In the past couple of days, the Toronto Blue Jays have been one of the more active participants of the trade deadline, having dealt away Yimi García, Nate Pearson and Danny Jansen in exchange for some unproven yet potentially promising prospects. Whether or not these end up being fantastic moves being made by the Jays, only time will tell.
With dire hopes that the current trade deadline will turn out to be a positive one for the Jays down the road, let’s take a trip down memory lane and look back at the five best deadline moves that they had made in the past decade that ultimately helped the team in a big way.
2015 – Blue Jays acquire David Price from the Tigers for Daniel Norris, Matt Boyd and Jairo Labourt
With the Jays hovering around the .500 mark and needing a significant boost to take a serious run at the playoffs in 2015, they worked out a huge blockbuster deal to acquire former Cy Young winner David Price from the Tigers. Sure, they had to give up a hefty package of pitchers, including their No. 1 prospect at the time in Daniel Norris. But what Price did for the Jays more than made up for the “price”, as the trio of arms traded away never really ended up reaching their full potential in the big leagues.
In the final two months of the 2015 season, Price went a dazzling 9-1 with a 2.30 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, along with 87 strikeouts in 74.1 innings pitched over 11 starts to propel the middling Jays team into the postseason. He ended up being a less of a factor during the playoffs, as the Jays would end up falling to the Kansas City Royals in the ALCS. But without the valiant effort of Price down the stretch, they certainly wouldn’t have made it to the big show for the first time since their World Series championship year back in 1993..