The San Diego Padres and Houston Astros made surprising moves that rocked the deadline. The Seattle Mariners went big in their quest for the first World Series trip in franchise history. And the Minnesota Twins, well, left us scrambling to see who is still left on their roster.
Which clubs made the right calls? What should we believe (or not believe) about the rest of the baseball season? Now that the dust has settled from the 2025 trade deadline, we asked our ESPN MLB experts to debate what’s real — and what’s not — moving forward.
Real or not: The two teams to beat in the American League reside in the AL West after the Astros and Mariners made big moves
Bradford Doolittle: Not real. There is no team to beat in the American League. The Royals, Rangers and even the Rays — and that’s just the R’s — can all win that league. That’s not because they’re all sleeping giants. There’s just not much separation in that circuit.
I actually don’t believe the Astros are any better, and I already thought they were hanging on to their usual front-runner status with their proverbial fingernails. I like what the Mariners did, and that lineup is a lot more dangerous with Arizona’s former heart of the order. And I love Matt Brash, just to throw out some random hyperbole. I could slot the Mariners into the top spot from here, but I still don’t see any real separation.
David Schoenfield: Not real. I still think you can take the top six or seven teams in the AL and rank them in any order and not have much of an argument.
Yes, the Astros added offense in Carlos Correa and Jesus Sanchez, but Correa isn’t close to the player he was at his peak, and the Astros didn’t address their rotation. The Mariners certainly improved with Eugenio Suarez and Josh Naylor, but their rotation hasn’t been nearly as good as it was last season, and the only reliever they added was Caleb Ferguson — hardly an impact move. The AL remains wide, wide open. Which will make these final two months super exciting.
Real or not: The two teams to beat in the National League are in the NL East after the Phillies and Mets loaded up at the deadline
Jorge Castillo: Not real. Both clubs went for it at the deadline and emerged bigger threats for October, but the National League remains a jumbled mess of contenders. In the West, A.J. Preller went full A.J. Preller again, aggressively maneuvering to improve the Padres’ chances, while the Dodgers are still the Dodgers, and their starting rotation is getting healthy. In the Central, the Brewers are a finely tuned machine, and the Cubs can bang with the best of them. Not a lot separates those six teams. It should make for a fascinating October.
Schoenfield: Not real. I love what both teams did at the deadline, addressing holes in their bullpens. But, um, the Dodgers are finally beginning to get healthy (Blake Snell will start Saturday, for starters) and the Brewers might still be the best team in the league, even if they added only reliever Shelby Miller, and the Cubs still have maybe the best offense in the majors.
I especially loved what the Padres did, getting Mason Miller, Ryan O’Hearn, Ramon Laureano and Freddy Fermin, plugging all their lineup holes while adding another dominant reliever to what was already a dominant bullpen. Much like in the AL, I think you could now rank these teams in almost any order. October is going to be a wild ride.
Real or not: The Padres are now a legitimate threat to dethrone the Dodgers in the NL West after their latest deadline spree
Alden Gonzalez: Real. Very much so. The Padres sat just three games back heading into the deadline on the heels of a five-game winning streak. Then they lengthened a very top-heavy lineup, acquired a pretty decent upgrade at catcher and, most notably, gave themselves the deepest, fiercest bullpen in the sport.
The Dodgers are quite comfortable with who they are at the moment — in first place, with several key players coming back, while feeling pretty confident that their best baseball might still be in front of them. But there’s no denying that the Padres are a legitimate threat. Again.
Jesse Rogers: Real. They got better where they needed to, especially at the catching position and at the bottom of their order. And their bullpen is clearly better than L.A.’s right now. The Padres have been hanging around near the top of the NL all season but have been viewed as only a good team, not a great one. They have a chance to be better now that they’ve eliminated the holes in their lineup. And whatever deficit they have in their rotation, that bullpen will make up for it.
