How did our model do at the 2025 deadline?

 

Starting with the Josh Naylor trade, here’s the scorecard:

 

Number of trades: 64

Number accepted by the model: 57

Acceptance rate: 88%

Average value variance per deal: 3.5

 

We’re pretty happy with that. The trade market is inherently inefficient, and there are multiple variables involved, so to go 57-7 feels good.

Also, it’s a bit of an improvement on last year, where our acceptance rate was 83% and the average variance was 3.7.

 

Wins: Significant trades on which our model was very close – aka “fair deals” (bigger names in bold):

Amed Rosario, Erick Fedde, Tristan Gray, Brewer Hicklen, Chris Paddack, Nick Fortes, Seranthony Dominguez, Austin Slater, Tyler Kinley, Luis Garcia/Andrew Chafin, Caleb Ferguson, Jhoan Duran, Mike Soroka, Rafael Montero, Zack Littell, Feduccia, Ramon Urias, Steven Matz, Paul Sewald, Kyle Finnegan, Harrison Bader, Codi Heuer, Freddy Fermin, Cedric Mullins, Danny Coulombe, Alex Call, Ryan O’Hearn/Ramon Laureano, Oswald Peraza, Willi Castro, Miguel Andujar, Taylor Rogers (to the Cubs), Phil Maton, Griffin Jax/Taj Bradley, Louis Varland, Adrian Houser/Curtis Mead, Matt Manning, Camilo Doval, Mike Yastrzemski, Carlos Correa, Shelby Miller

 

Borderline calls: Significant trades marginally accepted by our model as overpays within reason:

Josh Naylor, Gregory Soto, Randal Grichuk, Danny Jansen, Ryan Helsley, Eugenio Suarez, Andrew Kittredge, Mason Miller, Brock Stewart, Jake Bird, Jesus Sanchez, Will Wagner, Bailey Falter, Jose Caballero, Nestor Cortes, Charlie Morton

 

Misses: Significant trades rejected by our model as unreasonable overpays:

Ryan McMahon, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Tyler Rogers, Shane Bieber, David Bednar, Merrill Kelly, Dustin May

 

Overall, it was a more balanced market this year than in others. There were 15 buyers, 14 sellers, and one (the Rays) doing a bit of both. That kept prices somewhat in check, as there was enough inventory on the supply side to mitigate the bid prices on the demand side. Further, some of the buyers (like the Red Sox and Cubs) stuck to their principles and refused to overpay, if reports are correct, which also kept a lid on craziness.

From a modeling perspective, things went mostly according to form. Where we were off here and there, it was by a matter of degrees – with one exception (see below). 

Common themes

 

Players with question marks stayed put

Luis Robert Jr. and Sandy Alcantara, both of whom struggled this year, stayed with their current teams because there was too big a gap between the bid and the ask. The White Sox and Marlins priced each player based on upside; other teams priced them based more on current lackluster performance. 

In the case of the Marlins, they should be fine waiting for another opportunity, since Alcantara may be on a gradual improvement path, and they have him under control for two years after this one. 

The White Sox, however, may have to exercise their $20M option on Robert just to see if he can improve enough to trade either in the offseason or at next year’s deadline. That’s a gamble, though, as our model projects him to be worth $10.6M at his current run rate. So even if he turns on the jets, that’s a big mountain to climb. The other option is to just let him walk and eat the $2M buyout.

 

The Carlos Correa deal

This trade looks simple on the surface – we had Correa’s contract underwater at -35.1, and the Twins kicked in $33M to get a non-prospect in return, making this a straightforward salary dump. However, the devil is in the details of how we got to that number and how the money from the Twins changes things.

Correa’s contract is front-loaded, with heavy salary years early in the guaranteed portion, and lighter salary years later that come as team options starting in 2029. Here’s how it breaks down value-wise, pre-trade:

 

 

Now let’s look at it after accounting for the $33M the Twins are sending to the Astros, which breaks down as $3M in 2025, then $10M in each of 2026, 2027, and 2028:

 

 

It’s a pretty friendly deal now for Houston, which is why they agreed to it. The upfront years are now close to fair value, and the option years are close enough that it might be worth it to exercise them, especially since the salary obligations decline in accordance with Correa’s expected age decline. And if Correa is injured or performing badly, they can just let him walk at that point. So there’s not much downside now.

