paid in arbitration — is simply good management.
Of course, all of this could be moot because Stearns also believes that relievers can be developed or found on the cheap, and it would not be his style to give up multiple top prospects to get one. So perhaps New York will opt for a Brock Stewart type or target one of the Orioles’ lesser arms.
Either way, the Mets are bound to reshape their bullpen, and if they can upgrade at third with Eugenio Suárez or center with Luis Robert Jr., even better. Among their young infielders and a farm system that has taken steps forward this year, they’ve got the juice to do more or less anything they please.
Biggest need: DH, C, 1B
Best fit: Marcell Ozuna, DH
The latest: Rangers GM Chris Young is perpetually in win-now mode and needs to be convinced to offload players. The team’s recent hot streak is the sort of thing that could embolden him to go after a bat like Ozuna, who, with Drake Baldwin‘s emergence in Atlanta, no longer has a regular spot in the lineup and, with free agency beckoning, probably will waive his no-trade clause in search of everyday at-bats, whether it’s with Texas or elsewhere. At the same time, the Rangers could trade García, their 2023 postseason hero, though he has looked more like his slugging self recently.
The Rangers have the bones of a scary postseason team, headlined by Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi, and backed by a bullpen of relative anonymity — Hoby Milner, Robert Garcia, Shawn Armstrong, Jacob Latz, Caleb Boushley and the most famous of all, Chris Martin — that has the best ERA in baseball over the past two months. The offense has been the problem, and if that starts to turn around, the Rangers can be a very dangerous bunch.
Biggest need: OF, RP
Best fit: Jarren Duran, OF
The latest: For the variety of options the Reds have offensively, they find themselves one impact bat light, which is why turning their surplus of starting pitching into a high-end outfielder is a reasonable goal. Is it realistic, though? Not particularly.
They’re not inclined to trade Hunter Greene under a team-friendly contract unless it’s for a star, and as good as Duran has been and as talented as Steven Kwan is, neither passes muster at that threshold. Andrew Abbott, on the other hand, is putting up the sorts of numbers that Boston is seeking from a starter, but with a fastball at 92 mph, he doesn’t scream front-of-the-rotation guy. The Reds don’t want to move Chase Burns, and that’s understandable with his ceiling.
So as much as a bold move would behoove the Reds, they’re likelier to go the half-measure route, operating on the periphery of the bat and relief markets through incremental upgrades and hoping that Terry Francona can sprinkle his pixie dust downstate the same way he did in Cleveland for more than a decade.
Biggest need: SP
Best asset: Ryan Helsley, RP
The latest: The Cardinals have been good enough to hang around in the NL Central, but their lack of starting pitching finally has caught up to them. As much as St. Louis would like to move Nolan Arenado and Erick Fedde, suitors aren’t lining up yet. Sonny Gray and Miles Mikolas have no-trade clauses and don’t intend to go anywhere. Which leaves a trio of relievers who should bring solid returns: right-handers Helsley and Phil Maton, plus left-hander Steven Matz.
Were this not John Mozeliak’s swan song as president of baseball operations, perhaps he would be open to sending out one of the Cardinals’ young position players, but with Chaim Bloom set to take over after the season, that’s likelier to be the sort of thing on his to-do list. The Cardinals, as constituted, are a perfectly OK team. They just lack the arms to be good enough in an NL loaded with playoff-caliber teams, and despite a record over .500, they’re in acquisition mode for the future, not the present.
Biggest need: Offense. For everyone’s sake, please, just a little offense.
Best asset: Kris Bubic, SP
The latest: If the Royals were confident in ace Cole Ragans‘ health going forward, it would be much easier to consider trading Bubic, an All-Star who hits free agency after the 2026 season. As it stands, the Royals are prioritizing a new home for Seth Lugo, though if they keep winning this week and find themselves back in the AL playoff mix, they could hold and slap a qualifying offer on him in the winter.
But Kansas City’s front office is realistic, and for every game that the offense looks good, there are three or four in which it doesn’t. Bobby Witt Jr. is one of the game’s best players. Maikel Garcia’s breakout season is real. Vinnie Pasquantino can hit. Jac Caglianone will. Salvador Perez still has it at 35.
