A journey toward forgiveness: Davin Vann has finally found himself years after his sister’s death
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussions of suicidal ideation.
THERE ARE FORCES at work in the universe that, for most of his life, Davin Vann believed were malevolent. This is what occupied the thoughts of NC State‘s star defensive lineman when he slid into the driver’s seat of his car on Feb. 4, 2024, intent on surrendering to his fate.
Vann has always liked to drive at night. Football had long been an outlet for his anger and isolation, but when he finished practice and film study, a drive calmed him and allowed him to be alone with his thoughts. He’d crank some country music, pull his Mustang onto the highway, watch the road unspool past Raleigh, Apex and Cary — the North Carolina towns where he grew up — and think of all the things that kept him here. He’d think of Kayla.
He was 11 when he watched his 13-year-old sister drown in a neighborhood pool, and for much of the past decade, he had fixated on how it was possible that she was gone while he had been spared.
“For a long time, it felt like God took the wrong kid,” he said. “It felt wrong for me to have the ability to live life and be happy when such a beautiful person was taken.”
Some nights he asked for forgiveness, for some penance he could pay that would ease the guilt that overwhelmed him. Some nights he’d ask for solace, an explanation for how his coaches and teammates at NC State could laud him as a leader while he still felt utterly broken.
On this night, however, he asked for nothing.
“I was just tired of being tired,” he said.
Vann wasn’t planning to die, exactly. That would imply some agency in his life, a feeling he’d long abandoned. Instead, he figured he’d just ease his car onto I-40, inch the accelerator to the floor, then let go.
“Just f— the brakes, see how fast I can go,” Vann said. “I was thinking that if somebody hit me, I wouldn’t care.”
He slumped into his seat, shoved his key into the ignition and twisted.
Nothing.
He twisted again and again, screaming into the ether with righteous indignation, but the engine stayed silent.
For nearly a half-hour, he sat in his car sobbing, begging for mercy as music blared and his windows fogged over. Finally, Vann relented. He went inside his house, still crying, and crawled into bed. When he awoke the next morning, he looked at his phone and found a text from his head coach, Dave Doeren, who’d been on something of a spiritual journey of his own.
“Got something I want to share with you,” the message read. “Can you come see me tomorrow?”
Looking back, Vann said, it’s like something out of a movie — a story he wouldn’t believe if he hadn’t lived it. Vann is the Wolfpack’s senior leader, a fan favorite with 5.5 sacks and 12 tackles for loss, but as he gets set to take the field Thursday night against Georgia Tech (7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN), he’s not doing it alone. That meeting with Doeren would set him on a path toward forgiveness, clarity and family.
There are forces at work in the universe, but they’re not like Vann imagined them.
“I see that night as such a gift,” Vann said. “It was God or the universe or Allah or whatever you want to call it telling me I couldn’t go yet.”
Or maybe, he thinks now, it was Kayla.
DAVIN VANN WAS born Feb. 8, 2002, the fourth of nine children. Kayla, Davin and Rylan, each about two years apart, were the closest. Davin called them “the trio.”
Kayla loved basketball, baking and church. She was bubbly and outgoing. She taught Rylan to cook on her kitchen set. She’d let Davin braid her hair, even though he wasn’t very good at it. They all played sports — an escape from the crowded living room and an avenue for some sense of normalcy after Kayla’s death. They were each members of the swim team, and they spent countless summer afternoons at the Scottish Hills Recreation Club, the neighborhood pool just a quarter-mile walk down a greenway behind their house in Cary, North Carolina.
That’s where they planned to spend the evening of June 8, 2013. Usually, their mother, Joy Hall, or their grandparents, Dave and Joan, would accompany them, but Joy was busy with work, and the grandparents were babysitting the younger kids. Dave offered to drive the trio, dropping them off at the front entrance a little after 5 p.m.
The call to 911 came at 6:36 p.m. A child had been pulled from the water. She was unresponsive. An ambulance arrived four minutes later.
It was an 11-year old Davin who called his mother, who was in Raleigh for work.
“Mom,” he said, “Kayla’s hurt.”
If she had it to do over, Joy wishes she’d understood the weight Davin would carry in the years to come. Kayla was older, but Davin viewed himself as her and Rylan’s protector. Maybe Joy had, too.
Joy met Davin’s father when she was 16. The relationship was fraught from the outset. He was addicted to drugs, Joy said. He’d disappear for weeks. He spent time in prison. He fought with Joy routinely, and the arguments often turned violent.
“It was volatile,” Joy said. “It was scary sometimes. And heartbreaking.”
Joy had her oldest daughter, Brittany, when she was 17. Deanna, Kayla, Davin and Rylan followed over the next 10 years. Rylan was just 6 weeks old, Joy said, when she came home from an errand one afternoon to find the kids’ father smoking crack in the living room, the baby asleep on the couch next to him. She told him to leave. He beat her, and he took her car, and, after a handful of visits, he eventually disappeared from their lives.
Things weren’t easy after that, but they were better. Joy met Donald Haley, and they had four more kids together — Lola, Duckie, Rose and Vinnie. Donald had grown up in the foster care system, so he was eager to adopt the older kids, too. Family, for him, didn’t have to be blood. They weren’t poor, Davin said, but with nine kids to feed, there was never quite enough to go around. What they did have, Joy said, were the scars of those early years of abuse and fear.
“We didn’t grow up saying ‘I love you’ all the time,” Davin said. “Nobody liked talking about their emotions.”
Perhaps, Davin said, they just weren’t equipped to process their feelings back then. He understands now that, when Joy was confronted with the loss of her daughter, she didn’t appreciate the fragility of the 11-year-old boy on the other end of the phone. She couldn’t console. She wanted answers. How did this happen? Where was he when she was under water? Why hadn’t he noticed?
What Davin heard was a question that has hung with him like a weight around his neck ever since. Why hadn’t he saved her?
THE KIDS SCATTERED in different directions when they arrived at the pool that night, each to their own clique of friends. Kayla had asked Rylan to play with her, but he had scurried off with his own crowd instead.
“If I’d said yes, that might’ve changed everything,” said Rylan, now a sophomore offensive lineman at NC State. “That’s something I held deeply for my whole life.”
The Scottish Hills pool is not large. It’s zigzag-shaped with a deeper side, close to 9 feet, and a shallow side around 4 feet deep. At the time, there was a diving board at one end next to the lifeguard tower, and that’s where Davin had been playing. Joy learned later that Kayla had been underwater for somewhere between five and 10 minutes before anyone noticed. A neighborhood girl whom Kayla would sometimes babysit was the one who first realized something was wrong. The girl’s grandfather dove into the pool and pulled Kayla to the side.
The lifeguard blew a whistle, and a crowd scrambled out of the pool. That’s when Rylan first saw his sister splayed on the concrete. He screamed for Davin, who raced to Kayla’s side. Someone was doing chest compressions. She coughed up a mixture of blood and water.
“I tried to convince myself it wasn’t as bad as it looked,” Davin said.
In the moments after the 911 call, Rylan sat astride a ball machine on the nearby tennis courts as medics worked on his sister, convincing himself she would be fine. He’d see her in the hospital. She’d be awake. She’d hug him and laugh like she always had, and they’d bake a treat on her kitchen set when she got home.
After calling his mother and grandmother, Davin stumbled in a daze to a bench in the courtyard adjacent to the pool where he sat alone, crying and praying.
“The ambulance came and took her away,” Davin said. “I said goodbye to my friends. I don’t really remember the rest of that day. Or, really, that whole time in my life.”
Joy sped from Raleigh to Cary and beat the ambulance to the hospital. Kayla was alive, but her responses were “combative,” suggesting severe brain damage.
At 4 a.m. on Sunday, June 9, Joy and Donald were called back to Kayla’s room. She’d taken a turn, and things looked bleak. Joy called her parents and begged them to return to the hospital.
“I’m a Christian,” Joy said, “but they’re Christians far beyond what I am. And I thought, maybe if they pray for her, she’ll be saved.”
An autopsy showed no trauma to Kayla’s head or neck, no damage to her heart that would suggest a medical event had preceded her drowning. Fluid was found in her lungs. Her official cause of death was heart failure brought on by oxygen deprivation.
