What the 2025 Major League Baseball trade deadline lacked in blockbusters it made up for in volume. From the first deal on July 24 to the last at 5:59 p.m. ET on July 31, teams made 63 trades and exchanged 179 players (including those to be named later).

One team dealt away 10 players from its big league roster. Another added seven new faces. Every team made at least one move. All of it served to reinforce an indisputable truth: Nobody does a deadline like baseball.

To honor that, we present an award ceremony like no other: Honors for the dozen most interesting elements of the 2025 deadline, starting with an atypical biggest winner.

The Best Deadline Belonged to a Dealer Award: The Athletics

Plenty of impact players moved to contenders at this year’s deadline, so for the A’s to be the big winners took the sort of trade that almost never gets made anymore. Heading into deadline season, Leo De Vries, the 18-year-old, switch-hitting shortstop who was the prize of the San Diego Padres’ farm system, was considered off-limits in any trade conversation. Three days before the deadline, though, Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller showed a willingness to discuss him in potential deals for A’s closer Mason Miller and Guardians left fielder Steven Kwan. The A’s pounced, including Miller and left-hander JP Sears to net De Vries and a trio of right-handed pitching prospects: Braden Nett, Henry Baez and Eduarniel Nunez.

De Vries is the No. 3 prospect in baseball on Kiley McDaniel’s updated top 50 ranking. He has more than held his own in High-A as a teenager and figures to be in the big leagues — perhaps as a shortstop, perhaps at third base — by the time he’s 21. And there, he would join what’s quickly becoming one of the best lineups in baseball, loaded with Nick Kurtz, Brent Rooker, Jacob Wilson, Lawrence Butler, Shea Langeliers, Tyler Soderstrom and Denzel Clarke.

“I’m so pissed we didn’t get De Vries,” one evaluator said.

“They got De Vries for a guy who pitches one inning at a time,” another lamented.

These sorts of deals simply don’t happen. In a prospect-hugging world, deals that include top-five prospects are once-in-a-decade occurrences. Literally. The previous time a prospect of De Vries’ caliber moved was when the Chicago White Sox landed the consensus No. 1 in MLB, Yoan Moncada, from the Boston Red Sox in the 2016 deal for Chris Sale. Sale was coming off five consecutive seasons receiving Cy Young votes.

The Who Needs Those Kids Anyway Award: The San Diego Padres

De Vries & Co. were not the only Padres prospects to move. In deals that netted them Ryan O’Hearn, Ramon Laureano, Freddy Fermin, Nestor Cortes and Will Wagner, San Diego dealt 10 more players still rookie-eligible. Nobody is willing to sacrifice the future for the present quite like Preller.

Even if the A’s letter grade for the deadline matches their nickname, it doesn’t doom the Padres to an F. On the contrary, there are situations that warrant risky decision-making, and San Diego exemplifies that. Michael King, Dylan Cease, Robert Suarez and Luis Arraez are headed to free agency. Manny Machado isn’t getting any younger. The Padres’ window is now. In the franchise’s 56-year history, it has made two World Series and won none. The previous time the Padres participated in the World Series, the year’s first two digits were 19.

The Padres now have the best bullpen in baseball, and O’Hearn, Laureano and Fermin round out a lineup with Machado, Arraez, Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, Jake Cronenworth and Xander Bogaerts. There is not a weak spot in their order or bullpen — and if King gets healthy, Nick Pivetta keeps shoving and Cease or Yu Darvish find themselves, they will be as dangerous as anyone in the National League come October. San Diego might wind up the No. 6 seed, but so were the Texas Rangers in 2023, and that didn’t stop them from getting their franchise’s first ring.

The Joël Robuchon Award for absolutely cooking: The Seattle Mariners

Give the Mariners credit. They got the best bat at the deadline in Eugenio Suárez, filled a position of need at first base with Josh Naylor, deepened their bullpen with left-hander Caleb Ferguson and did so without sacrificing Colt Emerson, Jonny Farmelo, Ryan Sloan, Jurrangelo Cijntje, Michael Arroyo, Lazaro Montes, Harry Ford or Felnin Celesten, all top 100-caliber prospects.

The new-look Mariners took three of four from the Rangers, with whom they entered their series tied, over the weekend. Seattle is almost fully healthy — and with Bryce Miller carving in his rehab assignment with a fastball tickling 98 mph and Victor Robles potentially back in September, the Mariners are two recalls away from having the scariest squad they have had since their resurgence started in 2021.

By no means did they fleece the Diamondbacks for Suárez and Naylor. Arizona needed pitching and got quality arms in both deals, and Tyler Locklear should be the team’s first baseman for the next half-decade. But this deadline was about an organization that has drafted as well as any in the 2020s shedding its relative conservatism to take a run in a year where there is no favorite. That’s worthy of some Robuchon potatoes.

