With injury and underperformance keeping many promising prospects from reaching their potential, the teams that choose to part with their prospects for more established players often end up as trade winners. Key word: often. This is a story about the…
Three of the six finalists for the 2026 AL and NL MVP Awards—Yordan Alvarez, Junior Caminero, and Pete Crow-Armstrong—were originally acquired in trades as prospects before reaching the major leagues. The article details how each player transitioned from an early trade chip into one of baseball's top performers after their original organizations parted with them.
Alvarez went from the Dodgers to Houston for Josh Fields in 2016, later leading MLB in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage in 2026. Cleveland traded Caminero to Tampa Bay for Tobias Myers in 2021 before he posted back-to-back 40-homer seasons, while the Mets traded Crow-Armstrong to the Cubs for Javier Baez and Trevor Williams before he joined the 40-40 club in 2026.
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