5 contenders who made huge bullpen additions at Trade Deadline

Sandy Alcantara wasn’t traded on Thursday, nor was Dylan Cease, Mitch Keller, Edward Cabrera, MacKenzie Gore, Joe Ryan or Zac Gallen. With a few exceptions -- a Merrill Kelly here, a Shane Bieber there -- there really weren’t any impactful starting pitchers moved at the Deadline, which makes clear exactly what Astros general manager Dana Brown said about starters: The price was just too high.

But the price was high for relievers, too, and that didn’t stop dozens of deals being made for late-inning arms. It’s a continuation of what we’ve learned at the Deadlines for the last several years, really. If you’re a reliever of any skill whatsoever, and you’re on a team that’s not already obviously headed to the playoffs, then travel with a packed bag. Once again, Deadline Day (and the days leading up to it) ended with approximately 30 relievers on the move -- including the top two projected rest-of-season relievers (Jhoan Duran, Mason Miller) and five of the top dozen (including Griffin Jax, David Bednar and Ryan Helsley).

In a sport where relievers threw 52% of postseason innings last year, up from 40% a decade earlier and 36% in the first postseason of the 21st century, it’s not exactly an open secret that relievers take on added importance in October. (It has, somewhat unbelievably, now been an entire decade since the 2014 Royals rode the back-end trio of Wade Davis, Greg Holland and Kelvin Herrera to the World Series, and nearly that long since Andrew Miller’s 2016 run helped redefine what a non-closing playoff relief hero could look like.)

If not a trend, it’s a continuation of a theme. Each year for the last five years, somewhere between two and three dozen relievers get moved in the final five days of the trading period. It’s true that there were many decades of Deadlines before this, but the elimination of the August waiver period in 2019 makes this more of an apples-to-apples comparison.

Number of relievers traded at Deadline*

• 2025: 33
• 2024: 34
• 2023: 29
• 2022: 28
• 2021: 30

*Deadline day and four preceding days. Pitchers with Major League service time only.

Last year, the Dodgers added Michael Kopech at the Deadline. The year before, it was Texas making the big move for Aroldis Chapman. You can win without a reliever you added at the Deadline. It’s just a lot easier when you can get some help -- and a few teams stood out for reinforcing their ‘pens for a playoff push and October.

These aren’t the only teams who added relievers, obviously. (Yes, Texas, we see you, with Danny Coulombe and Phil Maton. Maybe you too, Cubs, depending on how you use Michael Soroka.) These are the five contenders who seem to have either strengthened a strength or reinforced a leaky unit, headed down the stretch and potentially into October.

1. Padres

Well, obviously. San Diego already had what was likely MLB’s best bullpen, went out and made the stunning trade for Miller, and then didn’t end up subtracting from that unit by moving Adrian Morejon or Robert Suarez for the bat they so badly needed. When Morejon was named to the All-Star team as an injury replacement, joining teammates Suarez and Jason Adam, the Padres became the first team in history to have three All-Star relievers in the same bullpen. Now, they have Miller, a 2024 All-Star, who has a 41% strikeout rate over the last two seasons … which is merely the best in baseball.

So that’s a pretty deadly quartet, except that the Padres already had a deadly quartet, coined “the Four Horsemen” by manager Mike Shildt, adding Jeremiah Estrada’s 66 strikeouts in 48 2/3 innings. So now there’s the five of them, plus Wandy Peralta, who’s got a top-12 groundball rate and has allowed just three homers all season. (Plus: David Morgan is a relative unknown, but he’s started his career with a 2.08 ERA in 26 innings.)

The regular-season impact might be less than you’d think, because there’s only so many high-leverage innings to go around, and someone overqualified might find himself in lower-leverage situations just because someone has to do it. (Talk about ‘champagne problems,’ really.) But in the playoffs, should the Padres get there: They might be able to throw out a top-end starter in three out of four games and follow them with filthy reliever after filthy reliever, a bullpen ace for any situation. Even if there’s a chance Miller could be a starter next year, he’s in this pen at this time.

Put it this way: Over the last month leading up to the Deadline, the Padres' bullpen had a 1.85 ERA – and now, they have Mason Miller.

2. Yankees

Well, start here.

Without any disrespect to Messrs de los Santos and Hamilton, going from those two to Bednar and Camilo Doval is … a considerable upgrade. (Jake Bird, also acquired at the Deadline, must have something the Yankees are interested in, though it’s hard to rely as much on a pitcher who has allowed 23 runs in 15 innings over the last six weeks, even if some of those came at Coors Field.)

The Yankees should have a good bullpen, if you just look at the names involved, but because of injuries and inconsistency, it’s been nothing short of a disaster in recent weeks, posting a 6.29 ERA in the 30 days leading up to the Deadline, better only than Bird’s former mates in Colorado. Some of that is due to the supposed bullpen aces in Devin Williams and Luke Weaver, who have either been great or terrible and rarely anything in between, and some of that is because Fernando Cruz, who had been a key addition this winter, hasn’t pitched since June 27 due to injury. (He’s slated to resume throwing this weekend and should return later in August.)