Real or not: The Yankees helped their chances for a World Series return at the deadline — and the Dodgers did not
Castillo: Real. The Yankees approached the deadline seeking to improve three areas: the starting rotation, bullpen and infield. In the end, they checked off two of the three boxes well enough to consider them real AL pennant contenders without surrendering any of their top nine prospects on Kiley McDaniel’s organizational rankings.
Though the Yankees chose not to pay the trade price for an impact starter, they overhauled their bullpen with high-octane closers (David Bednar and Camilo Doval) and a third right-hander (Jake Bird) who misses bats at an above-average rate. On the position-player side, New York improved its clunky roster construction with four additions who should supply manager Aaron Boone with greater lineup flexibility and better choices to navigate games. Aaron Judge‘s elbow injury — and whether he’ll return to play the outfield this season — still looms large, but the Yankees are a better team than they were a week ago when general manager Brian Cashman started dealing.
Gonzalez: Not real. The Yankees certainly helped their chances by giving themselves a deeper bullpen and more options against opposing left-handed pitchers. But the Dodgers helped their chances, too. Brock Stewart is a sneaky-dominant reliever, especially against right-handed hitters. Alex Call, while not sexy, is a good fit as a right-handed hitter who works good at-bats and provides solid defense. The problem is the Dodgers wanted to do even better. They were in on Steven Kwan. They were in on Griffin Jax. But in the end, they were not willing to meet trade demands that were deemed by many as exorbitant.
Real or not: The Cubs and Tigers are still teams to fear in October despite their less aggressive deadline approaches
Rogers: Not real.Both teams did work to help them get to the playoffs, but not necessarily win in them. That’s where trading for those top closers or setup men would have come into play. The regular season is about starting pitching. October is about bullpens.
Detroit recognized the need but chose quantity over quality (though Kyle Finnegan should help). Neither team did enough compared with its rivals. That doesn’t mean these teams won’t win in October. But their deadlines were just so-so.
Doolittle: Real, because being a team to fear doesn’t equate with being the clear-cut favorite. I am nevertheless underwhelmed. Both teams have already positioned themselves for a strong seed, though the Cubs have to fend off the Brewers. Neither team made the kind of splash an all-in team would make.
Detroit certainly helped its rotation and won’t end up relying on as many bullpen games as it did last season. (Then again, that approach worked.) I would have liked to see the Tigers do a lot more for the bullpen, and I’m not big on Rafael Montero or Finnegan.
The Cubs’ deadline was a yawner. Willi Castro is a nice utility player, but I’d rather ride with Matt Shaw and his potential to break out at any time at third base. And the outlook for the pitching staff is unchanged from before the deadline, and yes, I realize the Cubs added some people to the roster. But they were good before the deadline and remain so now.
Real or not: The Twins made their future brighter with their trade deadline teardown
Doolittle: Not real. My mother, tragically an inveterate Royals fan, texted me in the midst of the madness asking if the Twins were going to trade everyone on their team. They almost did! But I don’t know — it looks to me like a case of moving things around and not necessarily ending up in a better place. The long-term payroll outlook is a little better, but this team has become a bit dull, and the bullpen — a strength — is a husk of what it was. I’d like the Taj Bradley pickup more, but a deal like this with the Rays is perilous. Thumbs-down for me.
Gonzalez: Not real, because so many of their moves were clearly about cutting costs for a franchise in transition. To me, the Twins trading away 10 major league players was an indication that this roster was actually quite good — and perhaps worthy of a chance to contend again in the perpetually open AL Central as early as next year.
There were some nice gets here (Bradley for Griffin Jax, James Outman for Brock Stewart, Eduardo Tait and Mick Abel for Jhoan Duran). But in the end, the Twins parted with key controllable players, none more notable than Carlos Correa, who went to the Astros in what amounted to a salary dump. This was a bad day for Twins fans. Painting it any other way would be a disservice.
