While we won't be able to fully assess who won and who lost this MLB Trade Deadline until October, we can still open things up for debate by holding up the three teams we feel did the best to help their chances for this stretch run and beyond. Here's our list of the 3 Winners Of The 2015 MLB Trade Deadline.
Toronto Blue Jays
Meet your new baseball overlords, or something like that. The Toronto Blue Jays' trade deadline whirlwind makes the San Diego Padres' offseason splurge look miniscule and foolish (well, that and the Padres' actual play this year.) If this is GM Alex Anthopoulos' last-ditch effort to save his job, he's doing it with bazookas in both hands. David Price is a hell of a trump card to have in a muddled AL East and AL Wild Card race, and the additions of Troy Tulowitzki (and his five years of team control plus an option), singles-maestro Ben Revere, and relievers LaTroy Hawkins and Mark Lowe have transformed this team from an also-ran into a potential juggernaut. They'll have to get it done on the field, and next week's four-game home series showdown with a Minnesota Twins team that leads them by two games for the final Wild Card spot is a good place to start.
New York Mets
The Mets front office seems to subscribe to the notion that it's not how you get there but where you end up. The Carlos Gomez fiasco was a draining one (especially on Wilmer Flores), but the end result of landing a true middle-of-the-order bat in Yoenis Cespedes and a sometimes-dominant reliever in Tyler Clippard WITHOUT sacrificing Flores or Zack Wheeler justifies the stomach-churning means. The Mets are within striking distance in both the NL East and NL Wild Card races, and these moves (especially the Cespedes one) is enough to elicit optimism out of fanbase that was preparing to mourn for the next two months.
Kansas City Royals
The Royals are now baseball's most intelligently-run franchise, especially with the St. Louis Cardinals' bush-league hacking job hitting the presses earlier this season. Already the American League standard bearer this season, the Royals attacked their front-of-the-rotation and second base holes with vigor and calculated forethought. Ben Zobrist is an exponential upgrade over Omar Infante up the middle and Johnny Cueto has more than a puncher's chance to take top billing this August-October over the hype generated by both the David Price and Cole Hamels trades. Kansas City doesn't usually deal for rentals like this (both Zobrist and Cueto hit free agency this winter), but their current roll of the dice may very well bring with it the franchise's first World Series title in three decades.
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