Examining the prospects Blue Jays manager Ross Atkins has traded away

When Ross Atkins first joined the Toronto Blue Jays as general manager back in late 2015, he inherited a more veteran ball club that had been built by the previous front office to go all-in for the postseason.

While the Blue Jays would end up falling short of a World Series berth, the team began to change course just one year into his managerial tenure, with the organization’s managerial team focusing on securing younger players and letting the veteran players walk either by free agency or trade, officially entering a rebuild in the process.

The past two seasons have seen the headwinds shift for the Blue Jays, as they are gearing up to become a playoff team once again. They have signed some high profile free agents like Hyun-Jin Ryu and George Springer, while also supporting the young core that makes up a majority of the roster today.

During his time in the front office, Ross Atkins has made quite a few trades that involved both veteran players and a few prospects. One tactic the Blue Jays utilized over the past few years was signing veteran free agents to short term contracts and trading them to playoff contenders, securing prospects in return to help bolster the Blue Jays rebuild. While most veteran players can be found playing in the league with another MLB team, one does wonder how the prospects he traded away fared and where they ended up over this time.

This article is a two-part series that will examine the prospects Ross Atkins has traded away and seeing where those prospects have ended up since being dealt. The first part will examine the years 2016-2018 with the second part looking into the prospects traded from 2019 to the present day.

*The following prospects mentioned in this article were used in transactions that are found on the  Official Toronto Blue Jays website transactions page*