Enter Bednar and Doval, who aren’t terribly similar pitchers but have had somewhat similar trajectories, which is to say: They were both 2023 All-Stars who fell on hard enough times that they found themselves back in the Minor Leagues for brief stints over the last year. (Relievers, man.) But since May 1, they’ve combined for a 2.69 ERA, looking a lot more like their pre-demotion selves. There’s a version of this bullpen a month from now that has Williams, Weaver, Doval, Bednar, Cruz and lefty-killer Tim Hill as their top six -- plus potentially whatever they can get from Bird, if fixed, or flamethrowing rookie Cam Schlittler, if enough starters get healthy to push him to relief. There’s a lot of variance here. There’s a lot of talent, too.

3. Mets

Look, it doesn’t matter if you were already good or bad. When you add three quality relievers in hard-throwing Ryan Helsley, funky submariner Tyler Rogers and lefty Gregory Soto (who was technically acquired before our five-day Deadline window, but obviously still counts for New York’s purposes), you’ve done a ton to improve your bullpen -- to say nothing of the internal return of lefty Brooks Raley from Tommy John surgery.

So that’s four “new” pitchers, or at least ones who weren’t here a month ago, plus Reed Garrett and Ryne Stanek. (Plus, it’s fine to at least be intrigued by well-traveled righty Rico Garcia, who has a 14/2 K/BB and one run allowed in his first 10 2/3 innings with the club.) That, if we stopped there, would be a pretty solid bullpen. That’d be Rogers, Soto, Garrett, Stanek, Raley and maybe Garcia setting up for Helsley. You can win with that.

Except, it’s not just that, because they’re all going to be working to get the game to Edwin Díaz in the ninth, and all Díaz has done aside from being consistently excellent when healthy over the last half-decade is to allow exactly one single run since April turned to May. He’s finally going to have some help when it comes to October.

4. Phillies

The Phillies probably have the best rotation in the game, but the bullpen has been a clear source of stress all year long. Maybe David Robertson, signed from semi-retirement earlier in July, will help. Maybe they’ll get something out of José Alvarado, eligible to return from suspension in the second half of August (though ineligible to appear in the playoffs). Then again, adding Jordan Romano and Joe Ross last winter never really panned out, and others like Carlos Hernández (who's no longer on the Phils), Max Lazar and Seth Johnson haven’t exactly impressed.

Enter Duran, who came at a high price -- we barely knew you, Mick Abel -- yet now anchors a group that should, shortly, have Duran, Robertson, Matt Strahm, Alvarado, Tanner Banks and Orion Kerkering as the top six arms. It will be different, at least, and different is key given everything that’s come before this season. This is no “he’s probably solid,” like when they added Carlos Estévez last season; Duran is one of the few true relief aces in the game, thanks to a fastball that averages (averages!) 100.2 mph and a ‘splinker’ he made his own well before anyone knew the name Paul Skenes.

Yet despite that, his strikeout rate is more good than great; what really stands out here is the simple fact that it’s all but impossible to make hard contact against him. Duran stands in the 99th percentile in groundball rate (which is great), and in the 99th percentile in barrel rate (which is better). How about this: Duran has allowed all of one homer, all season long. It came off the bat of Shohei Ohtani, who managed to take a 100.1 mph splinker to the opposite field. It hardly seems like that should count as a demerit, really.

5. Blue Jays

Toronto’s pen has been more good than great -- middle of the pack in both ERA and WAR -- and while that’s not a problem, exactly, it’s also a group heavily relying on a pair of breakout arms with almost no track record of this kind of performance, in lefty Brendon Little and righty Braydon Fisher. Free-agent closer Jeff Hoffman has been better than his 4.76 ERA would imply, as a third of his runs allowed came in one bad week-long May stretch, but he’s also not exactly been consistent, either. Throw in the struggles of since-released Chad Green, and injuries that have sidelined the underrated Yimi García, and all of a sudden, Toronto was looking at some real bullpen concerns.

They did not, comparatively, add big names. There’s no Duran, Miller, Doval or Bednar here. Instead, they added Louis Varland, who has posted the quietest 2.02 ERA that absolutely no one outside of Minnesota knows about -- mostly because he’s not Duran or Griffin Jax -- and hasn’t allowed a homer since April, in no small part because of this kind of velocity boost. That’s mostly about being in the bullpen and not the rotation, as he occasionally has been, but also: He touches 101 mph now.

They also added Seranthony Domínguez, who has completely remade himself over the last two seasons, adding a high-quality sweeper last year and dropping his changeup for a splitter this year. To say those pitches have worked out is a bit of an understatement; between the two of them, they’ve allowed eight hits all season long. That’s it -- and against righties, who mostly see the sweeper and the 97.7 mph four-seam, he’s allowed a mere .123/.260/.173 line.

Varland and Dominguez won’t move the PR needle like the bigger stars here, and the Jays' bullpen won’t quite be relief-first in October, like other clubs will be. If this pitching staff is going to succeed, it’s going to be because they have a rotation that just added Shane Bieber to Kevin Gausman, Max Scherzer, Chris Bassitt and José Berríos. But with these two additions, they’re deeper -- and a lot nastier, too.