Jeff Passan's early 2025 MLB trade deadline preview - ESPN

The calls began in recent days, cursory in nature but loaded with meaning. MLB trade deadline season has arrived, and even if deals will take days, weeks, even months to manifest, plenty of them start with executives reaching out in early June.

How exciting the July 31 deadline will be depends on the next six weeks. One unfortunate victim of Major League Baseball's expanded postseason is the deadline. Because of the additional wild card added in 2022, more teams than ever see themselves as contenders — until they unequivocally aren't.

Even if more teams jump into fray, more than a dozen executives surveyed over the past week agreed that there are unlikely to be any top-end players available at this year's deadline. Between a soft free agent class and the best of them playing for contending teams — or at least contending for now — there is no obvious best player available.

As teams fade in the standings, that could change. At this time last year, it looked like the New York Mets would dump players. They wound up taking the Dodgers to six games in the National League Championship Series. So consider this simply a first look at where teams are now and what they're thinking, with their ultimate tack TBD.

We've divided teams into four groups: the Unloaders (certain to move players), the Tweeners (still not sure), the Holders (unlikely to do much either way) and the Acquirers (aggressively pursuing additions).

Jump to team:

American League
ATH | BAL | BOS | CHW | CLE
DET | HOU | KC | LAA | MIN
NYY | SEA | TB | TEX | TOR

National League
ARI | ATL | CHC | CIN | COL
LAD | MIA | MIL | NYM | PHI
PIT | SD | SF | STL | WSH

Objective: Forget this year ever existed.

Best player available: First baseman Ryan O'Hearn

What to know: The