Beyond that, the Royals need bats their farm system simply doesn’t have. So Lugo and his 2.94 ERA should wind up in a contender’s rotation, and the Royals could toy with moving a relief arm or two to help reboot the worst offense in the AL before they make another run at the postseason next year.
Athletics: Subtracting, but not completely
Biggest need: SP
Best asset: Mason Miller, RP
The latest: When the A’s look back on 2025, it will be seen as the year hope returned. Nick Kurtz has been one of the 10 best hitters in all of baseball since his debut. Jacob Wilson will win a batting title someday. Denzel Clarke might win a Gold Glove in center field this year. Brent Rooker is a middle-of-the-order force and locked up long term. Lawrence Butler is excellent and also going to be around for more than half a decade. Shea Langeliers, Tyler Soderstrom — when it comes to the A’s everyday players, it goes on and on.
Then there’s the matter of their pitching. It’s rough. And while they could theoretically move Miller, their flamethrowing closer, the price is exorbitant and too rich for teams in need of relief arms. Instead, the A’s will offer their veteran starters — Luis Severino, Jeffrey Springs, JP Sears — and hope to draw interest in relievers they can turn into young arms.
In Gage Jump, Luis Morales and recent first-round pick Jamie Arnold, they have young talent with potential, but if owner John Fisher wants to head to Las Vegas with a team worth watching, he needs to spend money — real money — on starting pitching and round out a team whose offense will be more than worth the price of admission.
Atlanta Braves: Subtracting, but not completely
Biggest need: SS, SP
Best asset: Marcell Ozuna, DH
The latest: This could be a boring deadline for the Braves, which is appropriate considering their season has been a snooze. Atlanta looked as if it were on the cusp of a dynasty after winning the World Series in 2021, 101 games in 2022 and 104 games in 2023. Then came the disappointment of 2024, which felt more aberrant than predictive.
Turns out this Braves team has even more flaws than its predecessor, some of which are due to injuries but more than that to substandard play. Hope does remain thanks to Ronald Acuna Jr.’s resurgence following a second ACL tear, Matt Olson‘s continued excellence and the emergence of Drake Baldwin, who, for all the warranted hullabaloo about Jacob Misiorowski, has been the best rookie in the NL. In a different world, the Braves might be inclined to move Ozzie Albies or Michael Harris II, both of whom have disappeared this season, but Atlanta doesn’t want to get rid of talented players at their nadir.
Instead, the Braves are left with trying to trade two former All-Stars in Ozuna and closer Raisel Iglesias, plus Pierce Johnson, who will be a good seventh-inning arm for a contender. Then they’ll start over with Acuña, Olson, Baldwin, Harris, Albies, Austin Riley, Sean Murphy, Spencer Strider, Chris Sale and Spencer Schwellenbach — an excellent 10-man foundation — and rebuild around it on the fly, hopeful that the past two years were the anomalies and not the portent of something worse.
Miami Marlins: Subtracting, but not completely
Biggest need: Talent
Best asset: Sandy Alcantara, SP
The latest: Squint and you can see the makings of an interesting team in Miami. Getting outfielder Kyle Stowers for Tyler Rogers was the coup of last year’s deadline. Eury Perez is back, and he’s going to be one of the best pitchers in baseball by 2027. More or less everyone else on the Marlins’ roster is up for grabs, though, and it’s a menagerie of players with skills — and deficiencies.
Alcantara has been awful this season … but teams can’t quit him, and all it takes is one to treat him like even a facsimile of his Cy Young-winning self for him to move before July 31. Edward Cabrera looks as if he’s finally figuring it out … but teams worry about an injury history and struggles with control that, until this season, have hampered him. Xavier Edwards and Otto Lopez are in their mid-20s and have been an under-the-radar excellent middle infield this season … but teams aren’t terribly inclined to treat them as deadline prizes just because of the paucity of available second basemen and shortstops. The Marlins could do well trading relievers with Anthony Bender (1.96 ERA) and Ronny Henriquez (65 strikeouts in 47 innings) … but teams see them as much as backup options to the big dogs out there.
President of baseball operations Peter Bendix rescued a destitute Marlins farm system at the deadline last year and infused it with much-needed depth. He has got a chance to do even more this week, but only if teams are willing to meet trade demands that are high because the market says they should be.
