Welcome to Silly Season, the time of year when trade speculation abounds, and unsubstantiated rumors flourish. Social media is rife with posts about trade possibilities; accounts you never heard of claim to have inside knowledge; and talk-show hosts on TV, radio, and podcasts run with ideas that have no basis in reality.

So here’s your friendly reminder: ignore the noise. Most of it is garbage. We’ve run this site for eight trade deadline periods, and in that timeframe, we've learned a few things.

 

Real trades bear no resemblance to rumored trades.

Virtually every real trade is negotiated privately, and leaks have become less of a thing. This means that a floated rumor almost never comes to pass, and that the real deal is surprisingly different. 

This summer, you will hear lots of rumors about Tarik Skubal – the destination, the return packages, etc. – but if and when a deal finally goes down, it won’t look anything like what you thought.

Similarly, there will be a lot of trades of players who no one is talking about at all. 

Reliever trades, for example, will often look surprising – but not the way you think. Some team will trade a decent prospect for an under-the-radar bullpen arm whose surface stats may not impress you. But look again at his Baseball Savant page, and you’ll probably see a lot of red – and that will explain the appeal to the acquiring team.

Similarly, a big-name reliever might get traded, but not for the “haul” you’ve been led to believe. That’s because other factors will weigh on it (age, salary, inconsistent track record, among others). Teams always due their due diligence before executing deals, so a shiny ERA is not the only thing that matters.

 

Social media influencers -- and many baseball journalists -- are incentivized to create noise. 

Be wary of the telephone game. One reporter posts that Team A is “interested” in these players. Social media then runs with that, and amplifies it. Average fans weigh in, thinking that’s a real package being offered. They argue about it, and get very vocal, which triggers still more threads. This goes on for a few days, until the next rumor surfaces.

In fact, there was no such deal on the table in the first place.

After eight years of doing this, I’m surprised that fans still fall for these tricks. Engagement farming is a staple of social media, and trade season is a perfect vehicle for it.

 

Most trades are fair. 

Here’s what happens every year: Our model is right roughly 85% of the time during deadline season, year in, year out. We’ve done this for eight years, and it’s the same pattern every time. 

Here’s a link to our recap of last year’s deadline: https://baseballtradevalues.com/articles/2025-trade-deadline-analysis-how-did-our-model-do

There were 64 trades. We got 57 of them right, for a hit rate of 88%. Some of the biggest ones accepted by our model last year included Carlos Correa, Mason Miller, Josh Naylor, Jhoan Duran, Ryan O'Hearn, Harrison Bader, and Seranthony Dominguez.

It’s a bell curve. Most trades fall within “fair” territory. Some fall outside of it, but as reasonable overpays. A few others are rejected as a bit too far afield – in these cases, there are usually baseball reasons that justify those. But even those are the exceptions, not the rule.

And looking at last year’s exceptions, one could argue that we were right on most of those as well (in other words, the acquiring teams should have listened to us instead of overpaying): These include the Yankees’ trade for Ryan McMahon; the Reds’ acquisition of Ke’Bryan Hayes; and the Red Sox trading hot prospect James Tibbs III for two months of Dustin May.

 

Teams’ models are similar to our models.

All teams have their own analytics departments – some are more sophisticated than others. The numbers they use are similar to ours. Most of them have accounts with us, and follow us not as a replacement for their own numbers, but as a gut check, a second pair of eyes. One team has one of our former guys working for them; we also have a former MLB team staffer on our team. We’re well connected with the baseball industry, and we know how it works. So when it comes to player valuations, we’re generally in the same ballpark.

 

So keep your head.

It's our favorite time of year -- the trade market is the only avenue available for teams to either improve for the stretch run, or re-gear for next season. But it's also a bit crazy. It can be tempting to fall for every rumor.

So we're here to help guide you through it. By this point, we're pretty sure we know what we’re doing.