NEWARK, Del. — Russ Crook has a shirt he likes to wear to Delaware football road games. He’s a lifelong fan and the current president of the Blue Hen Touchdown Club, but he knows the jokes, so he picked up the shirt a few years back when he saw it at the historic National 5 & 10 store on Main Street. It’s gray with a map of the state across the chest and the ubiquitous punchline delivered succinctly: “Dela-where?”
Yes, the state is small, though Rhode Island gets the acclaim that comes with being the country’s smallest. In popular culture, Delaware often translates as something of a non-place — cue the “Wayne’s World” GIF — and it’s widely appreciated by outsiders as little more than a 28-mile stretch of I-95 between Maryland and Pennsylvania that hardly warrants mentioning.
It’s a harmless enough stereotype, but Cook is hopeful this football season can start to change some perceptions. After all, in 2025, Delaware — the football program — hits the big time. Or, Conference USA, at least.
“Delaware’s a small state, but the university has 24,000 students,” Crook said. “Many big-time schools are smaller than we are. There’s no reason we can’t do this.”
When the Blue Hens kick off against Delaware State on Aug. 28, they will be, for the first time, an FBS football team, joining Missouri State as first-year members of Conference USA — the 135th and 136th FBS programs.
Longtime Hens fans might not have believed the move was possible even a few years ago, as much for the school’s ethos as the state’s stature. The university’s leadership had spent decades holding firm in the belief that the Hens were best positioned as a big fish in the relatively small ponds of Division II and, later, FCS.
And yet, just as the rest of the college sports world is reeling from an onslaught of change — revenue sharing, the transfer portal, NIL and conference realignment — Delaware decided it was time to join the party.
“Us and Delaware are probably making this move at one of the more difficult times to make the move in history,” said Missouri State AD Patrick Ransdell.
All of which begs the question: Why now?
Many of Delaware’s historic rivals — UMass, App State, Georgia Southern, Old Dominion, James Madison — had already made the leap to FBS, and the Hens’ previous conference, the Colonial, was reeling. Economic conditions at the FCS level made life challenging for administration. The NCAA was making moves to curb future transitions from FCS to FBS, and the school felt its window to make a move was closing.
“We had no choice,” Crook said.
And so, ready or not, the Hens are about to embark on a new era — a chance to prove themselves at a higher level and, perhaps, provide Delaware with a reputation that’s more than a punchline.
“We talk about doing things for the 302 all the time,” interim athletic director Jordan Skolnick said, referencing the area code that serves the entirety of the state. “We want everyone in the state of Delaware to feel the pride in us being successful, and we want people to realize how incredible this place is. It’s not just a place you drive through on 95.”
BACK WHEN MIKE Brey was coaching Delaware’s men’s basketball team to back-to-back tournament appearances in the 1990s, he would often swing by the football offices to talk shop with the Hens’ legendary football coach Tubby Raymond, who won 300 games utilizing a three-back offensive formation dubbed the wing-T. Brey recalls pestering him once about the new spread schemes being run at conference rival New Hampshire by a young coordinator named Chip Kelly. Raymond was a beloved figure at Delaware, and he had helped mentor Brey as a head coach, but he was notoriously old-school.
Raymond huffed, dismissing the tempo offense as “grass basketball,” all style and finesse without the fundamental elements of the game he had coached for decades. The mindset was often pervasive at UD.
“It was in the bricks there,” said Brey, who went on to a 23-year stint coaching at Notre Dame. “Tubby had his kingdom, and nobody was telling him what to do. It was, ‘Leave us alone. We’re good. We’ve got the wing-T.'”
Brey’s contract in those days technically referred to him as a member of the physical education department, and he and his staff had to teach classes during the offseason on basketball skills. Despite Raymond’s retirement in 2001 and an FCS national title in 2003, not much changed. By 2016, when Skolnick arrived to work in the athletic department, a number of coaches were still considered part-time employees, and several programs had to source their own equipment.
But change was brewing.