Joy begged the town of Cary to investigate, but officials insisted it was an accident. ESPN filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any documents pertaining to a police investigation and was told no such reports exist. At the time, Joy didn’t have the resources or the willpower to push back. She eventually filed a lawsuit, but without a police investigation, she had little evidence of wrongdoing. The sides eventually settled.
“They just said, ‘This is what we think your kid’s life was worth,’ and that was it,” she said.
It fell to Joy to explain to the other kids that Kayla died. What has stayed with her is the sound Rylan made when she told him — an anguished howl that still haunts her now.
So much of what happened after that is a blur.
That day, Joy walked the trail behind their house that led down to the pool, and she thought of the future Kayla would never enjoy.
“So many things get taken when a kid is just 13,” Joy said. “It just seems so terribly unfair.”
Brittany graduated from high school two days after Kayla died. The family was there, but it was just a formality. There was no celebration. There are pictures but not memories.
The funeral was held the next day. Seeing his sister in the coffin is the one clear memory Davin has of that week.
“I didn’t know when you die,” Davin said, “the body you see in the coffin, it doesn’t look like the person you knew.”
Davin retreated inward. That has always been his defense mechanism when times are hard. Joy has seen it happen on the football field after a bad play, but back then, she was too mired in her own grief to understand the implications of Davin’s silence.
What she remembers instead is a night soon after the funeral. She was lying in her bed, sobbing, and Davin came in to console her. He didn’t know what to say, so he just reached out and rubbed her foot.
“And I just thought, ‘What a sweet boy,'” Joy said.
For the next 10 years, though, Davin did not see a sweet boy. He saw a mistake.
DAVIN WEARS NO. 1 at NC State, which is intended as an honor. Each year, Doeren awards the jersey number to the player who best embodies the leadership skills he wants the team to emulate. Doeren met with Davin before his freshman season and predicted he’d one day be a team captain. Now it was reality.
“There’s this lion inside him,” Doeren said.
Davin wanted no part of it.
There was a sentimental reason, he said. He wore No. 45 — two digits that, summed, equal nine. Nine for the number of kids in his family. Nine was Kayla’s basketball jersey. Nine had meaning.
But that was an excuse. Davin really wanted to hide from a spotlight he didn’t think he deserved. He saw leadership as a burden, and he’d spent years carrying so many already.
The darkness that followed Kayla’s death festered and metastasized inside him. As a boy, he acted out, then drew further inward. He remembers little from Kayla’s death until high school, years lost in a fog. He got in trouble. Not real trouble, Joy said, just kid stuff, but Davin is not so sure. He can laugh now about the time he and Rylan acted out their favorite wrestling moves, only for Rylan’s tooth to end up stuck in Davin’s hand — one brother needing a root canal and the other needing hand surgery. But there were worse things, too, Davin said. Things he’s ashamed of in retrospect, such as bringing a knife to school; decisions born from hanging out with the wrong crowd and a simmering fury he held inside.
“I felt like the world was against me,” Davin said. “I didn’t want to listen to anybody about anything.”
Sports allowed Davin a chance to vent his anger without drawing attention. He blossomed in wrestling and football, recording 17 sacks and earning a Shrine Bowl invitation as a senior at Cary High School. He had dozens of scholarship offers, but he chose NC State to remain close to home. Davin never looked at his memories of Kayla straight on, but he couldn’t leave her behind, either.
Davin’s college career progressed just as Doeren had envisioned. By his third season, he was a full-time starter at defensive end. The next year, he was one of the most productive pass rushers in the ACC. He considered the NFL draft, and when he announced he would return for one final season with the Wolfpack, the fan base celebrated.
Davin couldn’t understand any of it.
“A lot of guys talk about how they go through hardships and injuries and stuff like that, but for me it was the opposite,” he said. “My hardship came from the success I was having. It felt like no matter what I did or how hard I worked for it, I didn’t deserve any of the accolades or success or publicity. It felt wrong.”
The people around him inevitably called him humble. Joy won’t argue with the characterization, but she knows there is more to it.
“Sometimes he really didn’t know why anyone wanted him to play college football,” Joy said. “He’d say, ‘I’m not very good.’ He’s just really hard on himself.”
Davin minored in psychology at NC State, and in those courses he learned terms such as suicidal ideation and survivor’s guilt and imposter syndrome. He had them all. But he also believed something more profound about himself: that the universe saw past his success to something deeper, something ugly and unfixable. It’s what led him to the front seat of his Mustang that night.
At almost that same moment, Doeren was on a Zoom with a Canadian performance coach he’d found on social media, deep in meditation. And he’d just had a revelation.
DOEREN WAS IN his office in late October 2023, lamenting his team’s blowout loss to rival Duke. NC State had begun the season with high expectations, but the Wolfpack were instead 4-3, and their starting quarterback had just quit the team to pursue a transfer. Criticism had been mounting, and Doeren was at a breaking point. To clear his head, he pulled out his phone and began thumbing through his Instagram feed, where he found Dan de Luis.
The video that caught Doeren’s attention was titled “Five Rules to Provide More Peace of Mind.” In it, de Luis strolls through a leafy field in Mallorytown, Ontario, and he implores his followers to ignore external critics and look inward for a path to betterment.
Doeren is an old-school, blue-collar football coach who’s not inclined to buy into a motivational pitch from a social media influencer, but he watched this “hippy-dippy life coach” with rapt attention.
“It was like he was talking to me,” Doeren said.
Doeren was so inspired by the message, he picked up his phone and called his friend, artist John Bukaty, to share the moment. He urged Bukaty to watch the video, too, and it sparked an idea.
“There’s a reason you saw that,” Bukaty told Doeren. “I’m going to call him.”
Doeren shrugged it off, but within the hour, his phone rang.
De Luis sports a chest-length beard, scraggly and streaked with gray, and he’s almost always wearing a ski cap and a T-shirt, often emblazoned with the logo of a favorite rock band. He has worked with hundreds of “high-performance” clients, from NHL stars to Olympians to Fortune 500 CEOs. On Instagram, he has 410,000 followers. He offers reassuring self-help mantras with practiced empathy.
The centerpiece of his practice is a method of intentional, deep breathing designed to “flex” the circulatory system, which can create physiological and psychological responses that de Luis calls a “flow state,” in which clients often report an ability to confront long-held trauma or discover life-altering realizations — a “cathartic release,” de Luis calls it.
On that first call, de Luis taught Doeren some basic breathing techniques designed to calm his mind and center his focus. They kept at it, and by week’s end, the lessons helped Doeren shed the noise and distractions that had clouded his thinking, allowing him to focus on the steps he needed to remedy a spiraling season. He gave an emphatic speech to his team later that week in which he told players to either buy in or get out. He named a new starting QB, whom the players rallied behind. It was a turning point, and the Wolfpack would win their next five games.
Doeren and de Luis stayed in touch in the months that followed. During one of those “flow states” in a session in February, Doeren had an epiphany: “Davin needs this.”
Doeren believes one of his best assets as a coach is an ability to connect with his players, and for weeks, he’d seen Davin retreat from interactions with teammates, keep quiet during meetings, slouch in his seat and shuffle through the locker room. Doeren saw a player who needed help.
Doeren hedged the introduction as a favor Davin could do for the team. He thought de Luis’ sessions could be useful for the players, and he wanted Davin to give it a try and provide feedback. (De Luis now accompanies the team before games and works with as many as 40 players.)
Davin worked with de Luis via Zoom for a few months — “Beginning to crack the door open,” de Luis said — but in April, de Luis flew to Raleigh for a three-day retreat at Doeren’s lake house. De Luis hoped he could push the door fully open.
“This works if you’re ready,” de Luis told him.
“I’m ready,” Davin said.
They practiced breathing in the morning, did yoga in the afternoon, and finished the day with meditative breathing aimed at relaxing the body before sleep.
Davin was amazed with the results. He could exhale and hold his breath for five, 10 minutes. At one point, he reeled off 100 push-ups while taking just a single breath. He felt relaxed, open, free from the weight he’d carried for so long.
