Top 5 players the Toronto Blue Jays gave up on too soon

Over the years, the Toronto Blue Jays have had their fair share of players that prospered when they eventually moved on from the team.  One example that many recent Jays’ fans would like to bring up is that of third basemen Gio Urshela. The Jays had acquired him in a trade with the Cleveland Indians in late spring of 2018, but his time with the Jays was quite underwhelming, so they ended up trading him again to the rival Yankees that very same year during the summer. Little did they know, Urshela would go on to flourish in the next couple of years with the Yankees, solidifying himself as a quality MLB player.

In the very near future, catching prospect Gabriel Moreno could make his way onto a list like this as well. Only time will tell.

Compared to some of the previous ones that have gotten away from the Jays, Urshela’s case seems a lot easier to digest for the fans, since his ultimate replacements in his fielding position on the Jays’ roster eventually became Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and now Matt Chapman.  However, that was not always the case. So here, we will take a look at five former Blue Jays that the team should have really thought over twice before letting them go.

No. 5: Rowdy Tellez

At one time, Rowdy Tellez was believed to be part of the core of the new wave of Blue Jays in their rebuild, along with Guerrero, Bo Bichette and others.  As such, Tellez showed some great promise with displays of decent power and was a fan favorite as well.  However, with the Jays bullpen struggling mightily during the 2021 season, they had to find a way to stabilize it to salvage the season.

In doing so, the Jays chose to part ways with Tellez to acquire Trevor Richards and Bowden Francis from the Milwaukee Brewers.  Since joining the Brewers, Tellez unleashed his power stroke and had put up strong production numbers for the past season and a half.  Not only that, Richards had started to show signs of erratic pitching control during this past season with the Jays as well. 

More significantly, the Jays spent much of this past offseason looking for strong, competent, left-handed hitters to balance their right-handed heavy lineup.  To think of it, they actually had one already that was homegrown in Tellez.  If their rash move to save the bullpen wasn’t made and Tellez was still here, he might have been the exact power lefty the Jays desperately needed to fit perfectly in their competitive lineup for now and years to come.

No. 4: Liam Hendriks

For Liam Hendriks, the Jays actually acquired him twice in a span of one year, once from a waiver claim from the Baltimore Orioles in early 2014, and then again in a trade with the Kansas City Royals in late 2014, after they had traded him to the Royals earlier that summer.  In his second short stint with the Jays, Hendriks actually performed admirably to a respectable 2.92 ERA with 71 strikeouts over 64.2 innings pitched. 

Despite that production, the Jays were aiming to strengthen their rotation depth by trading Hendriks again, this time to the Oakland Athletics for Jesse Chavez.  Chavez’s time with the Jays ultimately turned out to be negligible, but for Hendriks, he has now developed into one of the premium closers in the game.  Had the Jays held on to him, he could have potentially formed a two-headed monster with Jordan Romano for the Jays bullpen in closing out games.  That could have essentially resembled the magic formed by the duo of Duane Ward and Tom Henke back in the early 1990s in the Jays contending years.

No. 3: Cecil Fielder

Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, the Jays started fielding competitive teams that gave them the chance to make the postseason each year.  At the time, the Jays had two strong first basemen in Willie Upshaw and Fred McGriff, with a raw player named Cecil Fielder playing behind them.  With the Jays, due to their excess of quality first basemen, he was given mainly part-time duty and had only average production as a result.  Fielder eventually left MLB altogether after four years with the Jays and played in Japan for a year, hoping to restart his career.  From there, he discovered his power stroke and came back with a vengeance, starting with the Detroit Tigers in 1990.

Fielder became a power-hitting machine, and helped anchor the Tigers' offence, averaging over 35 home runs and 110 RBI consistently per season over the course of six-plus years.  The Jays did have some power hitters, such as Joe Carter and Dave Winfield, during the course of those years.  However, none of them instilled the fear shown by pitchers the way Fielder did whenever he stepped up to the plate.  That intimidation and power factor by Fielder could have really helped the Jays to potentially win more than the two championships that they got in the early 1990s.