Let’s Analyze the Latest MLB Trade Rumors: 7/5 Edition
We re-simulated every popular deadline rumor on our new hardware and sorted the board by the only number that matters in July: playoff odds. The three biggest names on the board move it the least, a rental closer to Pittsburgh moves it the most, and one team manages to get worse by buying a good pitcher.
BBMI Research Desk
·
July 5, 2026
·
13 min read
First, some housekeeping that turns out to be the reason this article can exist. This week we upgraded the computer system at BBMI Sports, moving our calculations off the old laptop that has run this site since the beginning and onto a custom-built server. Yes, we had AI help spec and build it. No, the laptop is not dead. It is resting comfortably and will be visited on weekends. The practical difference is not subtle: we can now push roughly sixty times more data through the models. The last time we simulated a single blockbuster (Tarik Skubal to the Brewers, back in June) the run took nearly seven hours. The same simulation now finishes in about seven minutes, which leaves us six hours and fifty-three minutes to over-analyze the results.
So, in honor of the trade deadline sitting less than a month away (August 3rd), we did the thing the old hardware never let us do: we took the 21 most popular trade proposals making the rounds and ran every single one through the full simulation engine. Each trade gets the same treatment. We slot the player onto his new roster, re-run the remainder of the season (that’s about 226,800,000 games for those counting: ~1,200 remaining games x 9,000 simulations x 21 scenarios) and the entire postseason bracket (another ~7,000,000 October games on top), and measure what changes.
Last time we did this kind of exercise we led with World Series odds. This time we’re leading with playoff odds, and we want to be honest about why: World Series odds in July wear the widest error bar of anything we publish. Once a team gets to the playoffs, all bets are off. A short series leaves a lot of room for the unexpected, and the bracket does not read scouting reports. The clearest recent example is the Blue Jays’ run last October: nobody had Toronto as the favorite, and they tore through the bracket anyway. So in July, the thing a trade can reliably buy is a better chance of getting in. What happens after that is much harder to predict.
One ground rule before the board. Most real MLB deadline trades are a star going one way and a package of prospects, a bucket of baseballs, and a Player To Be Named Later going the other. We are not modeling the return package. Prospects are a future-year story, and this is a current-season model, so read every number below as 2026 impact only. Each trade is also simulated independently: Boston appears as the seller in four different rumors below, but these are alternate universes, not a fire sale happening all at once. (Red Sox fans may still want to sit down.)
The board, sorted by the number that matters
Playoff-odds swing, all 21 trades
Change in the acquiring team’s odds of reaching the postseason, in percentage points. Sim noise on these figures is a rounding error, not a headline.
Look at the top of that chart and then at the bottom, because the sort order is the article. The three most famous names in the rumor mill (Skubal to the Dodgers, Rays, or Brewers) buy their new teams a combined quarter of a percentage point of playoff probability. A 38-year-old rental closer going to Pittsburgh buys +11.9. This is not the sim being contrarian. It’s arithmetic: you cannot buy what you already own, and Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, and Milwaukee already own October tickets. The teams that can actually purchase a postseason are the ones standing in the middle of the race, checkbook in hand.