In between sessions, Davin and de Luis talked about what had led them here. De Luis calls this “set and setting” — creating an atmosphere where people reluctant to share emotions feel more comfortable being vulnerable.
“What you’re holding inside,” de Luis told him, “that demon, that animal — the strongest thing a man can do is say he needs help.”
Growing up, Davin and Rylan had shared a bedroom, and in all those years, they’d never once talked about the day Kayla died. It was only after Davin left for NC State, when Rylan would make regular weekend trips to stay with his brother, that the veil finally lifted. It was Davin’s sophomore year, and the brothers were up late, playing video games and watching TV, and somehow they started talking about Kayla. They were surprised how often their perceptions of what happened diverged. They talked about the guilt they felt, and they were surprised at how much of that they shared. It was cathartic, Davin says now, but it wasn’t a wholesale change. He still wasn’t ready to truly face what happened, he said. Acceptance meant Kayla was really gone.
De Luis had endured trauma, too, and he shared his story willingly — about the “intense” father, the bouts of severe anxiety and depression, about the back injury that left him virtually bedridden for nearly two years in his 20s, and about finding salvation in yoga and breathing exercises at precisely the moment he hit rock bottom.
Davin listened, and his defenses began to crumble. Eventually, his whole story came out — the guilt and the anger and the grief. It was a moment he had run from for more than half his life, and now that he had faced it, he felt relief.
That was the lesson, de Luis told him. Davin had used his anger over his sister’s death as his motivation for so long, but it had only led him deeper into despair. It was time to focus on his love for Kayla instead.
“Dan had told me I can’t hold on to my past,” Davin said. “It’s a stepping stone I need to learn to live with, but it’s not me.”
On the last morning of the retreat, de Luis had Davin wade into Lake Gaston. It was 40 degrees and the water was freezing, but as Davin inhaled and exhaled with measured precision, the discomfort disappeared, and his thoughts turned to Kayla.
He could see her now. She was not angry with him. She loved him, and she wanted him to be happy.
“Kayla’s death changed the mindset of an 11-year-old boy. It put me in a victim mentality,” Davin said. “I’ve changed my mindset. I’m doing it for her now. She can’t be here, but I’m trying to let her live vicariously through me by being the best I can be.”
Davin and de Luis drove back to Raleigh blaring Zach Bryan and Luke Combs, and when they arrived on campus, Davin rushed to see Doeren. He grabbed his coach and hugged him — “Like I’ve never been hugged before,” Doeren said — and when he let go, his eyes welled with tears, and he smiled.
“Thank you, Coach,” he said. “You saved my life.”
THERE IS NOT a clean denouement to Davin’s story. He’s in a better place, but he still fights the battles, he said. On Oct. 5, in a game against Wake Forest, NC State quarterback Grayson McCall was hit by a defender, who buried his helmet under McCall’s chin. The QB crumbled to the ground and laid there, motionless. Vann ambled to the sidelines in a daze, sobbing. The scene — the unconscious body, the terrified onlookers, the scrambling trainers and doctors — it was too familiar. After games, Rylan always brings his mom a Gatorade, and Davin delivers hugs and recounts his plays. This time, the brothers were quiet, said their goodbyes and went straight home. Old habits, Davin said. But he could still breathe and refocus and find his way back.
“I’m in a lot better spot,” Davin said. “I won’t say I don’t deal with mental health issues, but I’m better at dealing with them.”
Davin and his mother talk often of Kayla now — and about what her loss meant to their family. Davin now understands that the weight he carried, Joy carried, too. Joy has found enough distance to understand that her pain kept her from seeing all the hurt her boys held for so long.
“We’ve talked about it a lot,” Joy said. “He’s told me he’s been…”
She can’t say it, but she knows. She was there, too.
“Dark moments,” she said. “Scary.”
She has regrets. They all do. But they don’t dwell on them.
“Did Kayla know that I loved her that much? That’s a regret I have,” Joy said. “Because of all the things I had going on, I didn’t say ‘I love you’ all the time to my kids. Now we do say it. The boys always tell me, every time I hang up the phone.”
That’s a gift. A gift from Kayla.
“We’ll never understand why things happen,” Joy said. “Not just with Kayla. We don’t understand the plan. We just have to appreciate that she was here for the 13 years we got to hang out with her and appreciate the things that make us tougher than where we started.”
Maybe this is how the universe works.
A girl went into a pool and stopped breathing. Her brother found football as an outlet for his grief, went to a college where his coach introduced him to a healer who taught comfort through breathing. The breathing saved his life.
There are forces at work in the universe that Davin will never understand, but he sees them more clearly now.
“It’s hard to think about, but how would life have turned out if none of that happened?” Davin said. “Of course I wish it didn’t, but how close would our family be? Would we still be in those bad habits we were back then? It’s crazy to think about.”
In August, Davin stood at the head of NC State’s team meeting room to deliver his senior speech. In front of him were more than 120 coaches and teammates. Aside from Doeren and Rylan, no one knew his whole story, but he was finally ready to share.
“I wanted to show people that I’m human, too,” Davin said. “I wanted to be as honest as I could be.”
He hadn’t written the speech down, but he’d practiced what he wanted to say a dozen times at least. At lunch before the team meeting, Davin and Rylan sat together, going over the introduction again and again to get it just right.
How do you start to talk about something so big?
Breathe, Davin thought. Take the first step. Breathe again, and trust that the universe has put you here for a reason, that there are people here who need to hear your story.
And so he told them about Kayla and Joy and Rylan and the pain and the anger and the guilt and the hopelessness and, at last, the refuge, forgiveness and love he found in his family and his team and, yes, the sister who’d been there all along.
“Growing up, it didn’t feel like she was with me. It felt like she was gone,” Davin said. “I wasn’t ready to let her be with me. I wasn’t ready for the truth. Now, I pray before every game. It sounds crazy, but I talk to her — ‘I hope you’re up there watching.’ I tell her what I want to do, and that I do it for her.
“I ask her to protect me.”
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or is in emotional distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or at 988lifeline.org.
You know it as soon as the college football schedule drops. The game that’s circled, the player you love to hate, the rival coach who seems to especially delight in destroying your team’s season.
We’re getting into the dog days of summer, with the only relief being the crisp autumn days of the college football season are rapidly approaching. But that means the enemies are lining up at the gates.