Old rivals such as App State, Georgia Southern and JMU had left FCS without missing a beat. Delaware had often punched above its weight and churned out genuine stars such as Rich Gannon and Joe Flacco, but the chasm between the haves and have-nots in football was growing. It was clear the Hens needed to invest, though the goal then was to take advantage of the power vacuum among east coast FCS schools.
“I think a lot of people wondered if we’d missed the window,” Skolnick said. “But at that time, the goal was to win as many FCS national championships as we can and resource our teams to be able to compete.”
Delaware football did compete, earning a spot in the FCS playoffs in four of the past six seasons, but another national title eluded the program, and by 2022, with rival James Madison moving up to the Sun Belt, then-AD Chrissi Rawak began to test the waters of a jump to FBS.
The school partnered with consultants who studied the economics of a move, both for the athletic department, which stood to see a $3 to $4 million increase in annual revenue, and for the state, which could enjoy a 50% uptick in economic impact from football alone. Meanwhile, Delaware looked at each FCS school that had made the leap up to FBS in the past 10 years to see how the Hens might stack up. What did Skolnick say the school found? Programs that had already been investing, had a solid recruiting footprint and were committed to football had success.
“We started to check a lot of boxes,” Skolnick said.
There were concerns, of course. The landscape of college football was roiling, and the expense of running a successful program seemed to grow by the day. But the opportunity to generate more revenue was obvious.
In the playoff era, 10 schools have made the leap from FCS to FBS, and nearly all have tasted some level of success. Overall, the group has posted a .548 winning percentage at the FBS level, and seven of the 10 have had seasons with double-digit wins. James Madison, who went from an FCS championship to the Sun Belt in 2022, is 28-9 at the FBS level and enters the 2025 season with legitimate playoff aspirations.
That success, however, is the result of a decades-in-the-making plan, said former JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne. The Dukes kicked the tires on an FBS move as early as 2012 but held steady as the program grew its infrastructure and, when the time came to make a move in 2022, it was ready.
“Before we made that decision, we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could support it financially,” Bourne said. “You had to have the fan base and donor base grow, have our facilities in a place so we could recruit. Looking at it from a broad perspective, it made our move not only prudent but ultimately helped us be successful.”
Off the field, the move has proved equally fortuitous. In JMU’s final year at the FCS level, the athletic department had 4,600 total donors, according to the school. For the 2025 fiscal year, JMU had nearly 11,000. The Dukes have sold out season tickets for three straight years, and high-profile games, including two bowl appearances, have been a boon for admissions.
So, when Conference USA approached Delaware with a formal invitation to join in November 2023, the choice seemed obvious.
“It was pretty clear that, as a flagship institution in our state, we wanted to be aligned with schools that look like us,” Skolnick said. “We want to align our athletic aspirations with our academic ones. Academically we’re one of the best public institutions in the country. Athletically, we’ve had all these incredible moments of success — but they’re moments. They’re spread out. So we felt like this was an opportunity to bring all of it together in a way that will show people — the best way to give people a lens into how special Delaware is, is for our athletic teams to be really successful and create more visibility.”
Brey remembers reading the news of Delaware’s decision to make the jump, and he couldn’t help but think back to his conversations with Raymond nearly 30 years ago. This had been a long time coming, he thought, and yet it still seemed hard to believe.
“I was shocked,” Brey said. “Little old Delaware is finally going for it.”
THERE ARE AMPLE lessons Delaware and Missouri State administrators have learned in the past few months as they’ve worked to ramp up staffing and budgets and add scholarship players for the transition. But if there’s one piece of advice Skolnick would share with other schools considering a similar process, it’s this: Find a time machine.
Delaware announced its intention to jump to FBS in November 2023. Just weeks earlier, the NCAA, in an effort to stem the tide of FCS departures, made changes to the requirements for moving up that, among other things, increased the cost of doing so from $5,000 to $5 million, and Delaware would be the first team to pay it.
That was not a budget line the Blue Hens had accounted for, meaning the school had to raise funds to cover that cost on a tight timeline.
“We had six months to do it,” Skolnick said. “Fortunately, we had people who were really excited about this transition.”
