BALTIMORE — The Toronto Blue Jays carried a sense of foreboding last year as they arrived at Camden Yards for four games straddling the trade deadline. Their selloff had already started and over three swamp-assy days, Yusei Kikuchi and Justin Turner one day and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Trevor Richards and Kevin Kiermaier the next were also dealt, capping a run of eight trades from July 26-30, all while across the diamond the Baltimore Orioles were busy bolstering themselves en route to a wild-card berth.
“You go into every season with so much optimism that you don't ever think you'll get to that point,” Blue Jays ace Kevin Gausman remembers of that grim series. “But we all knew probably weeks before that something was going to happen and it probably wasn't just going to be one or two guys, it was going to be a handful of guys. It was tough. Especially losing Kikuchi, losing (Danny Jansen). Obviously Jano was here for a really long time, it was unfortunate. You definitely feel a lot more comfortable being in this position than the other.”
This position, 364 days later, is a near total juxtaposition, the Blue Jays atop the American League East and buying as they resumed sweating in Maryland’s mugginess, the Orioles selling after an unexpected collapse, and another four-games-in-three-days set, this one opening with Baltimore delivering an 11-4 spanking Monday.
Chris Bassitt only made it through 2.1 innings and left down 6-3, surrendering back-to-back homers to Cedric Mullins and Coby Mayo in the second and a two-run double to Adley Rutschman in the third among the seven hits he allowed. The Blue Jays (63-44) were in damage-control mode from that point forward, even as Bo Bichette added four hits to establish a new team record with hits in nine consecutive at-bats.
A four-run fifth keyed by trade candidate Ramon Laureano’s two-run homer pushed the game out of reach as manager John Schneider had to run through five relievers ahead of a day-night doubleheader Tuesday, with one of Easton Lucas or Lazardo Estrada expected to start the opener, followed by Eric Lauer in the nightcap.
Compounding matters was George Springer getting hit on the side of the head by a 96 m.p.h. fastball from Kade Strowd in the ninth, a frightening moment that silenced a crowd of 20,176. Fans gave him a standing ovation as he walked off the field with assistance from trainers Jose Ministral and Voon Chong.
So, far from ideal at the tail end of 14 games in 13 days right out of the all-star break ahead of an off-day Thursday, when the trade deadline hits at 6 p.m. ET.
“He's doing all right. Kind of got him in the shoulder, then helmet. Thankfully he was able to turn a little bit, too,” Schneider said of Springer, who was being further evaluated. “That's the worst part of baseball for any side, is when a pitch gets thrown that high. You don't think about baseball. You think about the human. It's scary. It happens. It sucks. He was alert the whole time. He was kind of talking to me, Voon and Jose while he was laying down there, which is a good thing. But you hate seeing that happen to anyone at any time.”
As all that played out in the field, in the background, the Blue Jays continued to work a trade market building toward a burst that could start Wednesday and carry into Thursday. Somewhat of note was the Detroit Tigers’ acquisition of back-end starter Chris Paddack along with salary-dump reliever Randy Dobnak from the Minnesota Twins for catcher Enrique Jimenez, an intriguing 19-year-old in the rookie-level Florida Complex League with lots of raw tools and with lots of development to come.
It's far from cheap, but it also doesn’t seem like a gouge, something executives involved in trade talks say sellers are still trying to do to contenders shopping for pitching. For now, leverage still lies with the sellers, but each day closer to the deadline, they need to reset their asks as asset values drop, something that may have started with the Paddack deal.
The Blue Jays know that as well as any team, having learned from their experience as a clearing house one a year ago. Back inside the cramped visiting manager’s office Schneider recalled how “sitting in this exact chair last year was not fun” when “everyone kind of knew the reality of it, but it was still a little bit tense.”
Their plan at the time was to restock the upper levels of the farm system — Joey Loperfido and Will Wagner, two of the players acquired from Houston for Kikuchi were both in the lineup Monday — and this around time Schneider’s role is different.
“We've had a lot of conversations about how we can hopefully make the team better and then what the result of that would be,” he explained. “I think we're doing a good job of trying to measure some of the things that are happening now and not just saying, OK, this is what's going to be great on paper, but this is what's going to be good for this team. A lot of times when you're adding, you have to subtract, so making sure that we're really kind of aligned with what we're subtracting that aren't just prospects, if it's that. We have pretty much daily conversations about that.”
Given the way the Blue Jays are constructed, augmenting a group that’s relied on contributions from across the roster “is delicate,” Schneider explained. “You have to be aware of how we have arrived at this point and then do you continue to operate the way you are the rest of the way out? Or do you go for a little bit more of a stable look? … It's definitely interesting, because what we've done to this point has been pretty sustainable and guys have grasped onto their roles. If it's a slam dunk (talent add), yeah, OK, that's easy. It's not always that easy just to go get the best player that's available everywhere, so you have to thread the needle a little bit.”
That difficult task belongs to the front office, which also has to factor in considerations about the future, not simply this year alone, a balance that prompts Gausman to quip about how he’s happy those decisions aren’t his responsibility.
From afar, he and this teammates are following the action, with very different feelings from those of a year ago.
“I love it, especially if you're on a good team,” Gausman said of trade deadline time. “It's a lot different if you're one of the bottom-feeders and know that you're probably going to lose some friends and teammates, like we did last year. But this is what you hope for as a player, to be in a position where your team is going to add and hopefully add impact, whether it's a pitcher, a bat, whatever. I was with Baltimore in '14 when we added Andrew Miller and man, that was such a jolt to the whole team, bringing in a guy of his calibre. So I've seen first-hand what it can do. It's exciting, for sure.”
Remarkably so for the Blue Jays, one year after the deadline was everything but.
