If we didn’t know any better, it would look as though Monday’s trade between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Miami Marlins was an attempt to clean up the remnants of a party before your parents get back home. If you had been asleep from the beginning of 2025 to the beginning of 2026, things wouldn’t look terribly different. The Dodgers would still be the World Series winners, and there would be no hint of Esteury Ruiz anywhere on their roster. Heck, the guy they traded to the A’s to land Ruiz on April 2, Carlos Duran, has already re-signed with the Dodgers. And yet, some small changed have occurred. Ruiz is now a World Series champion, though he was left off the roster for the entirety of the postseason. Duran made his premature MLB debut when the A’s needed a fresh arm in May, and that one game came in Sacramento and was accompanied by poor results. On Monday, the Dodgers finished their cleaning, trading Ruiz to the Marlins in exchange for minor-league pitcher Adriano Marrero, an 18-year-old right-hander that s
