A dramatic MLB trade deadline led to a few stars changing jerseys—but the sport’s biggest spenders made relatively minor additions. In a year without a dominant team, the league’s middle class saw an opportunity and embraced entropy.
Among the key trades happening before the deadline:
The Astros made a blockbuster move to reacquire infielder Carlos Correa from the Twins. Correa won a World Series with Houston in 2017 and played in another two years later before becoming a free agent and signing a six-year, $200 million deal with Minnesota, now very much moving into a full-scale rebuild.
The Padres acquired top closer Mason Miller and starting pitcher JP Sears from the A’s. San Diego then followed that up by getting All-Star first baseman/outfielder Ryan O’Hearn from the Orioles, along with outfielder Ramón Laureano.
The Mariners acquired slugging third baseman Eugenio Suárez from the Diamondbacks. Suárez is tied for first in MLB with 87 runs batted in and fifth in home runs with 36.
The Rangers made their own deal with the Diamondbacks to get starting pitcher Merrill Kelly.
The Blue Jays acquired former American League Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber, out of action since early last year due to injury, from the Guardians.
The Tigers, MLB’s best team for significant stretches of this season, dealt for Nationals closer Kyle Finnegan and Guardians reliever Paul Sewald in moves to bulk up their bullpen.
The Phillies acquired veteran outfielder Harrison Bader and closer Jhoan Durán in separate deals with the Twins.
The moves arrive as the defending World Series champion Dodgers and the Yankees have each posted losing records in July after strong starts to the season, while the Mets are just 17–23 since June 13.
Those three teams were not idle this week, though, as each made its own moves, particularly to acquire bullpen and bench pieces who often have outsized importance in the postseason. Perhaps most notably, the Yankees acquired Rays infielder José Caballero, tied for the league in stolen bases, in the midst of a game Thursday in New York between the two teams. The Yankees supplemented that with deals for two closers, the Pirates’ David Bednar and Giants’ Camilo Doval.
Prospect Dealing
Many of these MLB trade deadline deals, and others, followed a traditional formula of a contending team sending minor leaguers to a rebuilding club looking to shed payroll, in return for an established veteran.
Those prospects, however, are typically not the contending club’s highest-rated ones, though, as there is often a reluctance to part with such promising talent for what could be just a short-term rental of the returning player.
The Padres deviated from that norm by dealing minor-league shortstop Leo De Vries to the A’s in the trade for Miller and Sears. De Vries is considered San Diego’s top overall prospect, and he is No. 3 in MLB.com’s rankings of all minor leaguers. De Vries is the highest-ranked prospect to be dealt at the deadline since the White Sox acquired Eloy Jiménez from the Cubs in 2017. Jiménez did not ultimately become the star he was projected to be.
The recent struggles of the Dodgers and a five-game winning streak by the Padres have left San Diego just three games behind their archrivals as GM A.J. Preller maintained his reputation for aggressive maneuvering.
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Barton shares how he went from being the director of scouting at 247Sports to running roster strategy in the SEC, why evaluating talent is more about minimizing misses than maximizing hits, and what it feels like to build a program from the ground up alongside lifelong friend Clark Lea. Barton also opens up about the future of NIL and what college football looks like when a salary cap becomes real.
This conversation is part of a larger look—presented by our partners at Teamworks—at how NFL-style general managers are changing college football. Teamworks’ end-to-end solution, Teamworks GM, is purpose-built for this new era. Watch the full Next Up episode here.
MLB’s Long Road to Its Most Unusual Game Yet
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For an event with the word “Speedway” right in the name, the run-up to Saturday’s MLB Speedway Classic was anything but fast.
Rather, the development to stage the league’s first-ever game inside of a motorsports venue and first regular-season contest in the state of Tennessee took about three years to create, and it was marked by the many logistical hurdles of placing a regulation-grade baseball diamond inside of a racetrack.
“We’re really seeing now how this is becoming more than the sum of its parts, and it’s been amazing to move, finally, from renderings to reality,” MLB SVP of global events Jeremiah Yolkut tells Front Office Sports.
Concept to Reality
The biggest and most tangible element of the MLB Speedway Classic was the development of the field itself and related infrastructure, such as player locker rooms and trainers’ facilities, in the sprawling, 64-year-old racing stadium,known as The Last Great Colosseum. There’s an established methodology for that through MLB’s various special-event games in recent years, and the league again employed a variety of outside firms such as commercial landscaper BrightView, sports architecture giant Populous, and event consultant BaAM Productions.
The MLB Speedway Classic, however, introduced additional factors such as regrading the infield area—normally part of the venue’s famed high-banked oval track—to meet baseball standards. Other efforts for the game included the removal of numerous pit walls, gas pumps, and interior lights and structures—as well as the installation of a turf field similar to Toronto’s Rogers Centre, instead of grass, as is typical at other special-event games.
Further adding to the spectacle—and the complexity—of the event, MLB and Bristol Motor Speedway constructed two separate stages for a series of pregame concerts. One venue outside of the racetrack will feature performances by a series of musical artists, including Adam Doleac and Jake Owen, and highlight a fan festival that has been developed. Another larger stage has been built inside the venue and will house a pregame concert by country superstar Tim McGraw and hip-hop artist Pitbull.
