Toronto Blue Jays: The Josh Donaldson Trade Tree

Over the history of the Toronto Blue Jays franchise there had only been a handful of times where they had acquired a player that they knew was an All-Star and was also just entering into the prime of his career. Acquiring Josh Donaldson was one of those times.

When the 2014 season came to a close, the Blue Jays finished four games above .500.  They had a decent pitching staff in veterans R.A. Dickey and Mark Buehrle, along with youngsters Drew Hutchison and Marcus Stroman.  Their line-up was filled with power hitters like Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, so GM Alex Anthopoulos was looking to take the next jump.  Anthopoulos signed Canadian free agent catcher Russell Martin on November 18, 2014 and 10 days later made one of the greatest trades in franchise history.

On November 28, 2014, the Blue Jays acquired Josh Donaldson who was coming off his first All-Star season where he finished eighth in MVP voting when he hit 29 home runs and 98 RBI for the Oakland A’s.

Donaldson would play just three and a half years in Toronto and after just his first season became the second Blue Jays player to win the AL MVP, when he hit a career high 41 home runs and 123 RBI to go with a .297 average. Donaldson showed leadership throughout the season and earned the respect of his teammates very quickly.

Donaldson also took home the Silver Slugger award for being the league’s best hitting third basemen in back-to-back seasons in 2015 and 2016.  Donaldson was a two-time All Star, led Toronto to two postseasons, and has one of the most underrated plays in Blue Jays history (in my opinion) when he scored the series winning run in 2016 against the Texas Rangers.

Injuries would really derail his last season and a half with the Blue Jays and with free agency looming, no sign of the postseason, and a prospect named Vladimir Guerrero Jr not far off, Toronto traded Donaldson to the Cleveland Indians on August 31, 2018 for a player to be named later, which was determined to be Julian Merryweather.

The Trade Tree

As the trade tree goes for Merryweather, he is but a small branch right now as he is still unknown.  Merryweather was acquired when he was coming off of Tommy John surgery and was only able to make two minor league appearances in 2019.  This season was going to be a big year for Merryweather as the now 28-year old is basically at a make or break time.

So who did the Blue Jays give up for Donaldson when they acquired him back in 2014?  Initially, Anthopoulos wanted to do an all prospects deal for the “Bringer of Rain”, however, Oakland GM Billy Beane told the Blue Jays GM that he still wanted the Athletics to compete in 2015, so he couldn’t move Donaldson without getting a MLB player back in return.  Canadian kid Brett Lawrie would be the player that had to be included in the deal, although Anthopoulos tried to keep him too, as he wanted him to shift over to second base.  Joining Lawrie were a couple of pitching prospects in Sean Nolin and Kendall Graveman, along with an 18-year old middle infielder by the name of Franklin Barreto.

Lawrie went on to have a productive season with the Athletics playing both second and third base, and at the plate he hit .260 with 29 doubles and 16 home runs. After just one season in Oakland Lawrie was traded again, this time to the Chicago White Sox.  Chicago decided to move Lawrie to be a full-time second basemen and leading up to the trade deadline he was having arguably his best power hitting season as he had 22 doubles and 12 home runs.  However, on July 21, 2016 he left a game midway through with a hamstring injury, which was later revealed to also include his hip, knee and quad.

Lawrie would end up trying to come back from the injury, but in Spring Training of 2017 the White Sox released him of his contract.  He sat out all of 2017 and 2018 before trying to make a comeback in 2019 with the team that first drafted him the Milwaukee Brewers, however, before getting into any minor league games he was released and he has hung up his cleats since.