Get ready: There are just 40 days until the MLB trade deadline, and there are still several teams whose futures look uncertain. Buy? Sell? Neither? Here’s a look at some of the clubs on the bubble.
Cleveland Guardians
On one hand, Cleveland could easily win the AL Central, just as it did last year. While the team has not been in first place since early April, it currently sits just one game back of Minnesota, which is not exactly an unstoppable juggernaut.
On the other hand … this division is so weak that winning it doesn’t necessarily mean very much. It seems hard to believe that a team with an offense like the Guardians’ could make any kind of serious run, even if they do handily win the division, and so they may look to sell.
The interest in a player like Shane Bieber—who will become a free agent ahead of 2025—could make it hard to pass up a trade. He’d easily yield an impressive return in a market thin on high-quality starters. (Even in an uncharacteristically down year by his standards, Bieber has a 118 ERA+ and is top five in MLB in innings per start.)
A big sell-off seems unlikely in any event for the Guardians. But dealing Bieber or someone else from this pitching staff feels entirely possible … even if they’re in first place.
John Minchillo/AP
Seattle Mariners
This season has held plenty in the way of frustrating, underperforming teams, but there may not be one that has frustrated in quite the same way as the Mariners.
After ending their lengthy playoff drought last year, seemingly poised to make another run at October, they’ve instead found themselves in no-man’s-land, right around .500. They haven’t been bad enough to be truly bad. (All of that talent from last year is still here!) But they haven’t been good, either, and the result is a squad whose direction looks unclear.
They’re only a few games out of the wild-card race, and with the addition of an extra bat or two, it’s not hard to see room for a run here. (And with a 94 team OPS+, Seattle really does need that extra offense.) But it feels hard to imagine this front office going big at the deadline the way it did last year with Luis Castillo—which could mean they end up going the other way entirely if the M’s don’t make up much ground in the next few weeks.
If Seattle sells, Teoscar Hernández is one name to watch: The outfielder is in his walk year and could fetch a nice return from contenders looking to bolster their lineup.
New York Mets
It’s hard to believe the Mets would sell. This team was assembled to be a World Series contender, after all, and a good portion of their lackluster start has been due to injuries that may not plague them as much in the second half. To sell off at the deadline—to admit defeat on a roster to which they committed this much—would certainly be a surprise.
And yet … look at their record. The Mets are six games below .500 and have been hovering at roughly seven games out of the last wild-card berth. A comeback isn’t out of the question, especially if they choose to add at the deadline and particularly if they can bolster their rotation with some depth pieces. (You don’t have to leave the Mets’ division for proof of just how drastically teams can turn around a bleak first half: Just look at the 2022 Phillies or the ‘21 Braves.) But it would be an uphill climb. And that might be enough to get them looking the other way.
The Mets almost certainly wouldn’t deal from their core—even if their record gets much worse in the next few weeks—but it doesn’t take much to see them pivoting and figuring out what they might be able to get from walk-year players like David Robertson and Tommy Pham.
The Entire NL Central
It’s impossible to pick just one team here. The NL Central is the most closely packed of any division: The five clubs are separated by just nine games. That could be the basis for deadline drama all on its own—but for these teams to be not just so tightly clustered, but in this order? Yeah, it’s going to be messy.
The club that began the season with the highest playoff odds is the Cardinals, who are now in last place, and the club that began the season with the lowest playoff odds are the Reds, who are now in first place. Of course, St. Louis still has all of that core talent, as much as it has underperformed this year, while Cincinnati is riding an 11-game win streak that can’t last forever.
And looking beyond win-loss records doesn’t offer very much clarity here: Four of the five teams have negative run differentials, and the only exception is the Cubs, who have been stuck in the middle of the pack all year in the standings. This could be anyone’s division in the end, which makes it especially tricky to parse deadline motivations.
None of these teams would really be in a spot to push all their chips in and go for it in a big way this year. But any of them could theoretically end up in a place to chase some modest upgrades … or begin selling off … or anything in between. The next few weeks will have to be clarifying here.
