Blue Jays: Top five trade targets that should be in the sights

#4- Reconnecting with a familiar face

As time has gone on, I really feel like the Blue Jays did exceptionally well with the way they handled the 2015 trade deadline. Of course, that was the summer they acquired David Price, Troy Tulowitzki, and more, and they had to give up a lot of prospects to make it happen. That said, most of them haven’t amounted to much at the big league level. However, there’s one that I wouldn’t mind seeing back in a Blue Jays uniform.

That would be Matt Boyd, a hard-throwing lefty now the Detroit Tigers who was traded from Toronto as part of the package to acquire Price. He was a secondary piece to Daniel Norris at the time, but he’s turned out to be the more successful big leaguer.

Last season he was dominant in the first half before falling off a cliff, and it’s hard to guess which version of the southpaw the Jays would be getting. However, my guess is that the asking price for his services will have drastically come down since last year, when the Tigers couldn’t make a deal at the height of his trade value.

The complicating factor here is that Boyd hasn’t been good at all yet this year, as he’s 0-4 with an 8.48 ERA and a 1.744 WHIP. That rough performance would usually be a reason to scare team’s off, but in this case it might actually be helpful. If the asking price is low enough, he’s a solid bounce-back candidate for this season, and he has two years of arbitration eligibility.

I wouldn’t give the Tigers a lot to bring Boyd back to Toronto, but if the price is right, it could be a gamble well worth making.