Yusei Kikuchi set to receive one more pre-deadline start as crunch time nears

Friday night could very well be Yusei Kikuchi's swan song with the Toronto Blue Jays. As the July 30 MLB trade deadline draws closer, his future with the team is murky, at best.

Rumors persist that the Blue Jays front office is looking to offload expiring contracts, putting Kikuchi directly in the crosshairs of contending teams looking to add rotation depth for the stretch run. Despite going through some rough times over the last couple of months, the third-year Blue Jay is still one of the team's best trade chips and an enticing two-month rental.

And he still has one more start, assuming he isn't dealt before the Jays open a weekend series against the Texas Rangers at Rogers Centre.

Yusei Kikuchi set to receive one more pre-deadline start as crunch time nears

Kikuchi is scheduled to pitch on Friday, his final turn in the rotation before Tuesday's deadline. There's not much he can do in his last start that will sway potential Blue Jays trade partners one way or the other. We all have a good idea of what Kikuchi is at this point. His time in Toronto has shown us all we need to know.

Deadline buyers wanting to keep his price down will point to his 6.62 ERA over the last two months and his disastrous 2022 season, in which he had a 5.19 ERA and an eerily identical 5.19 BB/9.

Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins will point to the left-hander's first 10 starts of the season when he paced the pitching staff with a 2.64 ERA. Then there's his 2023 campaign when he registered a 3.86 ERA.

The truth is that Kikuchi is somewhere in between those two wildly different versions of himself. With a 4.54 ERA through 21 starts this season, he will hold value as a mid-to-back-of-the-rotation starter for a contending team. You could even say that he has been unlucky up to this point, with a much better-looking 3.58 FIP and 3.33 xFIP.

One thing Kikuchi has done consistently while in a Blue Jays uniform is show the ability to strike out MLB hitters, with a 10.20 K/9 in 85 games as a Jay. He's striking out 10.14 opposing batters per nine innings this year and is logging the best walk rate of his career at 2.27 BB/9.

It would be shocking if the 33-year-old is still a Blue Jay after Tuesday. As MLB.com's Keegan Matheson affirms, "Kikuchi is the Blue Jays’ best shot at acquiring a prospect who can make an actual impact for this organization in the coming years."

The Athletic's Tim Britton and Aaron Gleeman rank Kikuchi No. 17 (SP No. 7) on their list of trade deadline targets and say he's highly likely to be traded, picking Houston, Minnesota and St. Louis as potential landing spots (subscription required).

Whatever Kikuchi's trade deadline fate, his final start with the team that has seen him through extreme ups and downs over the last three years will be emotional for all. Putting deadline implications aside, hopefully Kikuchi pitches like the best version of himself on Friday, so Blue Jays fans get a few extra innings to appreciate him and send him off as a hero.