Jeff Passan's early 2026 MLB trade deadline preview - ESPN

Major League Baseball's trade season is fast approaching, and the sport's cramped standings are providing little clarity on who's likeliest to end up where. There are too many contenders — and too many teams whose dreams of contention remain — to figure out how this deadline is likely to operate.

At this time last year, remember, the Milwaukee Brewers, who wound up winning a major-league-best 97 games, were barely above .500. The New York Mets were a day away from holding the best record in the National League, and they didn't even make the postseason. The best team in baseball was the Detroit Tigers, who snuck into the playoffs via tiebreaker.

And now, following an early-season flop that mirrored their late-season meltdown, the Tigers find themselves the focus of every contender's attention. Each loss draws them closer to divesting at the deadline, which means Tarik Skubal is almost certain to be available and with that there will be a bidding war not seen since Juan Soto went to the San Diego Padres in 2022.

Already this was bound to be a complicated deadline because of the potential for labor unrest that could imperil the 2027 season — and makes valuing players with multiple years of club control that much more difficult. Factor in the belief among some owners that a salary cap and floor are coming, and it could prompt teams that in the past would've dumped everything not tacked down to reevaluate because they don't want to be in a position to reach the floor through free agency's historically inefficient market.

All of it makes for a fascinating confluence of factors leading up to the Aug. 3 deadline. So we tried to make sense of it all, dividing teams into four groups based on their place in the standings as well as