# What we’ve learned in the first half of the MLB season: 10 midsummer takeaways
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1. A word for the 2025 trade deadline: Complicated
Over at Baseball Reference, they’re still listing (gulp) 25 teams as being within striking distance of some kind of playoff spot. That’s everybody but the Rockies, Nationals, Pirates, Athletics and White Sox. Even if the more realistic number is 23 or 24, that’s still a seller-buyer ratio that’s officially not helpful.
“I think it’s going to be a scramble,” said a National League exec, “because so many teams are still in it that I don’t know if you’re going to see a lot of activity until the last couple of days.”
The only great team in baseball is …
I asked that question of all four execs surveyed. The consensus answer?
“The healthy Dodgers.”
Good answer — except for one thing. In real life, that team doesn’t exist.
6. The Tigers are real — and they’re spectacular
In October 2024, we were asking: How’d this team make the playoffs? But nine months later, in July 2025, we’re asking a whole different question about the Tigers: How many teams in this sport are better than they are?
Did you see this magical Tigers season coming? Not many people did. Before the season, FanGraphs gave them only a 27 percent shot of winning their division — worse than the Twins and Mariners, and barely higher than the Royals. So the Tigers have been baseball’s most pleasant surprise. But are we over the surprise yet?
Their 11 1/2-game lead entering July wasn’t just the biggest in MLB. It was the largest in the 125-season history of their franchise. They’re in a tight race with the Yankees for the most runs scored in their league. They’re the best base-running team in their league. They’re tied for second in the sport in starting pitching ERA. And they’re a top-10 defensive team in the sport.
So … what about this feels like just another midseason illusion? That would be nothing, said a rival AL executive.
“Best pitcher in baseball (in Tarik Skubal),” the exec said. “Impact manager (in A.J. Hinch). Lots of guys exceeding expectations, like Gleyber (Torres) and (Casey) Mize.”
So are the Tigers — yes, the Tigers — good enough to win the World Series?
“If you are good enough to get to the playoffs and skip the wild-card round,” the same exec said, “you are good enough to win anything.”
8. Which free agents have helped themselves? Bregman, Gleyber and Ranger
That walk-year slog toward the free-agent auction stand can be an adventure. But that sound you hear, off in the distance, is the cash register ringing for three guys who are definitely going to be able to afford that new coffee table after they sign their next free-agent deals this winter.
Alex Bregman — He’s already making $40 million a year in the first year of his free-agent deal with the Red Sox … so nobody has to worry about Bregman’s earning power. But he can (and almost certainly will) opt out. And when you combine his 158 OPS+, his in-it-to-win-it intensity and the ripple effects of the Devers trade, he’s in prime position to cash in.
“I’ve been laughing about this for two weeks,” one AL exec said, “just thinking about (his agent) Scott Boras’ reaction to the Devers trade with Bregman, because you know he’s sitting there thinking: ‘Just give me a blank check, because whatever I want, you guys are going to have to pay me.’”
Gleyber Torres — Sometimes, the smartest thing a player can do is market himself outside of the New York glare. For living proof, check out Torres.
Took a one-year, $15-million deal with Detroit after his trip through free agency last winter failed to lead him to Ca-Ching Land. Now he’s starting in the All-Star Game for baseball’s most pleasant surprise, the Tigers. He’s rocking a 130 OPS+. And free agency 2.0 looks like it might be his kind of place.
“Gleyber has made himself the most money, right?” said another AL exec. “Gleyber bet on himself with the one-year deal. And if he does this again in the second half, he’s going to get paid.”