The 2025 MLB trade deadline is just around the corner, with contending teams deciding what they need to add before 6 p.m. ET on Thursday, July 31.
Could Jarren Duran be on the move from the Boston Red Sox? Will the Arizona Diamondbacks deal Eugenio Suarez and Zac Gallen to contenders? And who among the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, New York Mets, New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia Phillies will go all-in to boost their 2025 World Series hopes?
Whether your favorite club is looking to add or deal away — or stands somewhere in between — here’s the freshest intel we’re hearing, reaction to completed deals and what to know for every team as trade season unfolds.
More: Top 50 trade candidates | Passan’s deadline preview
Jump to: Trending names | Latest intel
MLB trade deadline trending names
1. Eugenio Suarez: The Arizona Diamondbacks star is No. 1 in our updated MLB trade deadline candidate rankings and could be the most impactful player to move this month. On pace to hit more than 50 home runs, the 2025 All-Star is on the wish list of every contender in need of third-base help.
2. Sandy Alcantara: The 2022 Cy Young winner is an intriguing option in a deadline with a dearth of impact starting pitching available. His ERA is over 7.00 for the Miami Marlins this season, but some contenders believe he could regain form in a new home.
3. Jhoan Duran: This deadline is suddenly teeming with high-end relievers who will at the very least be in the rumor mill during the coming days. If the Minnesota Twins opt to move their closer — and his devastating splinker — Duran might be the best of the bunch.
MLB trade deadline buzz
July 23 updates
How Cubs are approaching deadline: The Cubs are looking for a starting pitcher first and foremost, but won’t part with any top prospects for rentals. They would be willing to trade a young hitter for a cost-controlled pitcher or one already under contract past this season. They are desperate to add an arm who can help while Jameson Taillon recovers from a calf injury. Bullpen games in Taillon’s place haven’t gone well. — Jesse Rogers
Will Twins trade top pitchers? Several high-profile teams are in need of bullpen help ahead of the trade deadline — including the Mets, Yankees, Phillies and Dodgers — and the Twins have two of the best available in Griffin Jax and Jhoan Duran. The sense is that at least one of them will be traded, but those who are looking for relief help expect the asking price to be very high, partly because both of them are controllable through 2027 and partly because the Twins’ uncertain ownership situation has clouded the approach with those who are not pending free agents.
The Twins are widely expected to trade outfielder Harrison Bader, super utility player Willi Castro, starter Chris Paddack and lefty reliever Danny Coulombe. But Jax, Duran and young starter Joe Ryan are the ones who would bring back the biggest return. The Twins are said to be listening on everyone. But the team being up for sale since October, and in limbo ever since prospective buyer Justin Ishbia increased his ownership stake in the White Sox in early June, has complicated matters with longer-term players. — Alden Gonzalez
July 22 updates
An Orioles starting pitcher to watch: It seems very likely that Charlie Morton (3.47 ERA last 12 appearances) will be traded, within a relatively thin starting pitching market with a lot of teams looking for rotation help — the Padres, Yankees, maybe the Mets or Astros; a number of teams have expressed interest. In the past, Morton has had a preference to pitch for a team closer to the East Coast and his Florida home, but he doesn’t control that. O’s GM Mike Elias does. — Buster Olney
Will Cleveland deal All-Star outfielder? The player asked about the most on the Guardians’ roster is Steven Kwan, but given that he is two and a half years away from free agency, it’s unlikely he’ll be traded, according to sources. Kwan’s slash line this year: .288/.352/.398. He also has 11 stolen bases and has made consecutive All-Star appearances. — Olney
Braves not looking to move Murphy: Sean Murphy‘s name has been tossed around in trade speculation, but according to sources, he will not be available. Atlanta’s catcher is playing well this year and will be playing under a high-value contract for the next three seasons — $15 million per year from 2026 to 2028, plus a team option in ’29. And the Braves are set up well with the right-handed-hitting Murphy and left-handed-hitting Drake Baldwin perhaps sharing the catching and DH spots into the future. — Olney
Why the 2022 Cy Young winner isn’t the most in-demand Marlins starter: Edward Cabrera has become more coveted than Sandy Alcantara, who teams believe might take an offseason to fix. Alcantara’s strikeout-to-walk ratio is scary low — just 1.9 — and his ERA is 7.14. Cabrera, on the other hand, is striking out more than a batter per inning and his ERA sits at 3.61. The 27-year-old right-hander will come at a heavy cost for opposing teams. — Jesse Rogers
How Kansas City is approaching the trade deadline: The Royals have signaled a willingness to trade, but with an eye toward competing again next year — meaning they aren’t willing to part with the core of their pitching staff. Other teams say Kansas City is (unsurprisingly) looking to upgrade its future offense in whatever it does.