The Cubs and Red Sox entered deadline season in search of the same archetype: a high-end starting pitcher with multiple years of club control. Both exited with that need unfulfilled.

Boston came close. The Red Sox were willing to part with a number of high-end prospects to land right-hander Joe Ryan from the Minnesota Twins. But that wasn’t expressed until the deadline was nearing, and the Twins were so deep in other talks to disassemble their roster, the prospect of moving Ryan had lost appeal. The Cubs landed Michael Soroka from the Washington Nationals the day before the deadline, but the trade demands for Ryan, Nationals left-hander MacKenzie Gore and right-handers Sandy Alcantara and Edward Cabrera of the Miami Marlins were too high for Chicago’s liking.

The balance the majority of front offices try to strike is not easy. They want to win this year, but they also want to win going forward. What’s most telling is that these are two organizations with enormous expectations — and limitations. When the Red Sox dealt Yoan Moncada in 2016, they were consistently a top-five payroll team. Hoarding young, affordable players wasn’t nearly the imperative it is now, when for the past three seasons Boston has entered Opening Day with a payroll outside the top 10. When the Cubs made the Aroldis Chapman deal in 2016 and the Jose Quintana deal the next season, they were consistently a top-six payroll team. Over the past five years, their Opening Day payrolls have ranked 12th, 14th, 11th, ninth and 12th, respectively.

Could their front offices have ignored those realities and gone for broke? Sure. And none of their fans would have minded. For now. But if they lost in October this year and one of the prospects they moved broke out, not only would the deals be seen as failures, but because they would’ve been made against the advice of analytical models, they would’ve been of the you-should’ve-known variety.

Running a team isn’t easy. Running a team that has pulled back on payroll for seemingly no good reason is a particular sort of challenge. The fact that there is no true World Series favorite this year makes the frustration from fans especially warranted, but it’s also a reminder that no decision is made in a vacuum. Context with the Red Sox and Cubs matters.

The Juggling Octopus Award: The Minnesota Twins

The Twins are for sale. What had one meaning going into the deadline — the franchise has been on the market since this past October — took on a completely different one in the final 48 hours of trade season, when Minnesota shipped off 10 big leaguers and completely altered its trajectory.

The bloodletting was stunning in its scope. The Twins traded their highest-paid player, shortstop Carlos Correa, to Houston. They moved their closer, Jhoan Duran, to Philadelphia, which later acquired center fielder Harrison Bader from Minnesota. They sent right-hander Chris Paddack to Detroit, unloaded their bullpen of Brock Stewart (Los Angeles Dodgers), Danny Coulombe (Texas) and Louis Varland (Toronto Blue Jays, along with first baseman Ty France). Super-utility man Willi Castro went to the Cubs. And finally — and most surprising — relief ace Griffin Jax landed in Tampa Bay.

Just like that, players making around $65 million this year were gone in an instant, replaced by a mixture of big leaguers (right-hander Taj Bradley and outfielders James Outman and Alan Roden), high-end prospects (catcher Eduardo Tait, right-hander Mick Abel, left-hander Kendry Rojas) and lottery tickets. Days later, the industry remains stunned by the extent of the dump.

How much of it is attributable to clearing the books for the sale of the team is unclear. But what shouldn’t be lost in it is that the Twins still find themselves in a reasonable position to compete going forward. Joe Ryan and Pablo Lopez are an excellent 1-2 atop the rotation. The everyday lineup, with Byron Buxton, Royce Lewis, Matt Wallner and Ryan Jeffers, will soon be complemented by top prospects such as Walker Jenkins, Emmanuel Rodriguez, Luke Keaschall and Kaelen Culpepper. They’ve got excellent starting-pitching depth. And suddenly they’ve got plenty of payroll flexibility for the winter.

Will the new owner use it? That’s the key, of course. A fire sale is to tear down. A recommitment of resources is a strategy most teams don’t have the gumption to undertake. Which course the Twins chart won’t be clear until next spring.

When it was first reported that the Astros were keen on reacquiring Correa, a linchpin of Houston’s run to seven consecutive AL Championship Series, the news registered as a shock. Correa’s journey — free agent market craters, signs short-term with the Twins, opts out, has deals with San Francisco and the New York Mets fall apart, returns to Minnesota — seemed like it had reached an end.

Particularly when the Astros insisted on the Twins eating upward of $50 million of the $104 million owed Correa through the end of 2028 and throwing in a reliever like Jax. Minnesota wasn’t against trading Correa; it was against stupidity. The deal looked dead going into the last 24 hours before the deadline.

