Blue Jays: Top 5 trade deadline relief pitcher targets

To say the 2022 season has been inconsistent for the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen would be an understatement. It started off well, with closer Jordan Romano winning American League reliever of the month in April, but since then they’re struggled to find any sort of consistency. With July well underway, the pen has certainly improved but has still struggled to help the also inconsistent starting rotation at times.

Every year, plenty of relievers are dealt at or before the trade deadline, and this year is shaping up to be no different. There are a plethora of good relievers on bad teams who gain nothing by keeping them, and I would expect there to be more than enough solid arms on the market for the Blue Jays to go after. Moves like this have worked in the past for the team, most recently when they acquired Adam Cimber at last year’s deadline, who despite some brief struggles in 2022, has been one of the Jays’ best relievers over the past year.

It seems more likely than not that the Jays will end up trading for a reliever prior to the deadline, so here I’ll take a look at five of the best options. These are, in my opinion, the five best relief pitchers from teams who could be looking to sell at the deadline. I’ll be ranking them in terms of how good I think they could be for the Jays, not just how good they have been this year.

To preface, there won’t be any left-handed pitchers on this list, for two reasons.

One, the left-handed reliever market isn’t very strong right now. Most of the good lefties have already found a place and they’re generally harder to come by. Secondly, the Blue Jays seem to have found themselves a solid set of lefties in Tim Mayza and Matt Gage, and a lot of the team’s righties have solid splits against both lefty and righty batters, so they’re not necessarily in desperate need of more southpaws in the pen.

Finally, before we get into the players themselves, there’s obviously the matter of what it would take to acquire them.

Instead of going over the potential package for each player, I’ll just go over what these deals could look like now. At this moment, despite recent struggles, the Toronto Blue Jays appear to be in win-now mode, and as much as you want to hold on to your prospects, they’re not going to help you win this year so you may as well pay whatever the price is to get the players that could help you get a ring in 2022. You’d rather not part ways with top prospects like Orelvis Martinez or Ricky Tiedemann but as I said, they’re in win-now mode and the right deal could see them heading elsewhere.

Final note, given that I’m only covering five players here, this is far from a comprehensive list. If you want to take a deeper look at the upcoming deadline, we have plenty of other pieces, like this one here about teams the Jays could be partnering with at the deadline. Make sure to follow all our coverage of the Blue Jays leading up to the deadline to get all the info you need.

4: Jorge Lopez – Baltimore Orioles

Prior to 2022, Jorge Lopez had been, for the most part, a starting pitcher, something that he wasn’t very good at. As of 2022 though, Lopez has been moved to the bullpen, a role that, as it turns out, Lopez is very good at. From his MLB debut in 2015 with the Brewers through 2021, Lopez has amassed a career 6.04 ERA over 350 innings pitched. He consistently struggled to limit hard contact, allowed far too many balls to be put in play, and rarely found himself having quality outings. Now that he’s in the bullpen though, those issues seem like a distant memory.

Through 42.1 innings pitched in 2022, Lopez has put up a 1.70 ERA with a sub-1 WHIP and has converted on 17 of his 21 save attempts. Unlike Bard, Lopez’s peripherals don’t necessarily reflect an elite pitcher, with most of his baseball savant metrics generally sitting in the high 70s and low 80s, his raw stats show just how effective he has truly been.

His sinker averages around 98 mph and has been great at both producing whiffs and ground balls. His pitch mix also features a curveball, changeup, and slider, which have all been very effective this season, as well as an occasional fastball, which he should probably stay away from given the fact that it has produced a 1.234 xSLG this year. Surprisingly, all three of Lopez’s main secondary pitches have below-average spin, despite still producing excellent whiff and put-away rates.

The big question with Lopez is whether the Blue Jays could actually get him. Despite being in the same division as the Orioles, a few weeks ago this would’ve seemed very attainable. Things have not gone Toronto’s way recently though, and all of the sudden the Orioles are nipping at their heels, making any trade more and more unlikely. To be able to get Lopez, who’s under club control through 2024, the Blue Jays would have to hope that they pick things up and that the O’s fall back down to earth. If that happens, they certainly have the pieces to acquire him, it just depends on how the standings look and whether the Orioles will deal within the division come the deadline.

3: Michael Fulmer – Detroit Tigers

This might sound like I’m repeating myself, but Michael Fulmer has had a bit of an unorthodox career path.

Fulmer made his MLB debut in 2016 with the Tigers as a starter. Unlike guys like Jorge Lopez though, Fulmer originally excelled in this role. In his rookie season, he pitched 159 innings and put up a 3.06 ERA on his way to the American League Rookie of the Year Award. In 2017, he put up similar numbers and was named to the All-Star team. Then the wheels fell off. While not atrocious in 2018, Fulmer was a below-average pitcher but missed time due to injury. He then missed the 2019 season following Tommy John Surgery, and then struggled immensely in 2020, posting an 8.78 ERA in 27.2 innings pitched over 10 starts. And then he moved to the bullpen, and just like that, he was better than ever.

