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Blue Jays Podcast (VIDEO): The Trade Market

By Shaun Doyle

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This week’s episode of Jays’ Nest is coming at your form our new day and time. We’ve switched to recording on Monday evenings at 6pmET. You can tune in on YouTube as we record every episode live. This week, we discussed the signing of Vlad Guerrero Jr and its impact on the Blue Jays’ system. As exciting a this signing was, the real focus of our episode was the upcoming July 31st Trade Deadline and what that might look like for the Toronto Blue Jays. We talked about some potential options for the Blue Jays as well as some of the names that might have to be given up to bring in a player or two. We also considered a scenario many fans may not want to think about. As well, we handed out our weekly awards.

Also From Jays Journal: The Cost of Trades

Remember, to catch all of our episodes, you can find us on Stitcher (for Android) and iTunes. If you’d rather watch our show, check us out on YouTube. If you like what you hear, please be so kind as to give us a good rating or some stars. Thanks! As always, you can tune in live on Google Hangouts to interact with our panel with questions, etc during our LIVE broadcast. We would also love to respond to your questions/ comments on air. You can submit them to @JaysNestPodcast or to JaysNestPodcast@gmail.com. 

Toronto Blue Jays
Toronto Blue Jays /

Toronto Blue Jays

We kicked off this week’s discussion with a quick look at the excitement that signing the 16 year old beast that is Vlad Jr. There certainly is a lot to be excited about this young man. He already possesses impressive power. We wondered just what kind of impact this signing would have  on the rest of the system; where would Vladimir Jr slot in on the depth charts. We should probably hold off on answering that until we see him in some game action for a little bit. Some are suggesting that he may not live up to his dad’s level of performance, but that’s OK. If he ends up to be a power hitting first baseman, that’s just fine with us.

From there, we moved into a really good discussion on the state of the Blue Jays’ pitching and what targets might be available. But, we took that chat further by looking at what might be realistic targets for the Toronto Blue Jays. Cole Hamels and Johnny Cueto might just be the prize jewels of this summer’s class, but should the Blue Jays be looking elsewhere? So, we considered other options. At this point in the season, it would not take much of an upgrade to improve upon the performance of the starting rotation. So, maybe the club can part with a less frightening package.

Which we discussed. We talked about the several names that teams are targeting when looking at a return from the Blue Jays. It seems that if the Blue Jays are going to pull off a deal, it will have to include one of Daniel Norris, Aaron Sanchez, Dalton Pompey, Roberto Osuna, Miguel Castro, Kevin Pillar or Devon Travis. This might be too steep a price for Blue Jays fans, not to mention GM, alex Anthopoulos. We debated whether there were other names that could be dangled instead. We also looked at whether we, as fans, might just have to come to grips with the fact that one or more of the above players may not be a Blue Jay for much longer.

From there, I presented a scenario that might be too much for our constitution. I asked what would happen if the Blue Jays wait around for “the right deal” and have to rely on the roster it has and it falls further behind to the point where they are no longer buyers, but sellers. How much value does a guy like Jose Bautista have on the trade market? What about Mark Buehrle as a rental? It was a discussion that hopefully will remain just hypothetical musing rather than a reality. 

More from Podcast

This lead perfectly into our reader question that came from Adam in Rhode Island. Adam wondered if the Toronto Blue Jays offense is strong enough to include someone like Edwin Encarnacion in a trade to land that big starting pitcher that might push this team t the playoffs. Could this lineup handle losing one of its bats to pick up a pitcher. We thought that the problem may not be so much with the Blue Jays’ lineup handling it, but with finding a team to trade with. Is there a team that is looking for a bat to help them make the playoffs? If so, do they have extra impact pitching laying around? Or, is there a team that is looking to rebuild that wants to take on an aging Encarnacion and his contract? Have a listen for this great discussion.

Finally, we wrapped up with our weekly awards.  for Hitter of the Week, Keegan went with Justin Smoak. I went with Devon Travis. Both are great choices. Both used the past week to show what happens when they are in the lineup, even though they’ve been out of it for different reasons. It was really hard to choose a Pitcher of the Week. the pitching has been bad. Actually, that made it easy to choose Roberto Osuna for this hardware.

We hope you enjoy Episode #27 of the Jays’ Nest Podcast. Feel free to leave your feedback below. also, send your questions in! We’ll use them every Monday evening at 6pm ET when we go LIVE!

AUDIO:


Jays’ Nest- Jays Journal- Podcast about Toronto Blue Jays – Jays’ Nest #27- The Trade Market

VIDEO:

Next: Blue Jays Player of the Week: Justin Smoak

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