Today, we’re doing recon on where each post-spring top 25 team stands and who stands in their way. These are each teams’ potential future villains, the coaches, players and teams that have the chance to make the whole season go south. — Dave Wilson
1. Penn State: Ryan Day
Penn State coach James Franklin and the Nittany Lions have been unable to get over the hump against Ohio State, especially since Day took over in Columbus. The Nittany Lions have dropped six straight to Day, culminating with last year’s defeat, as fourth-ranked Ohio State rallied to topple the third-ranked Nittany Lions in State College 20-13. This season, Day will have a new starting quarterback and inexperience on both sides of the ball coming off last year’s national championship. Penn State will counter with one of the most experienced teams in the country, headlined by veteran quarterback Drew Allar and running backs Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen. Franklin even hired away Day’s defensive coordinator, Jim Knowles. The Nittany Lions travel to Columbus on Nov. 1 in a showdown that figures to carry major playoff implications. — Jake Trotter
Clemson’s arch enemy for this season is obvious: Sellers. The Tigers watched the South Carolina quarterback dodge defenders, break tackles and keep one play after another alive last season in a stunning Gamecocks win that nearly derailed Clemson’s season. Clemson will be looking for revenge, of course, but new defensive coordinator Tom Allen will be more focused on finding answers for the elusive Sellers. There are lofty expectations at Clemson this season, and the Tigers don’t necessarily need a win over South Carolina to achieve them, but nobody will sleep soundly in the state if the 2025 defense coughs up another win to its biggest rival. — David Hale
3. Texas: Oklahoma
In Week 1, the Longhorns get a rubber match against an Ohio State team that eliminated Texas from the playoff last season, but the results of this game leave a lot of runway for either team to get back into this year’s postseason. Yet, there is no bigger test every year for Texas than Oklahoma in Dallas. This one’s a bit of a mystery, with the Sooners bringing in new offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle and quarterback John Mateer, who played high school football in the Dallas area, from Washington State. The new-look Sooners could either be a launching point or a big speed bump in the SEC schedule for a Longhorns team with national championship aspirations. — Dave Wilson
4. Georgia: Alabama
The last coach Georgia fans ever wanted to see on the other sideline is doing television. Nick Saban was 5-1 against Kirby Smart, but even with Saban in his first year of retirement last season, Alabama still beat Georgia in a wild 41-34 game in Tuscaloosa the final weekend of September. Georgia has lost nine of the past 10 games in the series and hasn’t beaten Alabama in the regular season since 2007, Saban’s first season in Tuscaloosa, when the Mark Richt-coached Bulldogs won 26-23 in overtime. Georgia has vaulted to elite status under Smart, but a second straight loss to DeBoer — especially with this year’s game being played in Athens — wouldn’t sit well with anybody in Athens. — Chris Low
5. Ohio State: Sherrone Moore
Michigan coach Sherrone Moore has become a problem for the Buckeyes. He might not wear the villain outfit quite as well as predecessor Jim Harbaugh did, but Moore’s rise in coaching — as Wolverines offensive line coach, offensive coordinator and now head coach — has coincided with Ohio State’s longest losing streak (four games) to its archrival since 1991. Moore served as acting head coach during Harbaugh’s Big Ten-imposed suspension in 2023, as Michigan punched its ticket to the Big Ten championship game. He then earned the permanent role and pulled off one of the more stunning upsets in the history of The Game in November in Columbus. The story of Moore’s coaching career at Michigan is really just beginning, but he has already demonstrated his ability to win the biggest games. — Adam Rittenberg
6. LSU: Daytime home games
LSU fans have been known to curse day games, especially in the sweltering September heat. It’s at night when Tiger Stadium (and typically LSU’s football team) shines. In 2025, the only SEC home game that LSU will definitely play at night is the league opener against Florida on Sept. 13. Home games against South Carolina and Texas A&M fall into the “flex” window, meaning they could start as early as 3:30 p.m. ET or as late as 8 p.m. ET. Since 2000, LSU is 112-15 in Saturday night home games at Tiger Stadium. Brian Kelly has faced just two nationally ranked SEC opponents in day games at Tiger Stadium and is 1-1. — Low
7. Notre Dame: Miami
No Notre Dame players were alive for the 1988 clash with Miami, and Fighting Irish coach Marcus Freeman was only 2 years old. But longtime Domers will always view the U as a true villain, and new Miami quarterback Carson Beck, the transfer from Georgia, sparks a range of reactions. Notre Dame scored a signature win in the CFP semifinal at the Sugar Bowl against a Georgia squad that had lost Beck to injury. When healthy, Beck is talented enough to villainize a Notre Dame defense replacing standouts Xavier Watts, Jack Kiser, Rylie Mills and others and appearing in its first game under new coordinator Chris Ash. Early season games are one of the only knocks against Freeman, who has dropped at least one September game in each of his three seasons as Irish coach. Notre Dame needs a strong start with its two most talented opponents — Miami and Texas A&M — leading off the schedule. — Rittenberg
8. Oregon: Ohio State
Is it too simple to say Ohio State? Maybe just Jeremiah Smith after he caught seven passes for 187 yards and two touchdowns in the Rose Bowl drubbing that the Buckeyes put on the Ducks to end their undefeated season? The good news for Dan Lanning & Co. (or bad depending on how you look at it) is that Oregon will not face Ohio State in the regular season this season and a rematch could only occur in the Big Ten title game or in the College Football Playoff. Penn State enters the fray this season as a much-hyped conference contender that the Ducks will have to face and yet it feels like Oregon and Ohio State are still the cream of the crop for the conference and are likely to continue seeing each other on the sport’s biggest stages. — Paolo Uggetti
9. Alabama: Vanderbilt
Remember when Saban won 100 straight games against unranked opponents, the longest such streak in the AP poll era? Now, all of a sudden, the Crimson Tide are 2-3 against their past five unranked foes, a stretch that started with a stunning 40-35 loss at Vanderbilt last season, which came only a week after DeBoer beat No. 2-ranked Georgia in his SEC opener as Alabama’s head coach. It was the first time Alabama had lost to Vanderbilt since 1984. Alabama will get its shot at payback this season on Oct. 4 when Vanderbilt visits Bryant-Denny Stadium. The loss to Vanderbilt a year ago ignited what was the first three-loss regular season for Alabama since 2010. Judging by some of the comments from Alabama players this offseason, nobody will need to remind the Tide when the Commodores are coming to town. — Low
10. BYU: Utah
It’s always Utah. The “Holy War” frequently manages to surprise us. A year ago, BYU was coming off a 5-7 season and Utah was considered the Big 12 favorite. This time, we have a full reversal: The Utes are the ones coming off a disappointing 5-7 campaign and the Cougars are ranked the highest of any Big 12 team on this list. (Granted, this ranking doesn’t account for the sudden uncertainty BYU is dealing with at the QB position.) We’ll already have a decent idea of BYU’s capabilities by the time Utah visits Provo in Week 8, but the Holy War could serve as a Big 12 title elimination game, and it will definitely impact the tenor of the season for both teams. It always does. — Connelly
Purdue didn’t generate many highlights in 2024, but it gave Illinois a major scare at Memorial Stadium, erasing a 24-3 deficit to force overtime before falling 50-49. Among the Boilermakers’ stars that day was tight end Max Klare, who recorded his first 100-yard receiving performance, finishing with 133 yards on six catches. Klare, like most of Purdue’s best players, transferred following the team’s coaching change. He landed at Ohio State, which will visit Memorial Stadium on Oct. 11. Illinois certainly will be aware of Klare but also must contain Heisman Trophy contender Jeremiah Smith and several other standout wide receivers, if it wants any chance at knocking off the defending national champions. — Rittenberg
12. Arizona State: Regression
Arizona State had one of the hottest teams in the country at the end of 2024 and returns far more of last year’s production than most. The Sun Devils appear primed for a run at a repeat Big 12 title. The problem: No one repeats in the Big 12. ASU’s biggest archrival could simply be regression to the mean. Among current members, the past six teams to reach the Big 12 championship before 2024 — 2020 Iowa State, 2021 Baylor, 2021 Oklahoma State, 2022 Kansas State, 2022 TCU and 2023 Oklahoma State — went a combined 28-9 in one-score finishes during their title runs. The following seasons, they went a combined 9-22 in such games. ASU went 6-2 in one-score finishes last season. It’s really hard to do that twice in a row, and in the Big 12 it appears impossible. — Connelly
13. South Carolina: LSU
South Carolina has its share of hated rivals — Georgia, Clemson, anyone else who plays “Sandstorm” during timeouts — but as the Gamecocks look to make a playoff run in 2025, enemy No. 1 might well be LSU. The Bayou Bengals have dominated South Carolina over the years, holding an 18-2 all-time record and winning eight straight matchups dating to 1995. More recently, LSU escaped Columbia with a 36-33 win last season in which the Gamecocks blew a four-point lead with less than 2 minutes to play. That loss ultimately cost South Carolina a playoff bid, but the Gamecocks feel certain they’re a far better team than they were then. If they can exact some revenge this time, it’ll be a big step toward reaching those lofty goals. — Hale
14. Iowa State: Kansas State
