BALTIMORE — Two trades amid two games, never mind the rain delay, netting the Toronto Blue Jays four more prospects, one immediately bound for the majors, with time to explore other opportunities, heavy lifting done, before Tuesday’s 6 p.m. ET trade deadline.
Between the emotional goodbyes, the asset reallocation and corresponding roster churn, a wild Monday was yet another (very, very long) day where the actual baseball felt immaterial to the larger happenings around the club.
The trades of Yusei Kikuchi to the Houston Astros, especially, and Justin Turner to the Seattle Mariners in time may be transformative, or perhaps not, as is the inherent risk in such present-for-future transactions. But if the Blue Jays are a house, these deals and the three before them over the weekend, were essential, akin to selling the main-floor furniture to patch up a rotting foundation.
So, painful as this period is for the franchise — Danny Jansen’s dispatching to Boston on Saturday hit particularly hard up and down the organization — this is what had to happen to reverse a Blue Jays’ collapse several years in the making. Recent drafts didn’t do enough to bolster the organizational base so this season, when injuries and underperformance pressured the entire structure, there wasn’t enough support beneath to hold everything up.
The jaw-dropping return for Kikuchi — dealt between an 11-5 loss and an 8-4 victory against the Baltimore Orioles on a sweaty day at Camden Yards — may very well turn out to be the most significant fix.
Jake Bloss, a 23-year-old right-hander ranked by Baseball America as Houston’s No. 2 prospect who started the year in high-A before landing in the depleted Astros’ rotation, would have been a strong get alone. But capitalizing on what was described as a robust market for the left-hander, the Blue Jays also got outfielder Joey Loperfido, BA’s No. 5 prospect who is slated to join the club in Baltimore, and No. 19 Will Wagner, a bat-first infielder who controls the strike zone very well and has some pop.
Both Bloss and Wagner, at least initially, will head to triple-A Buffalo, but the trio offers both instant and near-term help, especially if Bloss can stick in a rotation that now needs to backfill for Kikuchi.
Turner returned interesting double-A outfielder RJ Schreck, adding to the previous stockpile of seven prospects headlined by triple-A outfielder Jonatan Clase in the deal that sent Yimi Garcia to Seattle.
The volume — 11 prospects — matters because of how attrition impacts player development. Most prospects don’t reach their peak. Those contending teams trade generally with clear risks, which is what makes them willing to surrender them. But the Blue Jays were so far from a critical mass, adding them was essential to begin repairing the underpinning of their shaky 50-57 big-league record.
Save for Nate Pearson, the Blue Jays have focused their trade efforts on selling off their pending free agents only, and the club still has two more expiring contracts remaining in Trevor Richards and Kevin Kiermaier. Given how hot the market has been, meaningfully exploring what some players under contractual control into next year might return is intriguing, although that continues to not be the club’s posture to the industry.
And so, the discussion on what comes next and how realistic another run at the playoffs in 2025 might be can begin taking shape.
Certainly, the ongoing resurgence of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who went 7-for-10 with two homers, three doubles and five RBIs during the doubleheader bodes well.