The MLB trade deadline is always a great time for baseball… teams gear up to make playoff runs, superstars swap uniforms, and new cleats are customized with new colors.  Here’s the breakdown of how this year’s deadline affects the a handful of MLB cleats…

(PlayerExclusive.com Photo Illustration; Original Photos by Jim Rogash/Getty Images and Al Behrman/AP Photo)

Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers: This was the most shocking trade of the bunch, and I’m really looking forward to what Nike customizes for Manny.  My Photoshopped image above shows him in a Dodger-ized PE of the Fuse cleats he’s recently been wearing in Boston, and while it’d be great to see something like that in LA, here’s my guess about what will happen: he’ll start off by wearing a blue GR of the 5-Tool or Fuse, and he’ll break out a new Fuse PE or maybe even a Max MVP PE in a couple of weeks.  I also wouldn’t be surprised if he just went with the white / blue Max MVP… Russell Martin has already worn these for a couple of games this month, so the Dodgers are apparently one of the few teams getting these.

Ken Griffey Jr. to the White Sox: This one is confusing for the White Sox, great for Griffey, and awful for footwear.  With white, black, red, and grey, Griffey was able to lace up a ton of different colorways of his Swingman Remix signature cleat in Cincinnati.  Now that he’s with the Sox, we’ll probably only be seeing black / black, black / white, and black / grey… hopefully Nike will mix it up and start doing new colorblocking on the different upper elements.

(AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Mark Teixeira to the Angels: No impact here… Teixeira wore black / red 5-Tool PE’s in Atlanta, and as you can see from the above image, he’s already wearing them in Anaheim.  They’re one of the nicer 5-Tool pairs around the league, so I’m glad he can keep them.

(AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Pudge Rodriguez to the Yankees: As you can see, Pudge is already in New York, wearing pinstripes as well as an incorrectly numbered turf shoe.  He’ll be wearing #12 for the Yanks, but expect his cleats to have his old Tigers #7 on his Verdero PE’s for a few days until Verdero ships him some new stuff.  They’ll likely be similar to the home PE’s he wore in Detroit… black / white and black / navy with hopefully some other ones thrown into the mix.

Jason Bay to the Red Sox: I’m excited for the potential here… with Bay moving out of a small market into a massive one, I’m hoping that Easton hooks him up with some new black / red Mojo PE’s.  His cleats in Pittsburgh were pretty basic… hopefully that will change to something like this.

Casey Kotchman to the Braves: Like Teixeira, Kotchman moves from one red team to another, and while he may continue wearing his black / red Fuse PE’s, there’s a catch: I’m fairly certain that they originally belonged to Torii Hunter, who wore them earlier in the season.  I can’t imagine that Hunter would keep him from bringing a borrowed PE to another team, but stay tuned to see what Kotchman ends up wearing in Atlanta.

That’s about it for the notable PE’s that got moved around… if I missed anything, or if you just want to leave an update on what these players are wearing, please leave it in the comments.

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