Right-handed starter Seth Lugo will be the most-watched Royal before the deadline, since he holds a $15 million player option for 2026 “that you’d assume he’s going to turn down,” said one rival staffer. That’ll make it more difficult for other teams to place a trade value on him: The Royals could want to market him as more than a mere rental, while other teams figure he’ll go into free agency in the fall when he turns down his option. — Olney
What the Dodgers need at the deadline: The Dodgers’ offense has been a source of consternation lately, with Max Muncy out, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman slumping, and key hitters tasked with lengthening out the lineup — Teoscar Hernandez, Tommy Edman and Michael Conforto — also struggling.
But the Dodgers’ focus ahead of the deadline is still clearly the bullpen, specifically a high-leverage, right-handed reliever. Dodgers relievers lead the major leagues in innings pitched by a wide margin. Blake Treinen will be back soon, and Michael Kopech and Brusdar Graterol are expected to join him later in the season. But the Dodgers need at least one other trusted arm late in games.
It’s a stunning development, considering they returned the core of a bullpen that played a big role in last year’s championship run, then added Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates in free agency. But Scott and Yates have had their struggles, and there are enough injury concerns with several others that it’s a need. — Alden Gonzalez
Which D-backs starter is most coveted? The Diamondbacks are getting as many calls — if not more — about Zac Gallen as they are for Merrill Kelly, even though the latter starting pitcher is having the better season. Teams interested in adding to their rotations still have more faith in the 29-year-old Gallen than the 36-year-old Kelly. — Rogers
Who are the White Sox looking to deal? Chicago’s Adrian Houser seems likely to move, as a second-tier starter who has performed well this season. The 32-year-old right-hander was released by the Rangers in May but has been very effective since joining the White Sox rotation, giving up only two homers in 57⅔ innings and generating an ERA+ of 226. Nobody is taking those numbers at face value, but evaluators do view him as a market option. The White Sox also have some relievers worth considering.
But it seems unlikely that Luis Robert Jr. — once projected as a centerpiece of this deadline — will be dealt, unless a team makes a big bet on a player who has either underperformed or been hurt this year. The White Sox could continue to wait on Robert’s talent to manifest and his trade value to be restored by picking up his $20 million option for next year, which is hardly out of the question for a team with little future payroll obligation. — Olney
Why Rockies infielder could be popular deadline option: Colorado’s Ryan McMahon is the consolation prize for teams that miss out on Eugenio Suarez — if he’s traded at all. The Cubs could have interest and would pair him with Matt Shaw as a lefty/righty combo at third base. — Rogers
Does San Diego have enough to offer to make a big deal? The Padres have multiple needs ahead of the trade deadline — a left fielder, a catcher, a back-end starter. How adequately they can address them remains to be seen. The upper levels of their farm system have thinned out in recent years, and their budget might be tight.
The Padres dipped under MLB’s luxury-tax threshold last year, resetting the penalties. But FanGraphs projects their competitive balance tax payroll to finish at $263 million this year, easily clearing the 2025 threshold and just barely putting them into the second tier, triggering a 12% surcharge.
Padres general manager A.J. Preller might have to get creative in order to address his needs. One way he can do that is by buying and selling simultaneously. The Padres have several high-profile players who can hit the market this offseason — Dylan Cease, Michael King, Robert Suarez, Luis Arraez — and a few others who can hit the open market after 2026. Don’t be surprised to see Preller leverage at least one of those players, and their salaries, to help fill multiple needs. — Gonzalez
Which Orioles could be on the move? Not surprisingly, Baltimore is perceived as a dealer and is expected by other teams to move center fielder Cedric Mullins, first baseman/designated hitter Ryan O’Hearn and some relievers. — Olney
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