Blue Jays: Stanton trade helps with Donaldson’s future

After the Yankees acquired Giancarlo Stanton, it changed the landscape of next offseason, which may push Josh Donaldson back to Toronto.

For some Blue Jays fans, Saturday’s news that Giancarlo Stanton is now a New York Yankee felt like doomsday. The Yankees already had baseball’s most powerful lineup in terms of home runs, and they just added the bat that hit 59 home runs in 2017, and brought the name of Roger Maris back into the mainstream media again.

The move has ramifications across baseball to be sure, but it’s not as if the other 29 teams should close up shop. Every year there are contenders and pretenders, but when you play out 162 games there are a lot of variables that can change things in a hurry. For example, if you predicted the Minnesota Twins would make the playoffs last year, then I’d like to talk to you for some investment advice.

With that in mind, teams like the Blue Jays have to figure out how to proceed, and how the Stanton move changes the future of things in their own division. It’s made things more difficult to be sure, but it’ll also have a trickle down effect, such as on next year’s free agent class.

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After the 2018 season is over, names like Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, and others like Clayton Kershaw will headline one of the best groups to ever become available at the same time. The Blue Jays’ own superstar, Josh Donaldson, is also due to join that group. It’s been long expected that he’ll wait for free agency, as it’s anticipated that Harper and the others will, but things change in a hurry in baseball.

For example, I’ve read articles for the last four years talking about how Bryce Harper will eventually end up in New York and smashing home runs over the right field porch at Yankee Stadium. Now that Stanton is in New York and the Yankees have Aaron Judge in their other corner outfield position, Harper to the Yankees is all but dead.

As Blue Jays’ fans, that’s hardly a consolation on it’s own, but it does change things in the free agent landscape. When it comes to players like Harper or Machado, speculation has had them looking for something like 40-50 million annually. With the Yankees out of the running (on Harper anyway), how many teams are going to play in that kind of deep end?

The answer is not many, and if the top bidders are chasing the Harpers and Machado’s, that will only serve to help the Blue Jays re-sign Donaldson, assuming that they would like to do that. It could drive the market down a little as well, which will make an extension all that much more feasible.

And before you get all huffy, I’m not suggesting that the Blue Jays couldn’t play in the large market deep end for guys like Donaldson anyway, it’s just that they typically don’t take that approach. However, when the market plays into their hands the way it might be developing, then it would be foolish to ignore opportunity, just as the Yankees did with Stanton yesterday.

Next: Donaldson trade rumours are bound to fire back up

So while it’s not a great weekend for baseball fans in the AL East, there are silver linings in the equation if we look hard enough for them.