MLB Trade Deadline: The Best Prospects Acquired Since 2015

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There have been 511 prospects traded during the month of the trade deadline since 2015. That figure may miss a player to be named later or two, as it’s based off Baseball America’s yearly ranking of prospects traded at the deadline, but it provides a solid ballpark of how many prospects are traded midseason. Expect to see 55-60 prospects traded by the 2024 MLB Trade Deadline at 6 p.m. ET on July 30.

Acquiring prospects in a sell-off is intriguing but most of the time those players acquired provide little to no impact. Roughly 40% of those 511 traded prospects haven’t reached the majors. Another 41% have produced less than 1fWAR in their MLB careers.

But every now and then, a team trades away a big leaguer and gets a franchise player, or at least a long-term regular, in return. And when a team turns a run-of-the-mill reliever into a long-term starter, it’s the type of game-changing trade every general manager dreams of pulling off.

Here’s our compilation of a 26-player roster of the best prospects acquired in deadline deals since 2015. We’re weighting this heavily to big league success post trade, but when someone like James Wood is available, we’ll take a chance on the upside even if it means leaving a player with a more productive big league career so far off the roster.

Ranking The Traded Prospects

Catchers

Jonah Heim and Logan O’Hoppe

Analysis: This leaves off Keibert Ruiz, Reese McGuire and Jorge Alfaro, but Heim’s late-blooming dominance makes him an easy choice as the starter.

Infield

1B: Josh Naylor
2B: Gleyber Torres
3B: Isaac Paredes
SS: Oneil Cruz
CIF: Jeimer Candelario
MIF: CJ Abrams

Analysis: The shortstop crop was better than expected. You could argue Abrams as the starter and Cruz as the backup, but we’ll go with Cruz’s game-changing tools. Both are great players to have on a roster. Abrams was a top prospect included in the massive Juan Soto deal. Cruz was an astute pickup by the Pirates in the otherwise unmemorable Tony Watson trade.

Outfield/DH

LF: Tyler O’Neill
CF: James Wood
RF: Teoscar Hernandez
DH/OF: Yordan Alvarez
OF: Eloy Jimenez
OF/INF: Jorge Mateo

Analysis: For 14 middling innings of relief work the Astros received from Francisco Liriano, the Blue Jays got 129 home runs from Hernandez. The O’Neill-Marco Gonzalez deal was one of the oddest and most even prospect challenge trades we’ve seen. O’Neill was better at his best and he won two Gold Gloves in St. Louis, but Gonzales was a league-average starter for the Mariners for 150 starts and seven seasons.

The Alvarez trade is the dream of every team selling off at the deadline. He had never even played a pro game when he was traded to the Astros from the Dodgers for Josh Fields, so the Astros were taking a big swing, but it paid off. Fields did give the Dodgers 2.5 years and 117 innings of quality relief work, but Alvarez has gone on to be one of the best hitters in baseball and the best deadline deal prospect acquired in the past decade.

Starting Pitchers

SP1: Dylan Cease
SP2: Pablo Lopez
SP3: Zac Gallen
SP4: Sean Manaea
SP5: Jesus Luzardo

Analysis: You’ll go broke trying to hit on starting pitchers in trade deadline deals, as there are many more misses than hits, but the hits are so important that it’s hard not to stake a swing for an intriguing arm. Jose Quintana was a useful starter for the Cubs, but just as his Cubs’ career was ending, Cease was turning into an excellent starter for the White Sox. The Mariners got just nine innings from David Phelps in return for Pablo Lopez. The Marlins sent Gallen to the D-backs for Jazz Chisholm in a prospect challenge trade. Both teams did well, but the D-backs won that trade, as Gallen has finished top-10 in Cy Young voting three times.

There are a lot of useful starters left off here. We shoe-horned Joe Ryan and Frankie Montas into the bullpen, but Chris Paddack, Marco Gonzales, Michael Fulmer, Zach Davies and Patrick Sandoval were among the pitchers left off this staff.

Bullpen

Closer: Josh Hader
Setup: Jhoan Duran
Setup: Yennier Cano
Reliever: Jeff Hoffman
Reliever: Andres Munoz
Multi-inning relief/swing starter: Joe Ryan
Multi-inning relief/swing starter: Frankie Montas

Analysis: The Astros pulled off one of the deadline deal heists of the decade with Josh Fields for Yordan Alvarez. Here’s the yin to that yang. Houston sent Josh Hader to the Brewers in a massive deal that brought Houston back Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers. Eduardo Escobar was a useful pickup for the D-backs, but they’d surely like a do-over to keep Jhoan Duran from going to the Twins. There seems to be a lot of trades that equal each other out here. While the Astros traded Fields to get Alvarez but then lost Hader in another deal, the Twins acquired Duran, but traded away Cano for some ineffective innings from Jorge Lopez.