| # | Trade | Proj W | Playoff odds | Δ PO | Δ WS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aroldis ChapmanRP · BOS → PIT | 80.3 → 81.9 | 20.2% → 32.1% | +11.9 | +0.3 |
| 2 | Freddy PeraltaSP · NYM → CHW | 79.0 → 80.2 | 37.8% → 48.2% | +10.4 | +0.4 |
| 3 | Taylor WardOF · BAL → HOU | 77.5 → 79.1 | 19.6% → 29.5% | +10.0 | +0.2 |
| 4 | Reid DetmersSP · LAA → STL | 82.0 → 83.1 | 33.9% → 43.7% | +9.8 | +0.1 |
| 5 | Luis Arraez1B · SF → CLE | 79.7 → 80.7 | 46.1% → 54.5% | +8.3 | +0.2 |
| 6 | Aroldis ChapmanRP · BOS → MIA | 82.2 → 83.3 | 36.1% → 44.3% | +8.2 | +0.2 |
| 7 | Reid DetmersSP · LAA → ATH | 83.5 → 84.6 | 70.5% → 78.1% | +7.6 | +0.4 |
| 8 | Willson Contreras1B · BOS → SEA | 85.1 → 86.4 | 82.2% → 89.2% | +7.0 | +1.7 |
| 9 | Hunter GoodmanC · COL → NYY | 86.7 → 88.3 | 89.3% → 94.4% | +5.1 | +1.4 |
| 10 | Sonny GraySP · BOS → SD | 80.0 → 80.7 | 17.9% → 22.6% | +4.7 | +0.0 |
| 11 | Reid DetmersSP · LAA → AZ | 79.1 → 80.0 | 14.0% → 18.6% | +4.6 | +0.1 |
| 12 | Reid DetmersSP · LAA → WSH | 77.1 → 78.6 | 6.0% → 10.4% | +4.4 | +0.1 |
| 13 | Freddy PeraltaSP · NYM → CHC | 88.0 → 89.0 | 84.5% → 88.9% | +4.4 | +0.8 |
| 14 | Michael WachaSP · KC → TOR | 80.3 → 80.8 | 40.7% → 44.6% | +3.8 | +0.3 |
| 15 | Luis Arraez1B · SF → TEX | 81.5 → 81.9 | 51.8% → 55.0% | +3.2 | +0.3 |
| 16 | Joe RyanSP · MIN → PHI | 90.4 → 92.0 | 94.2% → 97.0% | +2.8 | −1.0 |
| 17 | Taylor WardOF · BAL → CIN | 71.7 → 72.5 | 0.3% → 0.6% | +0.3 | +0.0 |
| 18 | Tarik SkubalSP · DET → TB | 93.6 → 95.1 | 99.7% → 99.9% | +0.2 | +5.9 |
| 19 | Tarik SkubalSP · DET → MIL | 99.3 → 100.6 | 99.9% → 100.0% | +0.1 | +0.5 |
| 20 | Tarik SkubalSP · DET → LAD | 104.1 → 105.5 | 100.0% → 100.0% | +0.0 | +7.2 |
| 21 | Joe RyanSP · MIN → ATL | 91.7 → 91.2 | 96.7% → 95.9% | −0.9 | +0.1 |
All 21 rumored deals, sorted by the acquirer’s change in playoff odds. Proj. wins = the acquirer’s projected 2026 win total without, then with, the new player; the added wins accrue over the season’s remaining three months, not a full year of the player. WS odds in percentage points, for the traditionalists. Roster snapshot July 4.
Once you’re in, all bets are off
Here is the house philosophy, stated plainly so you can hold us to it: playoff odds are the number a July trade can actually buy. World Series odds are the noisiest number we publish. The postseason is a tournament of three-to-seven game samples between teams that are all, by construction, good. Skill still shows up there, and so does roster construction (the Skubal rows below are proof that the right arm genuinely moves October), but the margins between playoff teams are thin enough that the draw and the week you happen to have get a real vote. Ask Toronto. Last October the Jays went in as nobody’s favorite and ran through the bracket anyway. July numbers can price the field; they price individual runs like that one a lot less cleanly. So this article sells the entry fee first and treats the trophy odds as what they are: real, meaningful, and wearing a wide error bar.
Playoff odds are the number a July trade can actually buy. World Series odds are the noisiest number we publish.
So when this article says Freddy Peralta buys the White Sox +10.4 points of playoff odds, read that as Chicago buying real tickets to the postseason raffle. And when it says Skubal buys the Dodgers +7.2 points of World Series odds on +0.0 points of playoff odds, understand what that really is: a team that already owns its ticket paying a premium to load the dice. The loading is real (an ace who starts twice per short series is the one lever that reliably bends October), but it’s a luxury purchase. Everything else on this board is about the entry fee.
