Blue Jays: Examining potential starting pitching trade targets

As teams across the MLB head into spring training this week, Toronto Blue Jays fans have to be pretty happy with how the off-season turned out for the organization.

While the going was slow at the beginning, the Blue Jays walked away with quite a haul, inking outfielder George Springer to a six-year contract, while also signing a plethora of players on one-year deals like shortstop Marcus Semien, RHP Kirby Yates, RHP Tyler Chatwood, and LHP Robbie Ray. The Blue Jays were also busy on the trade front as well, acquiring LHP Steven Matz from the New York Mets organization, adding to the large starting pitcher pool the team currently has. The Toronto Blue Jays certainly got better this off-season, something fans were hoping the team would capitalize on given that the roster is full of young talented stars who will be heading into their arbitration years as early as next year.

Even though the Blue Jays did make some acquisitions, not many people are ready to pencil the team in as this year’s World Series Champions just yet.

While the organization did sign some potential starting pitchers, the team still lacks considerable depth behind ace Hyun-Jin Ryu when it comes to the starting rotation. Don’t get me wrong, the Blue Jays have quite a few candidates when it comes to starting pitchers rounding out the 3-5 spots in the rotation, but behind Ryu, the roster is missing one or two pieces which could take the team from being playoff contenders to legitimate World Series threats. Prospect Nate Pearson is still getting his feet wet at the MLB level and while he could become the team’s future ace, he still needs to get some reps in given his injury past limiting his innings during his professional baseball career.

With the off-season over and all of the top pitching free agents already signed, the Blue Jays will now have to resort to trading for a starting pitcher, something the organization has done in the past, or wait until next off-season to sign potential free agents like Max Scherzer, Noah Syndergaard, and Clayton Kershaw. Those pitchers would make the team better on paper, but if the Blue Jays want to attempt to win this year, the trade route will be their only option. While trading for a pitcher might not occur during spring training, if the Blue Jays find themselves close to the top of the A.L. East midway through the season, you will most likely see some trade action up until the deadline passes in late July.

The Rules and Regulations

With that in mind, using the Baseball Trade Values site (a website/simulator that analyzes potential trade scenarios while taking into consideration both player skill and contract size), this article is going to examine some possible trade scenarios that could see potential starting pitchers join the Blue Jays organization.

The trades mentioned are just a small snapshot of the potential scenarios that could happen or be modified (and certainly not the only ones available) but have all been considered fair trades and deemed acceptable from the website based on their criteria.

I tried to present a few different scenarios involving MLB-ready players and/or prospect deals based on whether the opposite team is entering a rebuild and the prospect/player depth the other team has with the players the Blue Jays would be trading. I also tried to take into consideration if the players being traded have been in recent trade rumours (whether with the Blue Jays or just in general) or if the Jays have been recent trade partners with the other team to make the possibility more realistic.

This will be a two-part series, as there are quite a few candidates on the table (so if you don’t see a certain player today, they may be up shortly, so don’t yell at me just yet).