MLB’s new trade deadline ranking shows one Blue Jays win, and two trades they wish they made

It's been over a month since the MLB trade deadline, and that's given enough time for hindsight to invade the conversation. MLB.com's recent rankings makes certain deals look obvious, while making others look questionable. Overall, it makes fans wonder what else could have been on the table.

That is where the Blue Jays find themselves after a deadline that was tricky at best to navigate for the front office. They were not traditional buyers. They were not full sellers, either. Instead, Ross Atkins and the front office tried to walk a thin line between remaining competitive in the short term and reshaping the roster for 2027 and beyond.

MLB.com’s says there is one Blue Jays move that looks better by the day after their hybrid approach. However, there are two other deals they really like that felt like the Blue Jays may have missed out on if they were slightly more aggressive.

Blue Jays deadline was still a success, but a little more aggressiveness might have paid off

The one they nailed: Brett Bateman for Kevin Gausman

Trading Kevin Gausman was always going to be a difficult sell to the fan base. Gausman had become one of the most respected pitchers of this era in Toronto. He pitched in multiple postseasons and helped raise the standard for what a big-game Blue Jays arm could look like.

But if the front office was going to move a pending free agent starter while trying to get younger and more athletic, the early returns on Brett Bateman have made that part of the deadline look like a legitimate win.

Bateman came over from the Cubs along with infielder Ty Southisene in the Gausman deal, and the Blue Jays wasted little time finding out what they had. Since arriving in Toronto’s system, Bateman has produced with a .333/.403/.390 slash line with 16 runs scored and a 1.2 fWAR through his first 26 games. His speed, defence and contact-oriented skill set have translated quickly, giving the Blue Jays exactly the type of role-player impact that can make a deadline deal age very well.

Missed opportunity No. 1: Could Jo Adell have been added to the Angels package?

The more interesting what-if might be Jo Adell, because the Blue Jays were already dealing with the Angels at the deadline.

Toronto made its big swing for José Soriano, sending a three-prospect package headlined by Arjun Nimmala to Los Angeles. That was a steep price, but it also landed the Blue Jays a controllable starting pitcher with the kind of arm talent they badly needed for 2027 and beyond.

The question now is whether Toronto could have pushed that conversation one step further. Adell ultimately went to the Guardians for catching prospect Jacob Cozart, who slotted in as the Angels’ No. 18 prospect after the trade. If that was the acquisition cost, it is fair to wonder whether the Blue Jays could have attached another prospect from the middle or back end of their top 30 to expand the Soriano deal and bring Adell to Toronto, too.

That would not have solved every issue in the lineup, but it would have addressed a real need. Adell’s overall profile still comes with swing-and-miss risk and inconsistency, but his power would have given the Blue Jays another right-handed threat at a time when extra-base damage has been hard to find. Since the deadline, he has hit four home runs. On the Blue Jays, only Alejandro Kirk, Nathan Lukes and Kazuma Okamoto have more over that same stretch, while Josh Smith has also matched that total.

There is no guarantee the Angels would have structured the deal that way, and it is possible Cleveland’s catching prospect simply fit Los Angeles’ preference better than anything Toronto wanted to add. Still, when the Blue Jays were already paying a premium price to get Soriano, it is hard not to wonder whether one more prospect could have turned a strong pitching acquisition into a bigger deadline deal.

Missed opportunity No. 2: Robbie Ray instead of Spencer Arrighetti and Jameson Taillon?

The second alternative may fall into a category of "wishful thinking", but still worth examining because of how the early returns have looked.

Instead of sending Daulton Varsho to Houston for Spencer Arrighetti, could the Blue Jays have found a way to bring Robbie Ray back from San Francisco? The Padres landed Ray from the Giants for prospects Miguel Mendez and Joniel Hernandez, who became San Francisco’s No. 13 and No. 21 prospects after the deal. Ray has since given San Diego 26.1 innings of 3.42 ERA baseball through his first five starts. That's the kind of stability the Blue Jays could have used over the last few weeks when their rotation has basically been held together with duck tape.

For the Blue Jays, Arrighetti has not yet looked like the pitcher who dominated for Houston in May. The hope, of course, is that he turns it around and becomes the longer-term rotation piece Toronto believed it was acquiring. But in the short term, Ray would have offered a much cleaner fit for a team struggling to find a reliable arm behind Dylan Cease, Soriano and Max Scherzer. Of course, at the time, they also had a healthy Trey Yesavage, and Shane Bieber, so that trade might have felt like overkill.

The deal to get Jameson Taillon was basically a flyer, getting him after he was DFA'd by the Chicago Cubs and Taillon made one start before he got hurt himself. He returned this past weekend only to land back on the IL after pitching two innings in Kansas City.

The Giants were well out of the playoff race, so Varsho as a rental likely would not have carried the same appeal for San Francisco to let go of Ray. Toronto probably would have needed to build a package around prospects rather than Varsho, and after already moving Nimmala for Soriano, that may have been a much tougher path.

Even so, this is the type of deadline comparison that eats at the fans when one pitcher immediately provides value and the other is still searching for it. Ray would have been a rental, but he also would have come with the familiarity of being a former Cy Young award winner in Toronto.

None of this means the Blue Jays failed at the deadline, but it does bring up a couple of conversational points about what the Blue Jays needed, and still need, while they fight for every win in September.

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