The 2025 Detroit Tigers have been one of the most thrilling, unexpected stories in baseball, but as far as out-of-nowhere shocks, they can’t hold a candle to the 2024 Detroit Tigers.
That team sent key starter Jack Flaherty to the eventual World Series champion Dodgers at the Trade Deadline, and for good reason. Detroit entered that day (July 30) four games under .500, 6 1/2 games out of the last AL Wild Card spot and with just a 2.8% chance of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs odds. In other words, they were toast.
And then what happened? Well, the Tigers didn’t turn things around immediately, falling to eight games under .500, with 0.2% postseason odds, through Aug. 10. But THEN: They went 31-13 the rest of the way, made the playoffs, beat the Astros in the AL Wild Card Series and set themselves up for the breakthrough season 2025 has turned out to be.
They were sellers in July, and they were winning a postseason series in October. They are proof that a sudden, post-Deadline turnaround can, in fact, happen.
But can it happen this year? Can a team that was selling -- or at least not buying -- at the 2025 Deadline fight its way into the postseason the very same year? It sure seems unlikely. But if anyone’s going to do it, it’ll be one of these five teams.
Teams are listed in order of their FanGraphs playoff odds through Monday.
Guardians (57-55)
Wild Card deficit: 2.5 games | Playoff odds: 17.0%
They’ve got playoff odds in the same neighborhood as the Royals, a team that bought at the Deadline, so obviously there’s some argument someone could make for them. And it’s not like the Guardians completely stripped the cupboard bare. They traded Shane Bieber and Paul Sewald, two pitchers who were injured at the time they were shipped out, and they held on to left fielder Steven Kwan, like many people thought they might.
So most of this team remains intact. They also have 10 games left against the Twins (who did actually dismantle their roster) and the White Sox, which should boost the win count. And José Ramírez, it should be noted, is still here. The Guardians still look like the second-best team in the AL Central, and they’re still the team that reached the ALCS last year. It wouldn’t be a total shock to see them storm the postseason castle … and maybe even face the Tigers, the team who did the very same thing to them last year.
Giants (56-57)
Wild Card deficit: 6 games | Playoff odds: 7.0%
Technically speaking, the Giants were buyers on the trade scene: They traded for Rafael Devers, after all. (Trades still count when they happen in June, you know.) Devers had an excellent weekend to get his Giants numbers back to respectability, but he has still not been the All-Star for the Giants that he was for the Red Sox earlier this year. And since that Giants surge never happened -- unlike, um, the Red Sox surge -- the Giants were sellers at the Deadline, most notably sending closer Camilo Doval to the Yankees and fellow reliever Tyler Rogers to the Mets. (They even sent Mike Yastrzemski to the Royals, a team with an identical record.)
But most of the rest of the players the Giants and president of baseball operations Buster Posey were so excited about are still here, and now they’ve got Matt Chapman regularly back in the lineup as well. The Giants have underachieved; that’s why they’re hovering around .500. But that doesn’t mean the talent isn’t here to go on a hot streak.
Rays (55-59)
Wild Card deficit: 5.5 games | Playoff odds: 5.2%
These Rays have flown in the face of what we usually expect from them: It’s their hitting, not their pitching, that has carried them this year. Well, it did carry them, anyway. Since June 29, they’re 8-23, the worst record in the Majors, and that’s largely because they’ve scored the second-fewest runs in that time. (The only team that has scored fewer is also on this list: The Cardinals.)
Losing Jonathan Aranda, the team’s best player this season, to a fractured wrist certainly doesn’t help matters. Nor does the 12-game, 14-day road trip they’re about to go on, their longest in 20 years, with the team’s schedule having been backloaded with road games to avoid the summer heat at George M. Steinbrenner Field. But this has been a streaky team all season. The Rays also don’t fit neatly into the “seller” bucket, having brought back Major League talent (starter Adrian Houser, ace reliever Griffin Jax, and catchers Hunter Feduccia and Nick Fortes as part of their various moves). There’s still enough talent here that perhaps they have one more hot streak left in them.
Cardinals (57-57)
Wild Card deficit: 5.5 games | Playoff odds: 5.6%
There was a stretch, not long ago, when the Cardinals looked like one of the most pleasant surprises in baseball. In what was clearly designed as a “runway” season for young talent as the team transitions from the front office leadership of John Mozeliak to Chaim Bloom, they played some good baseball, especially during a 19-8 May. Then July came: The Cardinals went 8-16 for the month as their starting pitching imploded, and they sent away pending free agents Ryan Helsley, Steven Matz and Phil Maton at the Deadline.
They did not, however, trade away any of the young lineup staples who led the early-season surge, players who the Cardinals will be counting on the rest of the year and, likely, into the future. Brendan Donovan is still here, as are Iván Herrera, Alec Burleson, Masyn Winn and Lars Nootbaar. They’re going to be giving once-hot prospects Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman every at-bat they can down the stretch: Maybe they get hot and carry the team? OK, probably not. But they still have better odds right now than the Tigers did last year.
Marlins (55-56)
Wild Card deficit: 6 games | Playoff odds: 1.5%
This is probably the closest analogy to the 2024 Tigers, right? Here is a team that not only was left for dead but, frankly, never taken all that seriously in the first place as a contender. Yet suddenly, out of nowhere, the Marlins are red-hot and riding high for the past two months. The Marlins, unlike those Tigers, didn’t trade away a key starter at the Deadline -- Sandy Alcantara and Edward Cabrera are still here -- with the only departures a part-time catcher (Fortes) and starting right fielder Jesús Sánchez.
That untouched pitching has been their bedrock during their current run; it’s downright exciting to see Eury Pérez back pitching great again, isn’t it? And hey: Ask the Yankees about how well the Marlins are playing right now. Whether the Marlins can make a run or not, this whole season, one no one (likely not even the Marlins) saw coming, should shine a light on the terrific job first-year manager Clayton McCullough has done. And the best part: There are no players on this entire active roster at present who have turned 31 years old. I’ll put it this way: 1.5% odds seems awfully low right now.