There’s no such thing as a Week 0 elimination game, but we get the closest thing to it in Dublin to start the 2025 season. The annual (for now) Farmageddon battle between ISU and Kansas State will take place in particularly green pastures this time, and it will pit two preseason top 20 teams with major Big 12 title hopes. Last year, the Cyclones’ defense played a perfect fourth quarter against the Wildcats, allowing just one yard in 12 snaps to win 29-21 and advance to the conference title game. This time, someone will be 0-1 in conference play before Week 1 even arrives. This is about as big a season opener as you could hope for. — Connelly
15. SMU: TCU
SMU was 3-17 against TCU coaches in the Dennis Franchione/Gary Patterson era, then Sonny Dykes won two straight against the Frogs in Dallas. Once he defected for the purple pastures of Fort Worth, he then won his first two against the Mustangs. Last year, however, SMU got its revenge in a 66-42 pummeling of TCU in a game in which Dykes was ejected. This year, the two teams, which have met 103 times, are scheduled for their last Iron Skillet game for the foreseeable future. This one will have some heat. — Wilson
16. Texas Tech: Baylor
Red Raiders coach Joey McGuire got his start in college coaching at Baylor under Matt Rhule and was promoted under Dave Aranda. He left in midseason in 2021 when he got the Tech job. While trying to right the ship in Lubbock, he’s gone 1-2 against Aranda, including a 59-35 home loss last season. Since Mike Leach was fired, the Red Raiders are 5-10 against the Bears, a team they’ll need to eclipse with their big ambitions to sit atop the Big 12. — Wilson
17. Indiana: UCLA
Coach Curt Cignetti and the Hoosiers did a great job of retaining players and coaches from a 2024 team that won a school-record 11 games and reached the CFP. But two who got away — a coach and a player — landed with UCLA, which visits Indiana on Oct. 25. New Bruins offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri coached Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke last year and had spent the previous three seasons on Cignetti’s staff at James Madison. He might know the secrets to attacking Indiana’s defense. Defensive back Jamier Johnson transferred from Indiana to UCLA after recording 35 tackles and an interception last fall for the Hoosiers. Johnson, who began his college career at Texas, will be part of a reshaped UCLA secondary. — Rittenberg
18. Kansas State: Iowa State
As mentioned above, it’s all about the season opener against Iowa State. It will be the first opportunity for quarterback Avery Johnson and K-State to prove that last year’s all-or-nothing offense has matured a bit. The Wildcats averaged 37.6 points in wins and only 15.8 in losses. They scored TDs on 75% of red zone drives in wins and 42% in losses. They committed more turnovers in the four losses (nine) than in the nine wins (seven). You could almost say that this means K-State’s biggest archrival is K-State. Regardless, Week 0 is enormous. Turnovers and later-down failures cost it dearly against Iowa State last season, and it gets an immediate opportunity to right one of 2024’s wrongs. — Connelly
19. Florida: Georgia
Florida has plenty of teams it considers rivals, but only one on the schedule this season has beaten the Gators four years in a row. That would be Georgia, which has absolutely dominated them since Kirby Smart took over the program in 2016. Smart is 7-2 against Florida, and just like that record, has finished ahead of Florida in the SEC standings seven times. We all know the Gators closed last season strong with big wins over LSU and Ole Miss, but the true litmus test for where this program is — and whether it can return to elite status under coach Billy Napier — is the Georgia game. — Adelson
20. Michigan: Ohio State
Even though the Wolverines have won four straight in the series, Ohio State remains Michigan’s archvillain for obvious reasons. The Buckeyes rattled off eight straight wins before Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh turned the tide in 2021 with the first of the four straight victories. Coach Sherrone Moore salvaged an up-and-down, first full season with a stunning 13-10 victory over Ohio State in Columbus last year. Much of that Ohio State national championship team has moved on to the NFL. But the postgame flag-plant fracas at the Horseshoe last year reinforced why this bitter rivalry has never carried more vitriol for either side. The last thing the Wolverines want this season is to watch Ohio State return the favor by planting its flag on the Block M at the Big House. — Trotter
21. Miami: Syracuse
Georgia Tech is not on the schedule this year or that would be the slam dunk choice. We could go with the obvious “traditional arch nemesis” Notre Dame, which is visiting South Florida for the first time since 2017. But there is another team that gets to wear the villain hat, if only for this season: Syracuse. That’s right, the team that beat Miami 42-38 in the 2024 regular-season finale to keep the Hurricanes out of the ACC championship game visits Hard Rock Stadium on Nov. 8. While both rosters have turned over since that game, the head coaches remain the same and there might be some added fuel to the fire. — Adelson
22. Louisville: Kentucky
In 2022, Louisville was 10-1 and favored against rival Kentucky. The Cardinals lost. In 2021, they were 7-4 and lost. It was an all-too-familiar story. Since 2016, Louisville has lost as a favorite against its rival three times — often sullying otherwise impressive seasons. Last year, the Cardinals had no such worries as they beat up on the Wildcats, who were slogging through a down season, but Jeff Brohm & Co. know the history too well to assume that will be the start of a trend. There are tougher and bigger games on Louisville’s schedule this season, but none that will mean more than beating those hated Cats. — Hale
23. Texas A&M: Steve Sarkisian
Sarkisian has done a masterful job reloading Texas to meet its potential. Last year, he took the Longhorns into Kyle Field and spoiled the Aggies’ chances of getting into the SEC championship game, and this year, A&M visits Austin for the first time since 2010 where Arch Manning hysteria dominates the headlines and the Longhorns will be seeking a coronation for a playoff run. Sarkisian, an avowed fan of college rivalries and traditions, will look to push all the right buttons to ignite his team. — Wilson
24. Ole Miss: Mississippi State
Don’t get anybody in Oxford started on those “dreaded” cowbells clanging away from fans of the “school down south.” That school being bitter rival Mississippi State, whose former coach, Dan Mullen, used to refer to Ole Miss as the “school up north.” Either way, nobody in the SEC is particularly fond of the Mississippi State cowbells, in no way a banned artificial noisemaker. Yes, that’s a joke. But to Ole Miss fans, they would rather hear nails scratching on a chalkboard. The good news for the Rebels is that they’ve lost only once in the past five games between the schools but will get a heavy dose of the cowbells this Nov. 28 in Starkville. — Low
25. Oklahoma: Texas
In the Wishbone era, and then once again after Bob Stoops took over then ceded way to Lincoln Riley, the Oklahoma quarterback position made college football kings. In recent years, Landry Jones, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, Caleb Williams and Dillon Gabriel all put up huge numbers. But the Sooners have fallen back a little and Texas is rolling into the Cotton Bowl with its own football royalty in Arch Manning. Oklahoma needs to right the ship, and all eyes will be on Dallas and where the program stands in the SEC era. — Wilson
It’s posturing season. Major League Baseball’s trade deadline goes through the same mechanics every year. Following June calls to indicate interest in players, early-to-mid-July brings out the first offers, which are inevitably imbalanced toward the teams willing to move players and, accordingly, holding all the leverage.
It’s the reason trades before the All-Star break are rare — and also a reminder that just because a match isn’t there now, it doesn’t preclude one going forward. So many elements play into a deadline (the keenness of teams to send away quality players, the willingness of contenders to make a move over the objection of their analytical model, the standings, recent performance and dozens of others) that to link team and player in a potential deal is a fool’s errand.
Well, consider this slightly foolish. Needs are needs, and even the best teams in baseball have them. Who would be the best players to fill them? This exercise endeavors to answer that.
Below are the 16 teams in MLB with winning records. Certainly a cadre of under-.500 teams — the Texas Rangers, Kansas City Royals, Minnesota Twins, Arizona Diamondbacks chief among them — could work their way into the conversation despite their slow starts. For now, though, these are the best teams baseball has to offer, and for each we found a fit among available players that makes too much sense not to pursue.
Teams are listed in order of record by league.
American League
59-35, first place, AL Central
Weakness: Swing-and-miss relievers
Best match: David Bednar, Pittsburgh Pirates
Cade Smith (Cleveland Guardians) and Griffin Jax (Minnesota Twins) are the right answers, but the likelihood of Detroit pulling off an in-division deal to get a swing-and-miss reliever is minimal. Which leaves Bednar, who has rebounded from an atrocious 2024 to recapture his form of 2021-23, when he was among the five best relievers in baseball. With a high-90s fastball, a hard-breaking curveball and a mean splitter, Bednar’s arsenal would give the Tigers a ninth-inning option beyond Will Vest or Tommy Kahnle.
Beyond the bullpen, the Tigers don’t need much. They can really hit, with eight of their nine regulars sporting slugging percentages of .415 or better. Manager AJ Hinch’s constant tinkering — the most Detroit has used one lineup this year is four times — doesn’t just work, it is an identity the team embraces.
And as much as the Tigers could use capital from their tremendous farm system to add to this team, they don’t necessarily need it. This is the second year of a window that’s bound to last. Securing Bednar’s services for two playoff runs is the sort of incremental step needed to capitalize in a down American League.
