Love it. The Toronto Blue Jays addressed needs at Monday’s trade deadline without sacrificing any of their future, which means we can have our cake and eat it, too: renting pitchers and a multi-positional-playing switch-hitter to fill in some gaps without getting rid of the likes of Jordan Groshans or Simeon Woods-Richardson. It means we can see whether Teoscar Hernandez and Randal Grichuk are fool’s gold or the real deal in a month that will see them play the New York Yankees 10 times with a playoff spot in hand and then recalibrate in the off-season if necessary.
What a season. The San Diego Padres (?) bossed the market. The Miami Marlins (?) landed the best available hitter. The first-place Cleveland Indians unloaded an ace with multiple years of contractual control for a prospect who plays the same position as their best player and volume and, because they’re the Indians, there’s every reason to expect they can win their division. Geezus. The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, meanwhile? Bupkis. Jack Squat.
For all the talk about the weirdness of how baseball got here in 2020 and where it’s going and how the economic damage from the pandemic is going to lead to some shocking non-tenders and the contraction of the minor leagues means the Rule 5 draft could be something, teams mostly adhered to their philosophical principles at the trade deadline. Even the Padres, who went all in for Clevinger and pulled off a multi-player deal with the Seattle Mariners, still managed to hang on to five of their top seven prospects. I’m sure Fernando Tatis Jr., who at 21 is a year older than the shortstop who went to Cleveland, Gabriel Arias, will do just fine.
Yeah, these are weird times. The pandemic, as Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins noted, meant up to date information on other organizations prospects was nearly impossible. There are no minor league games to scout, and while you or I could go online and look at any prospect list and pick out three of the top players in each organization, good luck trying to hoodwink a trading partner by over-selling one of your own mid-tier prospects or fleecing them out of a prospect you believe they’ve under-valued. The economics of the pandemic has wreaked havoc on scouting, but in some ways the value of eyes and ears on the ground has never been more obvious.
Meanwhile, the compressed season and expanded playoffs left almost every National League team thinking it had a shot, hence the Marlins adding Starling Marte and the Cincinnati Reds running a fake punt (pardon the mixed sports metaphors) by adding Archie Bradley and Brian Goodwin when we all thought they’d trade Trevor Bauer.
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So let’s run the rule over what the Blue Jays and their brain-trust have done at the trade deadline since taking over from Alex Anthopoulos. Last year they traded Marcus Stroman for Anthony Kay and the aforementioned Woods-Richardson. That’s a steal right now. David Phelps was traded to the Chicago Cubs for Thomas Hatch and Aaron Sanchez was dealt for Derek Fisher. Daniel Hudson was dispatched to win a World Series ring with the Washington Nationals in return for a minor leaguer. Knowing what was going to happen they probably should have asked for more but, well, Bichette happens.
In 2018, they backed up the truck, starting in June when trades sent out Steve Pearce followed by J.A. Happ, Aaron Loup, Roberto Osuna and then sent Josh Donaldson to the Atlanta Braves in a post-waiver deadline deal. Of the players arriving in return, Ken Giles, Billy McKinney, Santiago Espinal, Jacob Waguespack and Julian Merryweather are still around. The year before? Quiet, as befit a team that was in the baby steps of transition.
Nobody remembers 2016 — the first year without Anthopoulos — when the organization overhauled its pitching depth by adding Francisco Liriano for Drew Hutchison and landed Joaquin Benoit for Drew Storen. Benoit was superb for the Blue Jays: a 0.38 ERA over 23 2/3 innings before tearing a muscle running in from the bullpen in a late-season dugout-clearing incident. Could he have made a difference against the Indians in the post-season? Yes. It was a brilliant under-the-radar pickup. Reese McGuire also came over in the Liriano deal and he’s contributing on a team positioned for a playoff spot.
Bottom line? Where previous seasons were devoted mostly to getting rid of high-profile problems (Donaldson’s lack of interest and loss of faith in the organization and its medical staff, Sanchez’s nail and finger woes and Osuna’s legal issues) or getting something in return for players who were not in long-term plans, this is the first time since 2016 that this management group has been in a position to target multiple, specific additions to the Major League roster with an eye toward securing a playoff spot. Pitchers Robbie Ray and Ross Stripling offer depth and, in Ray’s case, raw velocity; Jonathan Villar is a switch-hitter who can hold down shortstop while Bo Bichette recovers. None of these players will get in the way of what the Blue Jays need to do in the winter or next season.
And Taijuan Walker? He saved the Blue Jays bullpen and put the team in position to win three of four games over the weekend against a team dogging them in the standings. That’s why you don’t wait until the last minute.
I wrote two weeks ago after the Blue Jays were slip-shod in a series loss to the Rays — the one where manager Charlie Montoyo said his team was not up to the Rays level — that I wasn’t even going to think about the playoffs even though any time you’re chasing the Baltimore Orioles (which the Blue Jays were at that point) the mathematics were in your favour, especially in a season in which half the league will make the post-season. I was simply going to focus on Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and hope to see progress and see Nate Pearson finish the year on the active roster.