In his first season as a reliever in 2021, Fulmer pitched 69.2 innings and posted a 2.97 ERA, and he’s gotten even better in 2022. At the time of writing this, he has a 1.89 ERA over 33.1 innings pitched with a WHIP slightly above one. His peripherals are also excellent, sitting near the top of the league for most expected stats, and in the 99th percentile for barrel rate. His career path isn’t the only thing about Fulmer that’s unorthodox though, as his slider, which he uses about 63% of the time is his primary pitch. Because of this, his approach relies mainly on producing non-dangerous contact, something he excels at.

Fulmer only being under club control through this season, and not providing a ton of swing and miss may not seem ideal for the Blue Jays, but personally, I think it is. As a pitcher, I think Fulmer could bring some consistency to the Jays pen that it currently lacks, and his contract situation should only make acquiring him cheaper. The Tigers are not very good and have no reason not to deal Fulmer, so come the deadline, Toronto should be all over him.

2: Scott Barlow – Kansas City Royals

All the pitchers on this list so far have had a sort of weird career path that has somehow led to them being great relievers, but Scott Barlow does not have that backstory. He’s had a pretty standard career arc to this point, starting his career as a solid, but not extraordinary, reliever, and turning into a reliable top-tier bullpen arm in the past couple of seasons.

Originally a sixth-round pick of the Dodgers in the 2011 draft, he didn’t make his MLB debut until 2018 with the Royals. In his first three years, he put up a 4.14 ERA over 115.1 innings pitched, which may not sound incredible, but actually produced a 114 ERA+ over that span. Barlow’s big breakout came in 2021 though, where he posted a 2.42 ERA over 72 innings, with 11 Ks per nine. In 2022 he’s continued his high-level play, with a 2.16 ERA through 41.2 innings to this point in the season.

Barlow’s strikeout numbers in 2022 may be down from past seasons (9.1 Ks per nine, down from 11.4 the previous three years combined), but his ability to make batters flail at the ball is top-notch. He currently sits in the 98th percentile amongst MLB pitchers for chase rate, which he’s accomplished by using breaking balls 76% of the time. Barlow’s main pitches are his slider and curveball, both of which have been incredibly effective at producing weak contact and lots of swings and misses this season. He also has a 4-seam fastball that he uses 24% of the time, but this is more out of necessity, given this is by far his least effective pitch.

Barlow’s ability to make batters look silly is something that the current Blue Jays pen doesn’t have a lot of, and he could immediately slot into a setup role for Jordan Romano. He’s also in a perfect situation to be acquired by the Blue Jays right now, since he has two years of club control left after 2022, and the Royals don’t seem to be anywhere near competitive. There’s certainly a chance that they elect to keep him at the deadline, but if the Jays really want him, they should have more than enough to incentivize the Royals to move him.

1: David Bednar – Pittsburgh Pirates

The Pittsburgh Pirates have traded a lot of good pitchers in recent years, and have gotten little in return. Padres All-Star starting pitcher, Joe Musgrove, would certainly be on the list of lost assets if the top player on this list hadn’t turned into the pitcher he now is. David Bednar is currently in his second season with the Pirates and has so far posted a 2.61 ERA over 103.1 innings pitched in that time. Over that period he also has a 1.016 WHIP, 11.6 Ks per nine, and a 163 ERA+.

A few hard-hit balls in recent appearances have hurt his 2022 peripherals a bit but over the past two years, his advanced numbers still suggest that the stats he’s putting up are no fluke. His strikeout and whiff rates are right among the leagues, which as I’ve said previously, is something the Blue Jays currently lack.

Bednar’s pitch mix consists of a 4-seamer, which uses 55% of the time, along with a curveball and splitter. Unlike some relievers who really rely on one pitch to get outs, each of his pitches has around a 28% put-away rate in 2022, so he can deal with batters in more than one way. As a pitcher, there’s nothing not to love about Bednar, the only issue is what it might take to get him.

He is under club control through the 2026 season, and while the Pirates may be in a situation where trading him could be in their best interest, it should still take a decent package to pry him away. Like I’ve said before, the Blue Jays certainly have the ammo to get him, and adding another shutdown arm to the back end of the pen could take some stress off Jordan Romano, but I imagine there will be other teams very interested in Bednar and the Pirates have turned down offers for his services already.

As the Pirates continue to struggle, the odds of him being dealt are certainly getting higher, and if he is on the market, the Jays should be making calls to Pittsburgh as soon as possible.