6 difficult roster decisions the Toronto Blue Jays must address ASAP

6. Are the Blue Jays buyers or sellers at the deadline?

As mentioned, with a favorable schedule coming up for the Jays, hopefully they will have some sort of success or a potential winning streak to help firmly secure their position as deadline buyers for 2023. If that is the case, what area/position should they pursue for help? Around the diamond and in the field, every position appears to be filled with an everyday MLB player that one wouldn’t deal away unless the player coming in is substantially better than what they currently have. Hence the focus should be on Jays’ pitching, which currently lacks a fifth starter along with a decent-but-not-great bullpen that could use an arm or two as well.

No one from the Jays’ current 26-man roster that they would be willing to deal (i.e. Espinal, Biggio, Clement, García) would be able to bring in what the Jays will be looking for, leaving most likely their prospects as their main source of assets to be used in any potential trades. If they do eventually pursue the trade route for pitching, look for certain bullpen arms to be DFA’d or sent to the minors to make room for such transactions. With the current Jays’ offence struggling to score runs at times, it may be more crucial to get valuable arms to bolster their pitching sooner than later to help make a difference in close games right now.

However, if the Jays go on an unexpected horrendous run in the coming week or so, moving them more towards the “seller” category, it would be to their best interest to help preserve the health of key players such as Kiermaier and Brandon Belt in the coming weeks and manage their playing time accordingly to ensure they could bring back valuable assets in return at the deadline. But let’s hope that does not happen and that the Jays can surprise us with a torrid winning streak to put away any of our doubts and worries.