The former is happening in front of our eyes. Truth is there are more games where you don’t notice him in the field but can’t miss him at the plate. The latter… well, let’s just say that Pearson’s early returns before injury suggested that Triple-A might still have some value, and that sometimes it isn’t only service time demands that weigh against a player being in the Majors when all the chattering classes say he should be up. I still believe this team is a middle of the order hitter and a better defensive outfielder away from a multi-year run, especially if the playoffs shrink again post-pandemic. Maybe they can find one player who fits in both categories. But that can be done in the off-season when this team should have money and most of its top prospects still intact.
In the meantime, I think we can safely use the ‘p’ word, now, even without sacrificing the other one: prospects. Playoff race? Prospects intact? Whether or not the Blue Jays are measurably better this morning will be determined. But they’re stronger at the Major League level and unless there’s a nasty surprise in store among the players to be named later in the Stripling deal, no more weaker as we look ahead to an unknown winter. That’s money in the bank, folks.
POP UPS
• Yankees general manager Brian Cashman can be one of the game’s most insightful interviews. It was intriguing hearing him discuss how the spate of injuries suffered by his team might be due to the impact of his overhaul of the team’s conditioning and sports science department in the age of COVID-19. Know this: there are real concerns in the Bronx about Aaron Judge and his ability to hold up over the course of a long season.
• Get ready to see Kevin Pillar appearing nightly on those highlight packages: one of the oddities of his new home, Coors Field, is that in addition to yielding home runs due to altitude it has a massive amount of outfield space that needs to be covered. Outfield defence has often been a weird Achilles heel for the Rockies.
• The Blue Jays were in on Clevinger. I figured once the Padres deal with the Indians was announced that they might also look at catcher Austin Hedges — he can’t hit much but he’s a pitch-framing monster who was credited with the second-most runs saved in 2019 according to Fangraphs.com. Catching is an area of organizational depth but I thought Hedges might be a short-term boon for a team looking at a playoff spot. The Blue Jays coaches and management are all in on Danny Jansen but there are still far too many times in games where he seems to have difficulty getting on the same page as the team’s pitchers, and now he’s got three new arms to learn in-season.
• The Nationals’ Trea Turner had his third career five-hit game Saturday, tying him for the most in franchise history with Andre Dawson, Mark Grudzielanek and Yunel Escobar. Turner’s 11 hits in the Nationals’ three-game series at Fenway Park tied him with Wade Boggs (1984), Ira Flagstead (1926) and Sam Rice (1924) for most hits over a three-game series at Fenway.
• Here’s a bonus second mention of the Expos: Sunday was the 269th time the Cardinals sent out a battery of Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina. That’s the longest run in the Majors since 1975 and in Wainwright’s next start, the pair will pass Steve Rogers and Gary Carter for sixth all-time.
• I vaguely remembered seeing Vladimir Guerrero Sr. intentionally walked with the bases empty a couple of times. Monday night, the White Sox intentionally walked the Twins’ Nelson Cruz with the bases empty in the seventh inning and sure enough — courtesy of the folks at Elias Sports Bureau — I now know that he and Guerrero Sr. are tied with four intentional career walks with the bases empty, which is good enough for fourth place since 1974. Cruz is the first Twins hitter to be walked intentionally with empty bases since our own Justin Morneau on June 5, 2010, against the Athletics.
• You can’t stop the Rays. They beat Gerrit Cole Monday night and now the Yankees ace has allowed back-to-back games of four runs for the first time since June, 2018 — yes, the Rays were part of it in 2018, too. And Cole has now allowed homers in his first eight games of the season. Phil Hughes is the only other Yankees pitcher with a streak of homers to match: he allowed homers in his first 12 games of 2012.
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THE ENDGAME
I wish I could take credit for checking out Andrew Miller’s 2011 season — a 5.54 ERA at the age of 26 in 17 games (12 starts) with the Red Sox and then a 3.35 ERA in 2012 following a move into the bullpen that started a nine-year run in which he had five seasons of an ERA under 2.00 — and wondering whether the Blue Jays’ newly-acquired, 28-year-old southpaw Robbie Ray could make a similar transition. But it was Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi who directed my attention in that direction. Miller had control issues, too, although his velocity as a starter had decreased dramatically when he made the transition, then humped back up. Ray’s velo is fine. Hey, if the Blue Jays want to be creative down the stretch…
Jeff Blair hosts Baseball Central from 2-3 p.m. and Writers Bloc with Stephen Brunt and Richard Deitsch from 3-5 p.m. ET. He also co-hosts A Kick In The Grass, Canada’s only national soccer show, with Dan Riccio on Monday evenings across the Sportsnet Radio Network.
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