55-38, first place, AL West
Weakness: Starting pitching and left-handed hitting
Best match: Seth Lugo, Kansas City Royals
The Astros lost Alex Bregman to free agency, traded Kyle Tucker to the Chicago Cubs, have spent most of the season without Yordan Alvarez, their best hitter, and currently sport a rotation that includes 26- and 28-year-old rookies. There is no reason they should be this good. And yet they are.
So even if the cost is heavy and eats into a farm system that’s among the worst in MLB, targeting a pitcher of Lugo’s ilk would give them among the nastiest postseason rotations in the game and further entrench the Astros as a force. Lugo’s peripherals suggest he’s in line for regression but even if his ERA does jump from its current 2.67 mark, Lugo’s nine-pitch mix gives him the flexibility to adjust in-game — a luxury shared by only a handful of starters in the game.
54-39, first place, American League East
Weakness: Starting pitching
Best match: Mitch Keller, Pittsburgh Pirates
Adding Keller solves multiple problems at once. The 29-year-old is producing the best season of his seven-year career with the Pirates, averaging nearly six innings a start and giving up only seven home runs in 106⅓ innings. The Blue Jays need rotation help — and, in a deal for Keller, could try to get David Bednar, Dennis Santana or Caleb Ferguson from the Pirates to complement an already-good bullpen riding breakouts from Braydon Fisher and Brendon Little.
Further, Keller remains under contract for three years at a reasonable $54.5 million, and with starters Chris Bassitt and Max Scherzer free agents after this year and Kevin Gausman following the 2026 season, Toronto covets controllable starting pitching in a market that, at the moment at least, doesn’t offer much.
Pittsburgh could hold onto Keller and march into 2026 with a staff of Keller, Paul Skenes, Mike Burrows, Bubba Chandler and Bailey Falter — easily a top-10 rotation, maybe better — with Hunter Barco not far behind. But the Pirates desperately need bats and while Toronto’s farm system is not teeming with them, the Blue Jays can cobble together enough to make a deal worth Pittsburgh’s while.
51-41, second place, AL East (first wild card)
Weakness: Third baseman and pitching
Best match: Eugenio Suárez, Arizona Diamondbacks
This could be Seth Lugo. Or Emmanuel Clase of the Guardians. Or any number of players. The Yankees are not going to stop at one player this deadline. For all their strengths — and there are plenty — they have too many weaknesses to take half-measures.
Suárez is an excellent first step. His power is undeniable, a perfect fit in the middle of any lineup. He plays third base, a black hole for New York this season. The Yankees could two-birds-one-stone a deal and get Zac Gallen or Merrill Kelly from Arizona, too. But Suárez is the main target, because even if other third-base options exist — Nolan Arenado in St. Louis, Ryan McMahon in Colorado, Ke’Bryan Hayes in Pittsburgh — they’re owed significant money and are under contract for multiple years. Suárez’s expiring contract would allow the Yankees a trial run, and if he thrives in the Bronx, all they would need to bring him back is cash.
50-43, third place, AL East (second wild card)
Weakness: Relief pitching
Best match: Griffin Jax, Minnesota Twins
Remember, now, this is the best match, not necessarily the likeliest. Minnesota is notoriously value-conscious in its dealings, and the Twins will put an exceptionally high price on Jax, whom they regard as one of the best relievers in baseball — an opinion shared by most teams. With a fastball that sits at 97 mph and a dastardly slider, he is a setup man in name and a closer in stuff — precisely what the Rays, who are missing Manuel Rodriguez and Hunter Bigge, could use.
The Rays aren’t typically the sort of team to overpay for relievers, even ones with two additional years of club control. If not Jax, they could opt for Brock Stewart (Twins), who likewise has a vast array of swing-and-miss stuff — and two more years of team control as well.
48-44, second place, AL West (tied for third wild card)
Weakness: Corner infielder
Best match: Josh Naylor, Arizona Diamondbacks
Though the Mariners are managing with Donovan Solano and Luke Raley at first base, upgrading to Naylor would transform Seattle’s lineup for the better. Whether it’s slotting him behind J.P. Crawford to ensure Cal Raleigh comes to the plate with more baserunners, or sticking him in between Raleigh and Randy Arozarena to do the cleaning up himself, Naylor is a high-average, low-strikeout slugger whose quality at-bats would help transform a solid Seattle lineup into something more.
Pairing him with Eugenio Suárez would plug both of Seattle’s holes, and certainly the Mariners have the prospect capital to pull off the double. Considering the state of their pitching — a tremendous rotation and a Gabe Speier–Matt Brash–Andrés Muñoz endgame — the Mariners need only a depth reliever to feel comfortable. Upgrading the lineup is the distinct priority over the next three weeks, and executives expect Seattle to act aggressively.
49-45, fourth place, AL East (tied for third wild card)
Weakness: Relief pitching
Best match: Ryan Helsley, St. Louis Cardinals
Red Sox relievers walk too many hitters and don’t strike out enough. Take away Aroldis Chapman — the best reliever in the AL this season — and the Red Sox have a middle-of-the-pack bullpen. Getting Helsley from St. Louis would give Boston arguably the top setup-closer combination in baseball and go a long way toward supporting a rotation that has been among the game’s best over the past month.
Boston has the makings of a very good team in the second half. Alex Bregman will return soon. Roman Anthony has an OPS of nearly 1.000 over his past 10 games. Ceddanne Rafaela is one of the best center fielders in baseball. Carlos Narváez is a gem. Wilyer Abreu, Trevor Story, even Abraham Toro — everyone is contributing. A reliever or two and another starter would make the Red Sox the sort of contender they envisioned being at the beginning of the season.
National League
56-38, first place, NL West
Weakness: Pitching depth
Best match: Jhoan Durán, Minnesota Twins
The Dodgers enter every deadline season seeking a major move, and the 6-foot-5, 230-pound Durán qualifies. With a fastball that averages over 100 mph, a splinker that sits at 98 and a curveball to keep hitters off balance, Durán is pitching as well as ever. He hasn’t given up a home run this season, and his 1.52 ERA is third in MLB for pitchers with at least 40 innings.
The asking price will be hefty. Durán comes with two more years of team control beyond this season. The Dodgers don’t have time to waste on taking advantage of Shohei Ohtani‘s prime, though, and assembling a team with standouts in all facets is a reasonable goal. For a group threatening to approach a major league record for pitchers used in a season — the Dodgers are at 35, the record is 42 from Seattle in 2019 — adding another wouldn’t in and of itself be a needle-mover. If that one happens to be Durán, the Dodgers could theoretically trot out him, Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates and Alex Vesia to make their bullpen every bit as scary as the rest of their team.
Chicago Cubs
54-38, first place, NL Central
Weakness: Starting pitching
Best match: Sandy Alcántara, Miami Marlins
The market for Alcántara might not reflect his résumé. A former Cy Young Award winner, the 29-year-old has been arguably the worst pitcher in baseball this season, with an ERA just above 7.22. Some teams — even ones that could desperately use starting pitching — see the remaining two years and $38.3 million on Alcántara’s deal as an impediment to any trade, particularly with Marlins GM Peter Bendix asking for a haul in return.
Whether it’s Alcántara or another starter, the Cubs are a good starter away from having one of the top teams in baseball. Their offense is undeniable. Their defense is magnificent. Their bullpen has been a pleasant surprise. Adding a playoff-caliber starter, even if it pushes Chicago past the $241 million luxury-tax threshold, would reward a team that has brought excitement back to the North Side of Chicago.
54-39, first place, National League East
Weakness: Bullpen and outfield
Best match: Emmanuel Clase, Cleveland Guardians
As long as the Phillies are aiming high — and nobody aims high quite like Dave Dombrowski — perhaps they could take a run at landing both Clase and Steven Kwan from Cleveland. Maybe it would take Andrew Painter. Maybe Aidan Miller. Maybe Justin Crawford. Regardless, the Phillies’ window is closing, and getting both club control (Clase is under contract through 2028 and Kwan through 2027) and cost certainty (Clase is due $26 million for the next three years and Kwan less than $20 million for two) would make dealing high-end prospects significantly more palatable.