The S-curve: where a win actually buys October
Acquirer playoff odds, before → after the trade
Gray dot = playoff odds before the trade; colored dot = after (red = went backward). The middle of the curve moves. The ends barely twitch, no matter how famous the player is.
This chart is the whole economics lesson. Playoff probability lives on an S-curve, and a trade is a shove. Shove a team sitting between 20% and 50% and it slides visibly up the steep middle: Pittsburgh, Houston, St. Louis, the White Sox. Shove a team at 89% and it politely absorbs a nearly identical shove for half the return: the Yankees buy the best bat on the board and gain 5.1 points, because there wasn’t much left to gain. Shove a team at 100% and physics gives up entirely. And shove a team at 0.3% (hello, Cincinnati) and you get our favorite row of the whole exercise, which we’ll get to in the margins section.
The October buyers
Aroldis Chapman, Red Sox → Pirates / Marlins
The best playoff-odds purchase on the board is a rental closer to Pittsburgh, and honestly, the sim deserves a raise for the comedic timing. The mechanism is sound: the Pirates’ problem is not talent, it’s converting close games, and a real ninth inning turns one-run losses into one-run wins at exactly the spot on the S-curve where wins convert to October at the best exchange rate in baseball. Chapman takes Pittsburgh from 80 to nearly 82 projected wins and buys almost twelve points of playoff probability. The same arm in Miami, starting from the thick of the wild-card pack at 36%, buys a still-excellent eight points. Either way: the Pirates or Marlins buying at the deadline would be the most surprising sentence we’ve published this year, which is precisely why the math says they should.
Freddy Peralta, Mets → White Sox
One good arm short of a coin flip. Peralta takes the White Sox from 79 projected wins to 80 and change, and because Chicago sits on the steepest part of the curve, that single win is worth ten points of October, carrying them from 38% to the doorstep of 50/50. The South Side buying a Mets starter to become a near-even-money playoff team is the kind of sentence 2026 keeps producing, and we’ve stopped fighting it.
Taylor Ward, Orioles → Astros
Yes, you read the baseline right: the Astros, of recent dynastic memory, are a 20% playoff team in our sim this year, standing in the same bread line as the Pirates. The empire is negotiable. That’s exactly why one everyday bat does so much here: Ward’s bat takes Houston from 77.5 projected wins to 79 and buys ten points of October on the steep part of the curve. Two years ago this trade would have been a shrug that moved nothing. Today it’s one of the most rational moves on the board.
Reid Detmers, Angels → Cardinals
St. Louis is the classic bubble team: one arm takes them from 82 to 83 wins and shifts the odds of getting in by nearly ten points, while the odds of winning it all barely blink (+0.1, the sim’s way of saying “one thing at a time”). Note the other side of the ledger: the Angels barely miss Detmers in any of the four scenarios we ran (never more than a quarter of a win), which is the model quietly observing that his current role in Anaheim underuses him. Sellers take note: assets depreciate fastest on the shelf.
Luis Arraez, Giants → Guardians
A batting title in exchange for a bucket of baseballs, as the rumor goes, and this is the trade that actually drags a team across the 50% line: Cleveland walks in a coin flip at 46% and walks out a favorite at 54.5%. The sim likes the contact archetype more here than anywhere else because the Guardians sit at the exact tipping point where every marginal win buys the most October available. Same player to Texas, ten rows down the board, buys less than half as much. Location, location, location.
Reid Detmers, Angels → Athletics
The quiet surprise of the board: the sim likes these A’s more than the discourse does. This is an 83-win team that’s already about 70% to make October, and Detmers is a nice mid-rotation add that pushes them to 78%, seven and a half points of entry at what should be a seller’s price. Not the flashiest row on the board, just one of the most sensible.
