Anthopoulos addresses recent Toronto Blue Jays rumours

Toronto Blue Jays general manager spoke with Jim Bowden of ESPN recently. Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

Alex Anthopoulos spoke with Jim Bowden from ESPN this morning on Sirius XM and the Blue Jays GM indirectly addressed some of the rumours that are floating around about his team. It was an interesting three minutes that potentially gave further insight to his plans for the winter. Full audio can be found here.

About the reports that he was in talks with the Chicago Cubs about pitcher Jeff Samardzija:

"I won’t comment on specific rumours or things like that but I will say that we are definitely exploring offers with teams but also just like a lot of other stuff that’s out there that is false, we have not made an offer to anybody with respect to a starter."

Nothing really noteworthy here. The tweet by Bruce Levin of WSCR 670 the Score in Chicago that started the rumor smartly said the “Blue Jays are putting together a package of young players” and did not state an offer was actually made. Anthopoulos then addressed the notion that he is speaking with teams however.

"But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t inquiring, we’re still inquiring."

He’s then asked if that means nothing sounds to be imminent and Anthopoulos responds with the following.

"You know what we’re talking to one club about a smaller trade maybe it will move the next few days or maybe it won’t happen. No I don’t think not right now there’s not anything imminent we’re not necessarily waiting on someone to get back to us."

Hmm… a smaller trade? Now that’s something curious, I wonder what Alex’s definition of “smaller” is since his transactions have ranged from full-blown blockbusters to a plethora of minor league deals. It makes me wonder what he could be working on. Could he be downplaying us a bit? You never really know when it comes to comments from the Ninja.

The Blue Jays interest in potential free agent pitchers also comes up:

"I probably wouldn’t come out and say who we might be in on just from a competitive standpoint but let’s say we’ve probably talked about all those guys definitely all the starters, definitely made calls on all those guys, trying to get a sense of what the price might be whether it’s guys like Garza and so one, those guys are clear-cut, they would be upgrades to any team, so I think any team would have interest in guys like that. The mid-tier guys we may have someone that we like a little more than some other clubs and would want to keep that a little more quiet. But we’ve even called on positions we don’t have a need on because there have been some trade talks where some teams have asked about some guys that we don’t plan on trading but all of a sudden we get to fill some other holes and if we can back-fill through free agency and strengthen the club we would look to do that as well. Obviously a lot more complicated to do something like that but we’ve been open-minded and we’ve actually looked into some of those things as well."

This helps give a bit more context to the recent rumours that the Blue Jays checked in on Matt Kemp from the Los Angeles Dodgers but basically leaves the door wide-open to all kinds of possibilities. Who are the mid-level starters they could be targeting? Could we see another huge trade that completely changes the look (or direction) of this team?

Who knows what Anthopoulos has up his sleeve at this point but Blue Jays fans are eagerly anticipating what he will do to try to improve the club for the 2014 and beyond.