The MLB trade deadline is supposed to be the time when contenders patch the leaks, add a little punch, and make a clean run at October. On August 3, plenty of teams did exactly that. But a few of the biggest names changed uniforms only to bring more frustration than relief.
With roughly 50 games still left in the regular season, none of these moves are fully written in ink yet. Still, the early returns have been ugly enough to stand out. And since this is about players already in the big leagues, struggling or injured prospects are off the board.
For the White Sox, the deadline brought Joey Bart in from the Braves as a much-needed answer behind the plate. Chicago has been one of the season’s best stories, sitting in the driver’s seat of the AL Central since early July just two years after going 41-121 and setting the MLB’s single-season loss record.
But the catcher spot has been a mess. Kyle Teel was lost to a Grade 2 right hamstring strain while trying to beat out a double for Team Italy in the World Baseball Classic, then returned briefly before a high-ankle sprain sent him back to the IL.
In the meantime, Edgar Quero and Drew Romo have struggled, and Chicago has the worst OPS in the MLB at catcher. Bart was supposed to steady things.
Instead, he fractured his hand after a HBP and joined Teel on the shelf, leaving the White Sox right back where they started with the Quero-Romo pairing.
Tampa Bay went shopping for rotation help, bringing in Freddy Peralta from the New York Mets as the Rays tried to hold off the Yankees and Red Sox in an AL East race that has become a grind. The Rays were in first place at the deadline, but they didn’t have the same kind of offensive firepower as their division rivals, so the move was meant to give the staff some backbone for the stretch run.
It hasn’t worked out that way. Peralta has made two starts for Tampa Bay and thrown 9.2 innings while allowing 10 earned runs.
The Rays are still finding ways to win, but they’re doing it in spite of him, not because of him - a formula that usually doesn’t hold up for long.
And then there’s the one that really turned heads: Tarik Skubal landing with the Dodgers. Los Angeles’ acquisition of the two-time Cy Young winner from the Tigers was the deadline’s most controversial move, the kind that sparked serious talk about whether the MLB was “broken.”
On paper, it looked like the kind of addition that could lock up a third straight World Series for LA. Instead, Skubal has been merely fine so far, giving up five earned runs in 11 innings across two starts.
That’s not disastrous, but it’s not the impact the Dodgers paid for. Worse for Los Angeles, the team has only three wins since the deadline and now heads into Wednesday needing the Wild Card round in the postseason.
For a move that seemed like a slam dunk at the time, the early results have been stunningly ordinary.
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