The locks: shopping for a different trophy
Eight of the 21 trades land on teams the sim already has at 82% or better to reach October. For them the playoff column is pocket lint, so the honest way to grade their deadline is the luxury column: World Series odds, the market you shop once the entry fee is paid. And the luxury market turns out to have wild price dispersion. The same ace is worth seven points of title odds in one uniform and half a point in another. The best bats on the board are worth about a point and a half each. And one of these teams manages to pay real trade capital to make itself worse.
The luxury column: Δ World Series odds for teams already in
Change in World Series odds for the trades whose buyers are effectively already in the playoffs. Green is buying loaded dice. Red pays prospects to get routed into a worse October draw.
Tarik Skubal, Tigers → Dodgers / Rays / Brewers
The biggest name at the deadline, and the playoff-odds column could not be less interested: all three rumored destinations are effectively already in. What the Skubal market is actually about is the luxury column, and the mechanism deserves spelling out: October is a top-three-starters tournament, and an ace takes the ball in two games of every five-game series. Drop Tarik Skubal into a playoff rotation and the upgrade repeats every round, compounding through the bracket. The sim prices that compounding at +7.2 title points for a Dodgers team it already projects at 104 wins, the largest single number anywhere in this exercise, and +5.9 for the Rays, which on Tampa Bay’s budget would be the franchise purchase of the decade. Milwaukee is the cautionary tale: when we simmed this exact trade on June 16, Skubal was worth six points of title odds to the Brewers. Today he’s worth half a point, because the rotation he was supposed to rescue stopped needing rescue: Jacob Misiorowski turned into an ace, Kyle Harrison emerged as a legitimate big-league starter, and a healthy, rested Brandon Woodruff was back to taking his turn every fifth day. We say “was” because, as this article went to press, Woodruff hit the IL with an inflamed labrum. We are choosing not to believe we’ve started a BBMI Sports curse (knock on wood), because we deal in science around here, not fairy tales (fingers crossed). Our numbers were run on the pre-injury rosters, so read Milwaukee’s +0.5 as the price before the news: with Woodruff down, this trade just became a lot more important for the Brewers. Same player, same month, three teams, a fourteenfold spread in value, and a fresh reminder that a trade’s worth is the size of the hole, measured the day you make the deal. Holes, it turns out, can reopen.
Three weeks ago, Skubal to Milwaukee was worth six points of title odds. By this morning, half a point. Then Woodruff hit the IL. A trade’s worth is the size of the hole, and holes can reopen.
Willson Contreras, Red Sox → Mariners
The one high-baseline trade that still buys real playoff insurance, because 82% is comfortable but not safe: Contreras takes Seattle from 85 to 86 wins and adds seven points of October certainty on top. Note the asymmetry, though: Boston loses more (−1.4 W) than Seattle gains (+1.3 W), which is what happens when a bat doing heavy lifting in one lineup joins another where the at-bats he takes over were already fine. In the luxury column, Willson Contreras’s +1.7 is the biggest hitter number on the board: a middle-of-the-order bat priced for a lineup that plans to still be hitting in late October. And that’s before we mention what the deal does to Boston’s own odds, which we will, in the sellers’ section, where Red Sox fans are advised not to scroll.
Hunter Goodman, Rockies → Yankees
The best bat trade on the board by raw wins (86.7 to 88.3), buried at No. 9 by the playoff-odds sort, which tells you everything about buying wins at 89%. What the Yankees are really purchasing is five points of insurance against the remaining sliver of nightmare seasons plus a point and a half of title odds, second among hitters only to the Contreras row above. Colorado’s side is the quiet lesson: losing Goodman costs the Rockies more than a win, in a season where the sim prices Rockies wins like arcade tokens.
Freddy Peralta, Mets → Cubs
The quieter Peralta scenario. Chicago adds a solid win to a team that’s mostly in anyway, four points of playoff insurance, and a respectable +0.8 in the luxury column, the best WS-odds-per-win price of any pitcher trade outside the Skubal rows. Compare the White Sox row at the top of the board, though: the same pitcher buys more than twice the October on the other side of town, purely because of who’s buying. If both Chicago teams call, the sim knows which line it would answer first.