It was defibrillated when the Astros moved off the additional-player ask and upped their end of covering Correa’s salary to $71 million. The deal came together about two hours before the deadline, helping Houston get past the season-ending right hamstring tear of third baseman Isaac Paredes and bolster itself as its two closest competitors, the Mariners and Rangers (who acquired right-hander Merrill Kelly and right-handed reliever Phil Maton along with Coulombe), saw the AL West crown within reach.

To pave the way for the deal, Correa waived his no-trade clause. He never left Houston, keeping a home there, and when the Astros return from their current nine-game road trip on Aug. 11, the ovation will be deafening. For all the foundational players who have left the Astros, the sight of Correa and Jose Altuve sharing an infield will conjure memories Houstonians won’t ever forget.

For all the talks Cleveland held with other teams about left fielder Kwan — and there were plenty — the Guardians wound up not moving the two-time All-Star despite a number of strong offers. Perhaps no team in MLB navigates trade talks of veteran players with the discipline and conviction of the Guardians. They set their trade demands for Kwan, and no one met them. So, they held him.

And that’s a good thing for a city like Cleveland, which has never gotten used to its team’s propensity to extract value out of tenured players before they reach free agency. There is a specific sort of pride in Cleveland, which has suffered without a championship longer than any other baseball team, and the prospect of kicking the can down the road again invoked painful memories of the departures of CC Sabathia, Francisco Lindor, Cliff Lee and plenty of others.

Between José Ramírez and Kwan, the Guardians have two of the steadiest players in the game. Building a lineup around them — and fashioning a proper rotation as well — is the trick on a skimpy payroll. A deal for Kwan could materialize again over the winter, which tends to be when position players get a greater return than at the deadline. Might the runners-up for free agent Kyle Tucker see Kwan — a lesser player, but a damn good one still — as a reasonable fallback plan? Sure.

It’s all part of life for the Guardians, who reflexively shuffle as if they’re stuck in an endless game of three-card monte. For now, they held off. And perhaps they can use the next three months to fashion the sort of contract-extension offer that would convince Kwan to remain in a Guardians uniform for a long time to come.

The One Big Move Can Change Everything Award: The Philadelphia Phillies

The Phillies wanted — needed — a late-inning relief solution after the past calendar year reminded them of the necessity of bullpen stability. As good as their relievers were this past year during the regular season, the bullpen faltered spectacularly during their division series loss against the Mets. Compound that with the struggles of closer Jordan Romano, the loss of José Alvarado for the coming October due to a previous performance enhancing drug suspension and the fragility of their other relievers, and there was no team that needed a player more than the Phillies did a fireman.

Enter Jhoan Duran. The fit was perfect. It cost the Phillies in Tait and Abel — a prospect haul they were willing to part with because it didn’t include Andrew Painter, Aidan Miller or Justin Crawford, their top three. And it gave them a lockdown closer with arguably the best pure stuff in baseball. His “splinker” and curveball are his two best pitches, which is saying something considering Duran runs his fastball up to 103 mph and has hit triple digits 161 times this season.

Beyond Duran, the Phillies can turn to Orion Kerkering and Matt Strahm and hope they fare better this October than last. David Robertson will arrive soon to bolster the group. Tanner Banks has been good. They’re not the Padres. They’re not the Brewers. But with the best starting rotation in the NL, they don’t need to be. Philadelphia’s relievers simply need to be good enough, and after the addition of Duran, they are.

The October Is For Relievers Award: The New York Mets and Yankees

About 59% of innings this year have been thrown by starting pitchers. In recent seasons, that percentage has dropped demonstrably come the postseason. Relievers account for around 50% of the innings pitched in the playoffs. And teams at this deadline acted like they understood the necessity for bullpen help.

Nobody added more relief help than the New York teams. The Mets gave up a lot to add Ryan Helsley and Tyler Rogers to a bullpen that already included Edwin Díaz, Brooks Raley and Reed Garrett, and as much as it cost in prospects, they didn’t have to move any of their troika of top-flight starting pitchers (Jonah Tong, Nolan McLean and Brandon Sproat) or their positional standouts (Jett Williams and Carson Benge).

The Yankees not only got relief arms in former Pirates closer David Bednar, Giants closer Camilo Doval and Rockies setup man Jake Bird, but control them for multiple years. As grisly as Bednar, Doval and Bird’s debuts were with the Yankees — the sweep at Miami’s hands over the weekend was the nadir of New York’s season — they ultimately will make the bullpen better.

Is it good enough to help them traverse the AL? The team that has spent most of the season atop the standings table, Detroit, thought enough of bullpen depth to acquire four relief arms at the deadline. The Astros, currently atop the West, have the second-best bullpen ERA in the AL — behind the Red Sox, who leapt ahead of the Yankees in the standings over the weekend. And the Blue Jays’ relief corps has the second-highest strikeout rate of any big league bullpen. The Mets and Yankees simply did what they needed to do to compete.

Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak could have gone out and floated any number of desirable players, from Brendan Donovan to Ivan Herrera to Lars Nootbaar, and found a market worth pursuing. Instead, Mozeliak kept things simple, and it was the right thing to do.

He’s leaving his position at the end of the season, ceding to former Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, and in unloading only Helsley, Maton and Steven Matz — all impending free agents — Mozeliak did not overstep his bounds and make deals that should be the purview of his replacement. Other executives might have let ego get in the way in trying to put one final stamp on a franchise they’ve run for more than a decade. Mozeliak instead recognized this is Bloom’s team going forward, and figuring out how to pilot a group that’s good but not good enough is no longer Mozeliak’s responsibility.

There is urgency for change with the Cardinals; it’s just not the sort of urgency that needed to be met by an outgoing executive. For all the disappointment the Cardinals have provided in the last three seasons — attendance is down in that time from more than 40,000 per game to less than 29,000 — they’ve got plenty of room to expand their payroll, a future star on the cusp of the big leagues in JJ Wetherholt and a wide suite of options going into this winter. In a division as competitive as the NL Central will be over the next half-decade, they’re going to need everything they can get.

Know thyself. It’s perhaps the most important characteristic for any front office. Know the quality of your big league team, know your personnel, know your strengths, know your weaknesses, know your purpose. A cursory glance at the Royals could have left outsiders wondering what business a sub-.500 team had adding at the deadline. And yet it was the perfect example of the Royals understanding themselves.

Even with ace Cole Ragans sidelined and All-Star left-hander Kris Bubic out for the season, both with left shoulder injuries, the Royals know their market. They know Kansas City suffered too many non-competitive seasons to spend the final two months of this season reliving those memories. They know that they want to get a new stadium built, and the first effort at that led to voters rejecting a proposal that would have helped erect one. They know that they’ve got only so many years of Bobby Witt Jr. before he can opt out of his contract. They know, more than anything, that a wild-card spot in the AL can be back-doored — because they saw Detroit, nearly 10 games under at the deadline this past year, do just that.

So, yeah, if the price isn’t prohibitive, why not try to win? Kansas City got outfielders Mike Yastrzemski and Randal Grichuk along with pitchers Bailey Falter, Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek without giving up a top prospect. The best player the Royals dealt was catcher Freddy Fermin, and considering their top two prospects are catchers Carter Jensen and Blake Mitchell, they moved from a position of strength. The Royals telegraphed this tack when they signed right-hander Seth Lugo to a two-year, $46 million extension, but it still caught some in the industry off-guard.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have. The desire to win is easy to talk about and far tougher to prove through action. The Royals remain a long shot to make the postseason, but inside the clubhouse, the players are appreciative of that shot, and it’s the sort of goodwill that, while immeasurable, is absent in the clubhouses of the teams that closed the deadline with a whimper.

The Let’s Win One for the Gipper Award: The Tampa Bay Rays

The Rays could have been the Twins. They could have gotten a huge return for Yandy Diaz and Brandon Lowe, moved closer Pete Fairbanks, made a half-dozen other moves and culled their already-low payroll to an embarrassingly low mark — under that of what Juan Soto makes all by himself.

Instead, the Rays played the deadline like only the Rays can. They got rid of their two most desirable expiring contracts in starter Zack Littell and catcher Danny Jansen. And they backfilled those spots via a deal for right-hander Adrian Houser (who has been tremendous this year), a three-way deal that landed them a controllable catcher (Hunter Feduccia) and the most surprising non-Correa trade, landing Griffin Jax for Taj Bradley at the deadline buzzer.

Why didn’t they go full dump mode? Beyond a similar rationale to that of the Royals — the league puts the AL in awful — they wanted to give owner Stu Sternberg, whose sale of the team should be complete sooner rather than later, one last shot at a playoff run.

Sternberg is beloved by Rays employees who appreciate his willingness to allow them to run an experiment in baseball operations. Under Sternberg, the Rays have managed to remain among the most successful teams in the game despite a distinct lack of payroll resources. What Sternberg gave them was leeway. To value things other teams didn’t. To build a front office that has figured out how to marry scouting and analytics to great effect. To create a culture that has kept employees engaged where in other organizations they would have grown bitter.

He was not the best owner, by any objective measure. He was far from the worst, though. And even if the Rays don’t claw their way back in the standings — at 55-58, they’re five games back of the final wild-card spot and must leap four teams to get there — they’ve got a chance, and that’s all they ever really want.