Ransdell took over as AD at Missouri State in August of 2024, just months after the Bears announced their plans to move to Conference USA, and he inherited a budget that wasn’t remotely ready for FBS competition.
“We had to change some things, do some more investing,” he said. “We weren’t really prepared to be an FBS program with the budget I inherited.”
In other words, the buzzword at both schools is the same as it is everywhere in 2025: revenue.
But if budgets have to be stretched with a move up to FBS, there are benefits, too.
Ransdell said Missouri State has sold more season tickets than any year since 2016, buoyed by a home game against SMU on Sept. 13.
Delaware had faced hurdles selling tickets in recent years, thanks in part to a slate of games against opponents its fans hardly recognized. That has changed already, with ample buzz around future home dates with old rivals UConn, Temple and Coastal Carolina. Crook said membership in the booster club is up 10-15% after years of steady declines. This season, Delaware travels to Colorado, and Crook said a caravan of Blue Hens fans will tag along.
On the recruiting trail, Delaware coach Ryan Carty said the conversations are completely different than they were a year ago, and the Hens have been able to add a host of new talent. The Hens’ roster includes 14 transfers from Power 4 programs this year, including Delaware native Noah Matthews, who arrived from Kentucky.
When Matthews was being recruited out of Woodbridge High School, about an hour’s drive down Route 1 through the middle of the state, he never heard from Delaware. It’s not that his home-state school didn’t want him. It’s that, no one on staff believed the Hens had a shot to land a guy with offers in the SEC.
Four years later though, Matthews is back home, and there’s nowhere he would rather be.
“I wanted to come back and show people, this is what Delaware does,” Matthews said. “We can play big-time football, too. After this year, they’ll know exactly who we are.”
For all the hurdles to get their respective programs in a place to compete at the FBS level, the costs are worth it, Ransdell said.
Need proof? Look no further than Sacramento State, a school that has all but begged for an invitation from the Pac-12 or Mountain West, even dangling a supposedly flush NIL fund with more than $35 million raised. And yet, no doors have been opened for the Hornets.
Still, the old guard around Delaware might not be so easily swayed.
Brey has kept a beach house in Delaware since his time coaching in the state, returning the past couple of years to serve as a guest bartender at the popular beach bar The Starboard to raise money for the Blue Hens’ NIL fund. This summer, he was strolling the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, chatting with the locals and getting a feel for how fans felt about this new era of Delaware football.
Most were excited, he said, but one — a longtime season-ticket holder — had a different perspective.
“On the first day of fall camp,” the fan told him, “we always knew we could play for a national championship in [FCS]. That’s not possible anymore.”
In other words, Delaware sold its championship aspirations for an admittedly more financially prudent place near the bottom of FBS. And who’s to say FBS football even remains viable as power players in the SEC and Big Ten move ever closer to creating “super leagues?”
“There very well could be a super league,” Bourne said. “There are signs that could happen. But I think when you look at it from the standpoint of your peer group, it’s to be competitive with them. There’s probably going to be a day where there’s a shake-up and you have some existing [power conference] schools that end up being more aligned with [Group of 6] than they are with the upper tier.”
Brey recalls his old friend Bob Hannah, the former Delaware baseball coach who had long been a progressive among the school’s traditionalists, wondering if the Hens might have been a fit in the ACC, had the school just pursued athletics growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The irony, Brey said, is these days, with even power conferences struggling to keep pace with the rapid change and financial strains of modern college sports, that doesn’t seem like such a long shot.
For Skolnick, that’s a worry for another day. Getting Delaware ready for its chance to shine on some of the sport’s biggest stages in 2025 is the priority. Delaware — the school and the state — hasn’t had many of these moments, and it’s an opportunity the Hens don’t want to miss.
“We’ve got to be ready for what we’re moving into, but everyone in college athletics is dealing with change,” Skolnick said. “That part is comforting. It’s more of an opportunity for us to do it our way. We’re too great of a historical and successful and traditional team to not be part of the conversation.”
