Boston and Detroit Are Both on Winning Streaks. That Makes Their Trade Deadline Calls Brutal.

The MLB trade deadline is still a few weeks away, but two teams that looked like obvious sellers a month ago just made things complicated for themselves.

The Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox have both been terrible for most of the season. But they’ve also both been red-hot lately. Detroit has won six straight. Boston has won seven in a row. And suddenly, neither team looks ready to wave the white flag.

ESPN’s Buster Olney pointed out the obvious on Saturday. The Red Sox are now just 1.5 games back in the American League wild card race. The Tigers are 2.5 games back. In a normal year, teams with losing records this deep into July wouldn’t have that kind of hope. But the American League is bad this season. Real bad. So here we are.

The Skubal Problem in Detroit

Detroit is 44-50. Boston is 44-48. Those are not good records. But the standings are what they are, and both teams have to decide if they’re buyers, sellers, or something in between.

The biggest name on the trade market is probably Tigers starter Tarik Skubal. He’s back from elbow surgery and pitching like an ace again. This season he’s got a 3.06 ERA. Any contender would love to add him to a rotation. But Detroit held onto him through the offseason instead of trading him then. The Athletic asked the logical question: if you believed in this team enough to keep Skubal last winter, why would you change course now just because the record is middling?

That’s the hard part. The Tigers aren’t good, but they’re not completely out of it either. If you trade Skubal, you’re telling your locker room you gave up. If you don’t, you risk losing him for less value later.

Boston’s Own Dilemma

The Red Sox have a similar problem with Sonny Gray. He signed with Boston before the 2026 season and has been great. Gray’s ERA sits at 2.54 over 95.2 innings. MassLive reporter Chris Cotillo called it a travesty that Gray didn’t make the All-Star team. That’s not wrong.

Gray is a veteran with value. A contender would overpay for that kind of production. But Boston is suddenly winning games. The front office has to ask itself whether this hot streak is real or just a tease before the bottom falls out.

The trade deadline is August 3. Both teams have about two weeks to figure out what they actually are. Right now, they look like teams that could go either way. And that’s exactly the kind of uncertainty that makes front offices nervous.