If you were glued to your screen during the 2025 MLB Trade Deadline, you witnessed a whirlwind. Carlos Correa made a shocking return to the Astros. The Mariners loaded up on offense by bringing Eugenio Suárez back and also trading for Josh Naylor. And seemingly every contender decided to build a “super-bullpen,” paying king’s ransoms for elite relief pitchers.
But amid the frenzy, there was a strange silence. While teams emptied their farm systems for closers, the market for top-of-the-rotation starting pitchers was frozen solid. The biggest story of the deadline became the trades that didn’t happen. A whole staff of sought-after arms—Sandy Alcantara, Joe Ryan, Zac Gallen, Mitch Keller, MacKenzie Gore, Dylan Cease, and Luis Severino—stayed right where they were.
So, what happened? How could a market be boiling hot for one type of pitcher and ice-cold for another? It wasn’t just one thing. It was a perfect storm of sky-high asking prices, tricky player valuations, and a league-wide obsession with relief pitching that warped the entire market.
To understand why the aces stayed put, you have to look at the deals that went down. The San Diego Padres, for instance, sent the No. 3 prospect in all of baseball, Leo De Vries, to the A’s for closer Mason Miller. The Phillies paid a similar price for Minnesota’s Jhoan Duran, giving up two top-100 prospects. The Yankees and Mets also got into a bullpen arms race, trading away prospects for guys like David Bednar, Camilo Doval, and Ryan Helsley. This had a direct impact on the starting pitcher market.
As one anonymous AL executive put it, both buyers and sellers were being unreasonable. Houston’s GM Dana Brown was more blunt, saying the price for starters was simply too high. When selling teams saw the historic return for a closer like Mason Miller, they set an equally astronomical price for their controllable starters. Their logic? If a lockdown reliever is worth a top-three prospect, a No. 2 starter with years of control must be worth even more. Buyers, having already spent their best assets on bullpens, couldn’t — and wouldn’t — meet those demands. The market ground to a halt.
Several teams simply valued their pitchers far more than potential buyers did. The Minnesota Twins were in a full fire sale, trading away stars like Carlos Correa and Jhoan Duran. But they refused to move All-Star Joe Ryan. With a stellar 2.82 ERA and team control through 2027, the Twins saw him as a pillar for their next competitive team, not just a trade chip.
When the Red Sox made a push, their offer, which included a top-100 prospect, was reportedly dismissed as not even close. It was a similar story in Pittsburgh with Mitch Keller. The Pirates saw a cornerstone leader, but buyers saw a mid-rotation arm with a hefty $55 million remaining on his contract. That combination of a high prospect cost and a big salary created a valuation gap no one was willing to cross. The Washington Nationals took it a step further with MacKenzie Gore. They view the 26-year-old lefty as an untouchable piece of their rebuild and set an intentionally prohibitive asking price to shut down any conversation.
For other pitchers, recent performance or injury history made them too risky for buyers to meet the asking price. Sandy Alcantara, the 2022 Cy Young winner, was a prime example. He has struggling this season following his return from Tommy John surgery with a 6.36 ERA. While teams like the Astros and Yankees were interested in a “buy-low” opportunity, the Marlins held firm, reportedly seeking a “Juan Soto-like return” based on his past pedigree and team-friendly contract. Miami decided to bet on their own guy, hoping a strong finish to the season would rebuild his value for an offseason trade.
The Arizona Diamondbacks faced a similar issue with Zac Gallen. A pending free agent, Gallen was having the worst year of his career with a 5.60 ERA, which hurt his trade value. But GM Mike Hazen had a trump card: the qualifying offer. He knew he could get a compensatory draft pick if Gallen left in free agency, so any trade offer had to be better than that pick. As Hazen said, no team cleared that bar.
Two final cases stood out for their unique circumstances. Dylan Cease was arguably the top rental starter available, yet he remained a Padre. San Diego was in the unique position of being both a buyer and a seller. They were willing to trade Cease, but not for prospects. They wanted MLB-ready offensive help to improve their current roster. When the right trade partner never emerged, GM A.J. Preller simply pivoted. He made other moves to fill his roster holes—acquiring pitchers JP Sears and Nestor Cortes—and kept Cease for his own team’s playoff push.
And then there was Luis Severino. The Oakland A’s were reportedly desperate to trade him, but a combination of poor performance (5.18 ERA), a massive contract ($67 million over three years), and public complaints about the team’s temporary facilities made him completely untradeable. No team would take on that salary for a struggling, disgruntled pitcher, leaving the A’s in a stalemate of their own making.
Here’s the thing, folks: The great starting pitcher standstill of 2025 wasn’t a failure of the deadline but a reflection of a new reality. Teams are prioritizing elite relievers, they’re more risk-averse than ever, and the gap between how a home team and a buying team value a player can be immense.
With that… This years trade deadline has simply set the stage for a fascinating offseason, where many of these same names will be back on the trading block.
If you cannot play with them, them root for them!