Joe Ryan, Twins → Phillies / Braves
The strangest pairing on the board, and we re-ran both twice. Philadelphia gets a win and a half better (90.4 to 92.0) and its title odds drop by a point: across thousands of simulated seasons, those extra wins nudge the Phillies off their most common playoff path and onto seed lines that route through tougher October opponents. Atlanta is stranger still: the Braves acquire the same good pitcher and get worse, half a win and about a point of playoff odds, because their production rotation already outgrades Ryan slot for slot, so forcing him into the five displaces a better arm. We are contractually obligated to remind you these are modeled quirks of fit and seeding math, not a scouting take on Joe Ryan, who is good. But a trade that makes one contender worse at baseball and another worse at October is the funniest pair of numbers the engine produced this week, and a fitting tribute to our thesis: once the bracket gets involved, all bets are off, including the ones you made on purpose.
The margins
Sonny Gray, Red Sox → Padres
The board’s only trade where both teams improve, which usually means someone has mispriced something, and the sim is happy to name names: its full-season profile of Gray grades him at roughly replacement level, so Boston backfills his starts with a better arm and pockets nearly a win plus four and a half points of its own playoff odds for the privilege of paying down payroll. Addition by subtraction, now available in writing. San Diego still comes out ahead too, five points of entry for a modest price. We’d treat Boston’s exact number as soft, but the direction as sincere.
Reid Detmers, Angels → Diamondbacks / Nationals
The two mid-market Detmers landings both buy four-to-five points of October entry, which is the S-curve doing honest work on thinner baselines. Washington is the true long shot (6% to 10%, and interestingly the biggest pure-wins version of any Detmers deal at a win and a half) while Arizona is the steadier play (14% to 19%). If your team is anywhere between 5% and 40% right now, an underused Angels lefty is apparently the best value on the shelf, and the Angels will apparently not miss him. Four rumored destinations, and Anaheim’s projected win total barely notices in any of them.
Michael Wacha, Royals → Blue Jays
Toronto sits right at 40%, prime real estate on the S-curve, and yet Wacha only buys four points of it, because the sim thinks the rotation slots he’d take are already respectable: he’s worth half a win, a depth move rather than a difference-maker. Given what this exact franchise demonstrated last October about what happens once you’re in, we understand the temptation to buy any ticket available. The board’s advice is just that Toronto’s money buys more October elsewhere: a bat, a bullpen arm, or a bigger starter than a back-half rental.
Luis Arraez, Giants → Rangers
The muted version of the Arraez deal. Texas gains less than half a win, well under half of what Cleveland gets from the identical player, because the at-bats he’d absorb in the Rangers’ lineup were already producing at a level he only modestly improves. Fit matters this much: same bat, same price in prospects, half the return. The sim’s advice to Texas, if it could talk, would be to spend the same trade capital on an arm.
Taylor Ward, Orioles → Reds
Our favorite row. Cincinnati acquires a genuinely useful everyday bat, improves from under 72 wins to over 72, and doubles its playoff odds, from 0.3% to 0.6%, the way buying a second lottery ticket doubles your odds. The same player buys Houston ten points. There has never been a cleaner demonstration that wins only convert to October if you have October to convert them into. (The WS column reads +0.0, which is the model’s driest joke to date.)
The sellers’ bill
What selling costs the seller (own playoff odds, pp)
The seller’s own playoff-odds change. Red costs you October; green is the rare sale that pays you to make it.