If Cleveland ultimately balks at moving Clase, it doesn’t change the imperative: Philadelphia needs to address its weaknesses. This bullpen is not suited to win a playoff series, much less the World Series. The consequence of bad relief pitching manifested itself in the postseason last year, when the New York Mets filleted Phillies relievers for 17 runs in 12⅔ innings. No other bullpen gave up more than nine runs in the division series. Clase (or Jhoan Durán or any shutdown reliever, really) is just a start. An on-the-fly overhaul is what this team needs — and deserves.
53-39, second place, NL East (first wild card)
Weakness: Pitching depth
Best match: Zac Gallen, Arizona Diamondbacks
The Mets started 45-24 on the strength of their starting pitching. With a 2.79 ERA that was nearly a quarter-run better than the second-best rotation, they cut the figure of a juggernaut. Since June 13, their starters’ 5.61 ERA is worse than every team in baseball aside from Washington. And if your starters are getting compared to those of the Nationals, something went haywire.
Gallen has looked more like his old self in recent starts, and if his home run rate stabilizes — typically one per nine, it has jumped to 1.6 — alongside a perilously low strand rate normalizing, he can shake off the 5.15 ERA and be a real difference-maker for the Mets before hitting free agency after the season. Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns doesn’t, as a general rule, spend big on pitching. In this case, though, an investment in Gallen makes too much sense for the Mets not to consider.
53-40, second place, NL Central (second wild card)
Weakness: Power
Best match: Ryan O’Hearn, Baltimore Orioles
With 88 home runs, the Brewers rank just 21st in MLB. And while that hasn’t impeded their production — they’re eighth in runs scored — another big bat could do their offense wonders. Nobody will mistake the soon-to-be-32-year-old O’Hearn for Aaron Judge, but he punishes right-handed pitching, and in a lineup without any boppers, O’Hearn also could serve as the strong side of a first-base platoon and pick up outfield and DH at-bats.
Milwaukee’s options are fascinating. Jacob Misiorowski‘s arrival has been an unmitigated success and only added to the Brewers’ starting pitching depth. They could easily move a starting pitcher and tap into their deep prospect well for O’Hearn. The add-and-subtract maneuver is risky, sure, but the Brewers have steeled themselves to weather it. The Brewers, as currently constituted, are solid. Better second halves from Jackson Chourio and Joey Ortiz, continued solid pitching and the proper sort of deadline aggressiveness could make them even more.
51-43, second place, NL West (third wild card)
Weakness: Starting pitching
Best match: Merrill Kelly, Arizona Diamondbacks
The Giants made their big move already, getting the best player who will move this season — designated hitter Rafael Devers — to shore up their offense. Intradivision trades can be trying, but if Buster Posey has shown anything in his first season as president of baseball operations, it’s a willingness to stomach the sorts of deals that would scare off his peers.
Kelly represents a significant upgrade over the Giants’ backend rotation options, as Justin Verlander and Hayden Birdsong are sporting ERAs of 6.27 and 5.73, respectively, since June 1. Whether the Giants are real or simply a function of a bullpen whose core of Camilo Doval, Randy Rodriguez, Tyler Rogers, Erik Miller, Spencer Bivens and Ryan Walker has given up only 11 home runs in 232⅔ innings remains to be seen. For an organization seeking its first postseason series win in nearly a decade, though, there is never a time as urgent as now.
49-43, third place, NL West (one game behind third wild card)
Weakness: Left field
Best match: Jarren Duran, Boston Red Sox
No player and team have been linked as strongly as Duran and the Padres — and that’s without any knowledge of how the Red Sox intend to handle the deadline. Roman Anthony’s emergence has put Boston in a position to float Duran and Wilyer Abreu in trade discussions, and whether it’s now or over the winter, Boston wants to use its surplus of bats to fill voids elsewhere.
Left field in San Diego is among the biggest voids in the game. The Padres have tried eight players in left this season, and collectively they’re barely have an OPS of over .600. A Duran-Jackson Merrill–Fernando Tatis Jr. outfield would be a factory of dynamism that would be under team control through the end of the 2028 season. The Padres might need to get creative — beyond shortstop Leo De Vries (who’s believed to be off-limits) and catcher Ethan Salas, their farm system is middling — but nobody does creativity like GM A.J. Preller. And whether that means facilitating a deal through a third team or including one of their high-leverage relievers like closer Robert Suárez, San Diego is willing to go places most other organizations would never consider.
49-44, third place, NL Central (1½ games behind third wild card)
Weakness: Starting pitching
Best match: Taj Bradley, Tampa Bay Rays
Certainly there’s a world in which John Mozeliak’s final deadline as St. Louis’ president of baseball operations is uneventful. The NL is stacked, and for all of the Cardinals’ improvement this season, they remain a flawed team. And yet there’s also a world in which Mozeliak can make this year’s team better and simultaneously set up his successor, Chaim Bloom, with a rotation option for the future.
The Rays don’t have a strong desire to move the 24-year-old Bradley, but with Drew Rasmussen, Ryan Pepiot, Shane Baz and Joe Boyle all pitching well, and ace Shane McClanahan out on a rehabilitation assignment, Tampa Bay is at least entertaining the idea. Bradley’s stuff has exceeded his performance over his three major league seasons, but the controllable-starting-pitching market is practically empty, and St. Louis’ farm system is replete with high-end catchers, which would fill a vacuum for the Rays
47-46, fourth place, NL Central (3½ games behind third wild card)
Weakness: Bullpen and big bat
Best match: Steven Kwan, Cleveland Guardians
With a sneaky-deep farm system, the Reds could put together the sort of package to convince Cleveland to move Kwan, a two-time All-Star who in his four seasons ranks fifth in wins above replacement among all outfielders, behind only Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Kyle Tucker and Julio Rodríguez. Kwan’s bat-to-ball and defensive skills in left field are elite, and with free agency not beckoning until after the 2027 season, sandwiching him between TJ Friedl and Elly De La Cruz strengthens a Reds lineup that could use an offensive infusion.
If the cost to acquire Kwan is too high, other good options exist, chief among them Marcell Ozuna, the Atlanta slugger whose swing was built for Great American Ball Park. With a rotation that includes All-Star Andrew Abbott, Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo and Chase Burns, the Reds are a terrifying postseason opponent. Another bat would buttress the rotation and give Cincinnati an opportunity to turn potential into its first postseason series win in three decades.
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David Schoenfield
Comparing MLB to the NBA is kind of like comparing apples to pomegranates, but the NBA, with its rapid-fire spate of blockbuster trades and signings, certainly has us wishing major league front office executives operated as daringly as their basketball counterparts.
The conservative nature in baseball is understandable. Nobody wants to end up as the general manager who trades Pete Crow-Armstrong for two months of Javier Baez and a failed playoff bid.
But every now and then we get a shocking deal. At the MLB trade deadline in 2022, the San Diego Padres gave up five highly rated young players to acquire Juan Soto, who still had two-plus seasons left of team control. Three of those young players — James Wood, MacKenzie Gore and CJ Abrams — now form the core of the Washington Nationals. And just a few weeks ago came the surprise mid-June trade of Rafael Devers, in only the second year of a 10-year contract, from the Boston Red Sox to the San Francisco Giants.
Might another similarly entertaining megadeal occur this month ahead of the deadline on July 31? Probably not, but we can dream.
Let’s consider three players who almost certainly won’t be made available for trade this year, but whose names have been kicked around in (quite unlikely) fan trade scenarios. If the right offer did arrive, the player’s organization would have to at least consider making the deal … right?
Call them Godfather offers. Let’s see what it would take to land three star players in 2025.
(All prospect rankings are from Kiley McDaniel’s top 50 update from late May.)
Why they’ll probably keep him: He’s arguably the best starter in baseball, perhaps on his way to a Cy Young Award in his first full season. He’s one of the biggest names in the sport — despite playing for the lowly Pirates — and a player you can build not only a pitching staff around but a championship contender. He’s under team control through 2029 and doesn’t even become arbitration-eligible until 2027, so the Pirates are still years away from paying him a fair salary.
