6 surprising players that could be traded if the Blue Jays are out of it at the deadline

RHP Erik Swanson

Ever since coming over from the trade with the Seattle Mariners for Teoscar Hernández, Erik Swanson has been a welcome addition to the Jays bullpen for 2023. Much more of a somewhat unknown entity due to his few years of MLB experience prior to joining the Jays, he has certainly shown that he could get the job done so far in his short time with the ballclub. Of all of the current Jays relievers, Swanson has provided the most consistency and reliability coming out of the pen each time out. For the season, he is 2-2 with a 2.56 ERA, 0.85 WHIP, giving up only 14 hits, nine earned runs, 13 walks and 38 strikeouts over 30.2 innings pitched. He also has 16 holds on the year, bypassing his previous high of 14 set last year with the Mariners.

From his stellar performance, Swanson has basically passed everyone in the Jays’ bullpen depth chart other than Jordan Romano, and has now become the reliable setup man to team up with Romano to help finish off games (as well as even being the closer on days when Romano is unavailable, as seen recently). For someone as valuable as Swanson has been with the team, it will be hard to part with a key player like that at the deadline. He would definitely net a nice return from a contending team, as he would be highly pursued by many teams looking to strengthen their bullpen for the postseason run. But it would certainly sting the Jays’ faithful, because they definitely don’t want to lose their only prized return from the Hernández trade that easily.