Blue Jays: Which NL contenders could come calling for a starting pitcher?

The no pile – Atlanta Braves, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs, Arizona Diamondbacks, Pittsburgh Pirates, Washington Nationals

As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of potential contenders in the NL playoff race, but some are more realistic than others.

I’ll start by dismissing the Nationals, Pirates, and Diamondbacks, as I don’t see any of them as buyers as this year’s deadline, even if they’re all technically still in the picture, The Nationals could go on a hot streak and change that, but I don’t see it happening this year after the way they’ve played through more than one third of the season.

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I would have included the Braves before they signed Dallas Keuchel on Thursday, but now that they’ve done that I would be surprised to see them make another move for the rotation. You never know when it comes to Alex Anthopoulos though, so maybe I’ll be laughing at that statement in a month from now.

The Cubs also spent some money this week by bringing in Craig Kimbrel, and while they could probably use another starter to help their World Series aspirations, they do have a pretty full house of veterans. They just need to hope that Yu Darvish can find some sort of version of his former self, but otherwise the rotation probably isn’t going to be addressed unless there is a significant injury. The Mets could be a team that looks for upgrades as well, but I really don’t see a fit here either.

When you look at the article from a few days ago and this one, you can see that there are a lot of possibilities on the table for Atkins and the rest of the Blue Jays’ brain trust. That doesn’t mean that every contender will be interested in what the Jays have to offer, but with pitching being at a premium as always, there’s plenty of reason to think they’ll be getting a lot of phone calls.