Deadline fallout colors wild MLB weekend. Plus: Series to follow this week

New York Times

3 hours ago

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Baseball let its hair down on Friday after an exhausting Thursday deadline. It got a little out of control, actually.
Plus: Ken has notes on the Diamondbacks, we dig a little deeper into the Twins' postmortem and we look forward to this week's action as playoff races heat up. I'm Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal — welcome to The Windup!
Yankees and Pirates fans, avert your eyes, but the weekend got started with two games that are destined for the paragraphs of a Jayson Stark column.
Yankees additions had a rough landing: On Friday, all four of the Yankees' Thursday trade additions were activated, then played pivotal roles in the game. Just … not in the way they hoped.
What a brutally bizarre collective debut. But while Friday was a weird one, you can chalk up Saturday's loss — in part — to an old familiar foe: unforced errors. In this case, it was Jazz Chisholm Jr. getting doubled off first base on a popup to the second baseman.
The final result: The Marlins swept the Yankees for the first time in franchise history. Which is a little weird, because the sweep also made them the only MLB team with an all-time winning record against the Yankees, at 25-24. (And the 55-55 Marlins are now .500 for the first time since early April.)
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As beat writer Chris Kirschner says: New York traded for some new players, but it didn't seem to acquire any urgency at the deadline.
Pirates led by nine five eight six nine (again), still lost. After keeping most of their players through the deadline, the Pirates jumped out to a 9-0 lead in the top of the first inning in Colorado on Friday. Oneil Cruz hit a grand slam! Andrew McCutchen hit a three-run homer! In the bottom half of the inning, Cruz made this jaw-dropping throw to nab Brenton Doyle at third base.
That should do it, right? I mean … it's the Rockies. Except it's also the Pirates.
That's two of the worst teams in baseball combining for 33 runs on 40 hits. Doyle hit the walk-off home run to seal the Rockies' win.
Honorable mention — Saturday's Speedway Classic (suspended). The on-field action between the Braves and Reds was nothing out of the ordinary (nothing like Thursday, when both teams scored eight runs in the eighth inning). But after selling more than 85,000 tickets to see an MLB game at Bristol Motor Speedway, the league had to suspend the game when the rain wouldn't stop Saturday. So everyone had to figure out if they wanted to stick around for another day to see Sunday's conclusion — a ho-hum 4-2 win by the Braves.
The official attendance for the game was listed at 91,032. Tyler Stephenson's Ricky Bobby-inspired catcher's gear was a nice touch.
Even after trading first baseman Josh Naylor on July 24, the Arizona Diamondbacks were not committed to selling. But after a 1-0 victory in 11 innings over Pittsburgh the next day, the D-Backs lost five straight to the Pirates and Tigers, scoring a total of five runs. Their streak extended to six games the day after the deadline with a 1-0 loss to the Athletics.
Even if they avoided selling, the Diamondbacks would have been ill-advised to part with the prospects necessary to rebuild their bullpen and contend. So, they ended up trading outfielder Randal Grichuk, third baseman Eugenio Suárez and right-hander Merrill Kelly, plus reliever Shelby Miller and lefty Jordan Montgomery.
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Most in the industry perceived the return for Kelly as superior to those for Naylor and Suárez, a reflection, in part, of the price for quality starting pitching. Other factors beyond the D-Backs' control also contributed to the market for their players being perhaps less robust than they anticipated.
Buyers were distracted by the availability of big names, from those who were traded like Carlos Correa and Mason Miller to those who were not like MacKenzie Gore and Sandy Alcantara. The last-minute decisions by the Twins and Giants also increased the supply of available players, hurting the other sellers.
The Diamondbacks' most unusual deal was the one in which they sent two injured pitchers, Miller and Montgomery, to the Brewers for a player to be named or cash considerations.
Miller is on the injured list with a strained right forearm but expected to return sometime in August. Montgomery is out for the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. And rather than acquire talent, the D-Backs chose to save about $2 million, paying down most but not all of Montgomery's remaining obligation.
Arizona floated the idea of making such a deal with Montgomery to a number of clubs, according to sources briefed on their discussions. The Brewers jumped, taking on the additional $2 million in salary. Their decision was not without risk, considering Miller has been out since July 7. But in their view, it was better than trading a prospect.
The math is complicated, but according to Fangraphs' Jon Becker, the D-Backs with their trades saved roughly $11.8 million in 2025 payroll and another $3 million in '26 by escaping Grichuk's buyout.
It's been four days, and we're still going through the pieces of the Twins fire sale. Here's some more reporting by our Minnesota crew:
More deadline fallout:
It is Aug. 4, and fully half the league — 15 out of 30 teams — sits within 3 1/2 games of a playoff spot. So today, it's not quite possible to list every series that is important. But here are a few with big playoff implications that are coming up this week:
Monday through Wednesday, the AL wild-card race has a chance to really shape up…
And in the back half of the week, there are two series that I'll be keyed in on:
Honorable mentions:
For the first time since 1990, the All-Star Game will be at Wrigley Field in 2027 (assuming there's not a lockout, of course).
Last year in Cleveland, Shane Bieber watched as injury-recovering acquisitions helped in the postseason. Now he's hoping to do the same in Toronto.
Carlos Correa's return is a feel-good story in Houston. But will he produce results?
Most-clicked in our last newsletter: The winners, losers and snoozers of the trade deadline.
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