Blue Jays: Ranking the best infield options that are still available

The Blue Jays managed to make an impact signing for their rotation before the lockout began, but they’ll still need to address the infield once they’re able to re-engage with players again.

As things stand at the moment teams can’t be in contact with their own players, let alone free agents, so even if Ross Atkins and company wanted to keep working on improving the roster they would have to break the rules in order to do so. I doubt that’s going to happen, especially in a situation that has both the league and the Player’s Association taking a pretty firm stance.

Still, Atkins is going to have plans in place for when things get moving again, so I thought it would be fun to have a look at the best remaining infielders that could be available to the Blue Jays. We’ve already seen new contracts for top-of-the-market free agents like Marcus Semien (seven years, 175 million with Texas), Corey Seager (10 years, 325 million with Texas), and Javier Baez (six years, 140 million), and Carlos Correa and Trevor Story still remain available. That said, I really don’t expect the Blue Jays to swim in the deep end at this stage, so I’m not going to talk about Correa or Story in this article.

Instead I’d rather look at the rest of the free agent market, and also at players that could potentially be available in a trade to see how many realistic solutions there are for Atkins and his team to consider. With the presence of Cavan Biggio and Santiago Espinal it’s likely that the Jays will only add one player to the mix, and rely on those two to fill the other role. That could mean the Blue Jays pursue a second baseman, a third baseman, or who knows, maybe they’ll acquire another shortstop and ask them to change positions again.

Let’s have a look at some of the best who could be available.