But Skenes is a pitcher — and pitchers get hurt. So, if the Pirates are open to listening …
Offer No. 1: New York Mets offer SS/CF Jett Williams (No. 20), RHP Jonah Tong (No. 50), RHP Nolan McLean, IF Ronny Mauricio, OF Carson Benge
Offer No. 2: Los Angeles Dodgers offer C/OF Dalton Rushing (No. 14), OF Josue De Paula (No. 17), IF Alex Freeland, RHP Emmet Sheehan, LHP Jackson Ferris
Offer No. 3: Detroit Tigers offer OF Max Clark (No. 8), SS Kevin McGonigle (No. 11), RHP Jackson Jobe, IF Colt Keith, RHP Sawyer Gipson-Long
The one that could get it done: Tigers
A playoff rotation with Skenes and Tarik Skubal? Thank you very much. Reminder: The Tigers haven’t won the World Series since 1984.
It will take one of the best farm systems in the sport to acquire Skenes, and Detroit is incredibly well positioned to make this kind of deal, with depth at both the major league and minor league levels, not to mention a payroll with only one expensive long-term commitment in Javier Baez. Two of the top prospects in the sport in Clark and McGonigle headline this trade, with both currently excelling in High-A ball. Clark, a speedy center fielder, has a .429 OBP with more walks than strikeouts, and McGonigle is hitting .373 with a high contact rate and OPS over 1.100. Former top pitching prospect Jobe underwent Tommy John surgery in June and would be a nice inclusion for the Pirates to gamble on.
For the Tigers, the deal wouldn’t even decimate their farm system. They would still have shortstop Bryce Rainer (No. 22), first baseman/catcher Josue Briceno and a slew of solid pitching prospects. For the Pirates, Clark and McGonigle project as solutions at two problem areas in center field (where Oneil Cruz has struggled defensively) and shortstop (stopgap Isiah Kiner-Falefa is the current starter) plus they get a solid major leaguer in Keith and a back-end rotation-type in Gipson-Long.
As much as the Mets could use a staff ace, their system is deeper in pitching prospects, which doesn’t best align with the Pirates’ needs. As the Dodgers’ pitching injuries have piled up again, Skenes could be a match. Rushing is blocked at catcher by Will Smith, and he and De Paula probably have more power upside (De Paula has drawn Yordan Alvarez comparisons) than Clark and McGonigle. The Pirates might, understandably, ask for Roki Sasaki, and that could be the deal-breaker for the Dodgers.
Why they’ll probably keep him: Acuña has been one of the best hitters in the majors since returning in late May from his second ACL surgery and has been the best hitter on a Braves team that is near the bottom of the National League in runs scored. He is signed through 2028 on an incredibly team-friendly deal that pays him just $17 million per season — making it one of the best contracts in the sport for a team. At just 27 years old, he remains in the middle of his prime and is one of the sport’s most dynamic talents.
But Acuña’s knees are a long-term concern, Atlanta lacks depth in both the lineup and pitching staff, and this looks like a lost season.
So, if the Braves are open to listening …
Offer No. 1: Milwaukee Brewers offer SS Jesus Made (No. 5), SS Luis Pena, OF Sal Frelick, RHP Logan Henderson, RHP Abner Uribe
Offer No. 2: Seattle Mariners offer SS Colt Emerson (No. 10), RHP Bryce Miller, C Harry Ford, OF Lazaro Montes, LHP Brandyn Garcia
Offer No. 3: Tampa Bay Rays offer SS Carson Willliams (No. 27), RHP Shane Baz, OF Theo Gillen, RHP Yoniel Curet, RHP Brody Hopkins
The one that could get it done: Mariners
The Mariners have never played in a World Series. Their right-field production is among the worst in the majors. Oh, and they have a loaded farm system with nine prospects on MLB.com’s recently updated top 100, more than any other team. On that list, Emerson came in at No. 18, Montes at No. 29 and Ford at No. 56. Miller’s value is temporarily down since he’s out because of right elbow inflammation, but he had a 2.94 ERA for the Mariners in 2024 and could give the Braves a front-line starter if healthy.
Ford might not be a perfect fit for Atlanta with Drake Baldwin (plus Sean Murphy) at catcher, but Cal Raleigh blocks Ford in Seattle. The Braves could trade Murphy in the offseason, and Ford does have the athleticism to play some outfield — although he has played exclusively behind the plate at Triple-A, where he’s hitting over .300 with an OBP over .400. Emerson is a favorite of scouts with his hard contact and ability to play shortstop, although he’s still learning to lift the ball more, while Montes recently earned a promotion to Double-A after slugging .572 in High-A at age 20.
For the Mariners, Acuña would fit nicely at the top of the order or hitting second in front of Raleigh, allowing them to slide Julio Rodriguez lower in the lineup — and maybe Acuña’s presence would also help take some pressure off Rodriguez. Most importantly: Acuña’s salary is a realistic fit even for the Mariners, who don’t like to spend. And despite giving up three excellent prospects and a young starting pitcher, their farm system would remain strong. Plus, they have the No. 3 pick in this year’s draft.
Milwaukee’s offer is enticing with two premium hitting prospects in Made and Pena, but it’s a riskier package as the 18-year-olds are a long way from the majors and neither is a lock to stick at shortstop, a big offensive hole in the Braves’ lineup. Williams would be the key to the Tampa Bay trade, but his sky-high strikeout rate at Triple-A has caused him to drop in the rankings and limits his offensive upside.
Why they’ll probably keep him: The Twins are under .500, but that doesn’t mean they’re out of the playoff race. Buxton has been their best player and best hitter as he’s on pace for a career high in WAR. Though he hasn’t reached the heights of Acuña at Acuña’s best, Buxton’s contract is also team friendly, as he’s signed through 2028 and making $15.1 million per season. He’s 31 years old but is still one of the better defensive center fielders in the game.
But Buxton, while healthy in 2025, is frequently sidelined by injuries. So, if the Twins are open to listening …
Offer No. 1: Philadelphia Phillies offer RHP Andrew Painter (No. 23) and OF Justin Crawford
Offer No. 2: Cincinnati Reds offer RHP Rhett Lowder (No. 48), RHP Chase Petty (No. 49) and 3B Sal Stewart
Offer No. 3: Kansas City Royals offer LHP Cole Ragans and LHP David Shields
The one that could get it done: Phillies
The Phillies, Reds and Royals all could use an outfielder to add some punch to their lineups, although in Cincinnati’s case, its biggest hole is at third base. Philadelphia has a lot riding on 2025 given the age of its lineup, and executive Dave Dombrowski knows how to go all-in. In this case, that would mean parting with one of the top pitching prospects in the game in Painter, plus a promising young outfielder hitting well at Triple-A.
Trading Painter would be painful, but the Phillies remain deep in the rotation with Zack Wheeler (signed through 2027), Cristopher Sanchez (signed through 2030), Aaron Nola (signed through 2030) and Jesus Luzardo (under team control through 2026). Ranger Suarez, who’s having an excellent season, is heading into free agency, so he’s the one arm they might lose. But center field has been a soft spot in recent seasons, with the Phillies in the bottom third in the majors in OPS this year, and the team’s overall power output has been below average, even with Kyle Schwarber. Adding Buxton adds more pop to the middle of the order.
Painter gives the Twins a potential ace, and they have top prospect Emmanuel Rodriguez ready to take over in center field anyway. The 21-year-old Crawford is a divisive prospect (he’s No. 49 in the MLB.com rankings) because while he’s hitting for a high average at Triple-A Lehigh Valley, he hits the ball on the ground too much and has only two home runs. Still, there’s a chance he produces a good OBP and plus defense with his speed.
The Royals’ challenge trade with Ragans is intriguing but risky for Minnesota, given he’s on the injured list right now because of a rotator cuff strain. Plus, intradivision trades are hard to pull off. The Twins would want Chase Burns from the Reds, but that’s probably a nonstarter for Cincinnati.
Will we get some surprise spicy deals this trade deadline? Will it just be the usual list of free-agents-to-be and relief pitchers? In a season that remains so wide open, the time might be right for some outside-the-box movement.
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