Raleigh’s record-breaking home run also marked his ninth multi-home run game of the season, passing Mickey Mantle (eight for the 1961 New York Yankees) for most multi-home run games by a switch-hitter in a season in major league history. The overall record is 11 multi-home run games in a season.
The switch-hitting Raleigh, batting from the right side, homered off Athletics left-handed starter Jacob Lopez in the first inning to make it 2-0 and tie Perez. Raleigh got a fastball down the middle from Lopez and sent it an estimated 448 feet, according to Statcast. It was measured as the longest home run of Raleigh’s career as a right-handed hitter.
In the second inning, Raleigh drilled a changeup from Lopez 412 feet. The longballs were Nos. 39 and 40 on the season for Raleigh while catching this year. He has nine while serving as a designated hitter.
Raleigh went 3-for-5 with 4 RBIs in the win.
Perez hit 15 home runs as a DH in 2021, and 33 at catcher.
Only four other players in big league history have hit at least 40 homers in a season while primarily playing catcher: Johnny Bench (twice), Roy Campanella, Todd Hundley and Mike Piazza (twice). Bench, Campanella and Piazza are Hall of Famers.
Raleigh launched 27 homers in 2022, then 30 in 2023 and 34 last season.
A first-time All-Star at age 28, Raleigh burst onto the national scene when he won the All-Star Home Run Derby in July. He became the first switch-hitter and first catcher to win the title. He is the second Mariners player to take the crown, after three-time winner Ken Griffey Jr.
Raleigh’s homers gave him 106 RBIs on the season. He is the first catcher with consecutive seasons of 100 RBIs since Piazza (1996-2000), and the first American League backstop to accomplish the feat since Thurman Munson (1975-77).
NEW YORK — Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe was benched Sunday night for the finale of a critical four-game series against the rival Boston Red Sox.
Volpe is mired in a 1-for-28 slump and leads the majors with 17 errors. New York started recently acquired utlityman Jose Caballero at shortstop as the team tries to prevent a four-game sweep.
Volpe is hitting .208 with 18 homers and 65 RBIs in 128 games this season. He has started 125 at shortstop and was not in the starting lineup for only the fifth time all year.
“Just scuffling a little bit offensively here over the last 10 days, (and) having Caballero,” manager Aaron Boone explained. “Cabby gives you that real utility presence that can go play anywhere.”
Volpe did not start for the second time in eight days. After going 0-for-9 in the first two games at St. Louis, he sat out the series finale last Sunday.
He went hitless in 10 at-bats over the first three games against the Red Sox. During a 12-1 loss Saturday, he had a sacrifice bunt and committed a throwing error on a grounder by David Hamilton during Boston’s seventh-run ninth inning.
Volpe, 24, batted .249 through his first 69 games. But since June 14, he is hitting .153 — and some Yankees fans have been clamoring for the team to sit him down.
Volpe won a Gold Glove as a rookie in 2023 and hit .209 with 21 homers and 60 RBIs. He batted .243 with 12 homers last season when New York won its first American League pennant since 2009.
In the postseason, Volpe batted .286, including a grand slam in Game 4 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“I think he handles it quite well,” Boone said about Volpe’s struggles. “I don’t think he’s overly affected by those things. Just a young player that works his tail off and is super competitive and is trying to find that next level in his game offensively. I think he’s mentally very tough and totally wired to handle all of the things that go with being a big leaguer in this city and being a young big leaguer that’s got a lot of expectations on him.”
Acquired from Tampa Bay at the July 31 trade deadline, the speedy Caballero was hitting .320 in 14 games with the Yankees and .235 overall entering Sunday’s game. Besides shortstop, Caballero has started at second base, third base and right field.
New York began the night six games behind first-place Toronto in the AL East and 1 1/2 back of second-place Boston. The Yankees, Red Sox and Mariners are tightly bunched in a race for the three AL wild cards.