 

Guardians get Blue Jays to overpay on a questionable contract for the third time in the past 12 months

The Shane Bieber trade makes sense for the Blue Jays from a baseball perspective – they get a former Cy Young Award winner to help them down the stretch. But from a trade value perspective, it’s not great. They took on a questionable contract from Cleveland – yet again. (This past offseason, they took both the sizably underwater contract of Andres Gimenez and the smaller, yet still underwater, contract of Myles Straw from the Guardians.)

Bieber is effectively a rental, as he has a player option for 2026 that is all upside for him, all downside for the team. It comes with a $4M buyout. So if he performs poorly in his comeback from TJS, he will likely exercise it, and the Jays will be on the hook for a questionable performer for $16M. If he performs well, he’ll opt out, and the Jays will be on the hook for the $4M buyout. At that point, Bieber would only need a free agent deal worth more than $12M to break even, which seems likely. Therefore, the Jays are paying $7.3M total for 2+ months of a pitcher who’s just coming off a major injury. And they paid a hefty price in prospect capital to boot, as the main piece going to Cleveland is Khal Stephen, who has a lot of upside.

 

Preller gonna Preller

Leodalis De Vries is one of the top prospects in baseball – likely a future star (he’s been hailed as the next Francisco Lindor). As such, he was reportedly “untouchable” in all trade discussions. Until he wasn’t. Padres GM A.J. Preller, after the market confirmed that De Vries was the only real valuable trade chip he had, relented and included him as the lead piece in the Mason Miller deal. (Presumably, his other top prospect, Ethan Salas, is of less interest to other teams as he hasn’t shown yet that he can hit and he’s been out with a back injury.) This trade, along with the O'Hearn/Laureano deal to a lesser extent, wiped out most of what was left of a barren San Diego farm, which is now dead last in our Team Rankings of farm systems.

Does Preller care? No, apparently not, because he cares more about winning a championship, and he’s supremely confident that, when the time comes, he can rebuild his farm, as he’s done a few times in the past. Damn the torpedoes, A.J.

 

That Tyler Rogers Trade

No trade shocked us more than the Mets’ acquisition of Tyler Rogers from the Giants, which turned out to be the biggest miss of this deadline season. Sure, he’s an excellent reliever, and super fun to watch with his funky submarine delivery. And we get that the Mets are all-in and willing to overpay for an arm that has been, for the most part, very consistent (unlike most relievers). 

We’re also willing to concede that we were low on Rogers’ valuation, which is based mostly on projection systems anticipating negative regression. And we’ve been monitoring the reliever market in particular, to understand whether smarter teams are valuing under-the-hood metrics more than other stats. That likely played into things here, too, as Rogers’ Statcast numbers are excellent. (For the record, we do factor in Statcast numbers for relievers, but the question is whether we are weighting them as much as some other teams’ models are.)

Even so, Rogers is a pure rental, and to give up three players (swingman Jose Butto, OF prospect Drew Gilbert, and pitching prospect Blade Tidwell) for him is an extreme case. All three players traded have their warts, to be sure (Butto is out of options, the other two have not performed as well they’d hoped), but in aggregate, any reasonable modeler has to figure some combination of them is going to contribute much more value in the long run than two months of a setup man, however good he is. Still, the Mets want to win, so price be damned here.

 

Other quick observations:

• The reliever market was hot, but outside of the above trade, mostly reasonable. The Jhoan Duran trade was surprisingly fair. Miller is elite, and garnered an elite prospect (and the A's should be commended for selling high, essentially selling him at last year's value, as he's declined a bit this year). Griffin Jax has great underlying metrics, and that attracted the savvy Rays to him, in another fair deal. But the Rockies should have gotten more for Jake Bird.

• The Mariners’ farm is ridiculous, so it was a mild surprise they didn’t trade more from it, as there’s a logjam coming. The prospect prices they paid for Suarez and Naylor barely made a dent in their system.

• Similarly, the Mets did not trade anyone from their logjam of young infielders (Vientos, Acuna, Baty, Mauricio), and they’re not going to be able to play them all. There’s got to be an offseason move coming.

 

Lastly…

As a reminder, most trades are largely based on surplus value, and fall into a fairly standard range. It’s a bell curve. But there are outliers, because it’s not an efficient market, and there are human beings involved, who have different goals and motivations. Buyers will prioritize field value, because they’re trying to win now; sellers will prioritize surplus value, because it’s part of the cost of acquisition. They usually meet in the middle, but not always. This year, most of them did.