Three headlines hiding on this side of the ledger. First: Detroit is not a seller. Every Skubal scenario costs the Tigers eight to nine points of their own playoff odds, the largest October price anyone pays in this entire exercise, buyers included. If Detroit trades Skubal this month, they are not rebuilding, they are donating. Second: Boston’s real sales cost four and a half to seven points each while their playoff pulse is still beating, except for the Gray deal, where selling a starter the model grades at replacement level actually pays them four and a half points. The sim’s advice to the Red Sox front office, free of charge: sell exactly one specific veteran and then sit on your hands. Third: the Angels can sell Reid Detmers with a clear conscience. All four scenarios cost Anaheim a quarter of a win at most and effectively nothing in October, because the sim already has their October at nothing. When selling is free, not selling is the mistake.
Collateral damage: the trades everyone else should fear
New this year, because the engine now re-simulates all 30 teams under every trade: we can measure what a deal does to the teams that aren’t in it, through the schedule they play and the bracket paths they inherit. Two findings stand out. First, the Chapman-to-Pittsburgh deal at the top of our board is quietly a mugging of the NL wild-card race: it takes 3.1 points of playoff odds from St. Louis, 1.8 from Miami, 1.7 from the Cubs, 1.4 from Arizona, and 1.2 from Washington. One rental closer, five rival fan bases annoyed, none of them at the negotiating table. Second, the Skubal blockbuster works the other way around: if the Dodgers land him, the biggest playoff-odds winners are Cleveland (+2.5), the White Sox (+2.4), and Minnesota (+1.3), who suddenly share a division with a defanged Detroit, while the title market taxes every other contender: Philadelphia −1.8, Tampa Bay −1.5, and Milwaukee −1.3 points of World Series odds without lifting a finger. When a superpower buys an ace, the bill goes to everyone.
What the board teaches
Three lessons, cheaply summarized after twenty-one expensive simulations. First: playoff odds are the deadline’s real currency, and they’re bought cheapest in the middle of the S-curve. The five best purchases on the board all belong to teams that started between 20% and 46%. Second: the famous trades aren’t the valuable ones. Skubal moves three fanbases’ blood pressure and a combined quarter-point of playoff probability; a rental closer to Pittsburgh moves nearly twelve. The WS column is where the locks shop, and it’s a luxury market by definition. Third: once you’re in, all bets are off. The bracket punishes seeding on a whim (ask our simulated Phillies, a win and a half better and a full point worse off, or our simulated Braves, who got worse by acquiring a good pitcher), and occasionally hands the whole thing to whoever last year’s Toronto was. You cannot trade for October certainty. You can only trade for October tickets, and this board is the price list.
The deadline is August 3rd. We’ll re-run the board as real deals come in, at seven minutes a trade. The laptop, for the record, could not have done any of this. We checked. It took seven hours to agree.
How we did it. Every trade was run through our what-if engine on the new server: we place the player on the acquiring roster (starters slot into the five-man rotation on merit, with each team’s baseline rotation defined by its actual production usage; relievers into late-inning bullpen work; hitters into the lineup), then re-simulate the remainder of the 2026 season and the full postseason bracket: 1,500 simulation cells over 9,000 bracket runs per scenario, with matched paired baselines so each trade is compared against an identical universe of simulated seasons. Playoff odds are the probability of reaching the postseason, calibrated against our bracket engine; third-party “collateral” effects come from re-simulating all 30 teams under each trade. Rosters are snapshotted as of July 4. Projected wins are the acquirer’s full-season total without, then with, the player; because the trade happens in July, the added wins accrue over the roughly three months remaining, not a full season of the player. Odds changes are in percentage points, and displayed baseline percentages for teams near the wild-card bubble carry a wider display precision than the paired deltas do. We model the traded player only. Prospect packages and Players To Be Named Later are future-season impacts and outside a current-season model. One correction made in public rather than quietly: an earlier rotation-selector bug gave the Athletics a fictional baseline; we rebuilt every team’s baseline on its real production rotation, re-ran all 21 trades on the corrected engine, and every number on this page comes from that corrected run.
Related: Skubal to the Brewers: what an ace is worth, our June 16 what-if, now superseded by the Skubal section above.