“It’s surreal to see, and it’s now game week,” Bristol Motor Speedway president Jerry Caldwell tells FOS. “People are going to be blown away by what they see. It looks like a baseball field. Yeah, it’s bigger [than a typical ballpark], and it’s spread out a little more, but it’s going to create great memories for a lot of people.”
For more on what will differentiate the MLB Speedway Classic, read Eric Fisher’s full story here.
Happy Gilmore 2’s main plotline may sound familiar to many golf fans: A rival league threatens the existence of the long-standing traditional tour.
In the new sequel to Adam Sandler’s 1996 hit comedy, the upstart Maxi Golf circuit takes on the Pro Golf Tour. The movie’s creators have said the storyline is not supposed to mimic the ongoing battle in professional golf, but it’s noteworthy that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, whose top players worked together as main characters in the film, weren’t heavily consulted about the script.
“We weren’t out there looking for approval from the leagues or not,” Chad Mumm, a co-producer of the movie, tells Front Office Sports.
The PGA Tour’s Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, and LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka all team up with Happy Gilmore to battle against Maxi Golf’s best players in the fictional universe.
Mumm, who is the executive producer of Netflix’s golf docuseries Full Swing and who Sandler brought on to facilitate golfer cameos, said he received “no pushback” from players’ representatives, who were the main points of contact throughout filming, not their respective tours. Mumm’s company, Pro Shop Holdings, has funding from the PGA Tour.
“They were excited,” he said. “Nobody really ever raised any sort of concerns about the plot points, because it’s ridiculous. I mean, there’s an ice hole and a fire hole. It’s all just kind of over the top.”
Scott Yamano/Netflix
Fairways and Greens
Mumm said he would have addressed any potential concerns, had they arisen. Objectively, if either side had a reason to be upset with the film, it would be LIV, since two of their players (whose contracts expire in 2026) worked against the upstart tour that many in reviews and on social media have compared to LIV.
“Ultimately, I think LIV obviously followed the lead of Bryson and Brooks,” Mumm said.
Both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf declined to comment when asked about the movie’s plot. However, both leagues have heavily promoted their players’ appearances in the film, which extend beyond the four aforementioned stars.
“It wasn’t about the PGA or it wasn’t about LIV,” Mumm said. ”It was about the Pro Golf Tour versus the Maxi tour. And I think that in Sandler’s mind, it was way more American Gladiator/over the top/Dodgeball villains than it was like a send-up of LIV. But if people are seeing it that way—I don’t know—Adam’s a big fan of all these golfers themselves. I don’t think he has a dog in the fight in terms of the league drama.”
Some critics have also compared Maxi Golf’s nontraditional antics to TGL—the tech-infused indoor league cofounded by McIlroy and Tiger Woods with financial backing from the PGA Tour—which completed its first season in March.
Putter Power on Netflix
Whether Happy Gilmore 2 is about the PGA Tour, LIV, TGL, or none of those leagues, the film had the biggest U.S. opening weekend of all time for a Netflix movie, amassing 46.7 million views in its first three days.
The NBA has hit its quietest period of the calendar. The Finals are long gone, free agency has mostly ended, and Las Vegas Summer League is in the rearview mirror. One major deal could happen this weekend, however, between the Lakers and Luka Dončić.
The five-time All-Star, who was traded from the Mavericks to the Lakers in February in one of the most shocking deals in pro sports history, will be eligible to sign a four-year, $229 million extension starting Saturday. Dončić has two years, $95 million remaining on his current deal, but he has a player option for the 2026–27 season.
Asked about his potential extension Tuesday on the Today show, Dončić played dumb. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t discuss anything yet,” Dončić said, grinning.
The 26-year-old has expressed the importance of franchise loyalty multiple times. When asked by ESPN’s Malika Andrews in April whether his loyalty had transferred to the Lakers following the trade, Dončić said: “Of course.”
While the trade took an emotional toll on the Slovenian star, who was in tears while a tribute video played for him during his April return to Dallas, it also reduced his earning potential. Dončić would have been eligible to sign a five-year, $345 million extension with the Mavericks this offseason.
The deal would have one extra year and an average annual value of $69 million, which is $11.75 million more than the contract he’s eligible to sign with the Lakers starting Saturday.
Dončić was also eligible to sign a three-year, $160 million extension immediately after the NBA Finals concluded in mid-June. This would’ve given him the option to re-enter free agency earlier and sign a larger deal then, but the average annual value would have been only $53.3 million. It is very possible that any deal he signs may include a player option like his current one does, giving him the ability to reset his contract status sooner.
Conversation Starters
Scottie Scheffler isn’t teeing up this weekend, but he’s still cashing in an $18 million check. He locked up the PGA Tour’s regular-season title and the bonus that comes with it.
Middle Tennessee State is upgrading its athletic facilities in Murfreesboro. Check it out.
Stipe Miocic showed up to Browns training camp as a photographer, and Myles Garrett made sure to say hello. Take a look.
Thursday’s result: 67% of respondents think that more stadium projects should include things like dog parks, skate parks, and green space for public use.
