Will Ross Atkins swing for the fences, or will he be more modest at trade deadline?

One reason they will be modest: Atkins doesn't like the trade market

Just because the Blue Jays are linked to those players, and just because they clearly have a need to get those guys, that doesn't mean Atkins is going into this draft with guns blazing and trying to bring in the biggest name he can with no cause for concern about what is going back the other way.

In fact, if there is anything we've truly learned about Atkins since he arrived in the winter of 2015, is that he sticks to his evaluations, he incessantly believes in their internal values of each player, and they rarely, if ever, budge from those beliefs.

Sure, he's saying they want to be aggressive at the deadline, but in the years where the Blue Jays have been buyers, they have only ever made one deal that looked like it could have been an overpay from the on-set. That deal was the 2021 Jose Bérrios trade, in which Atkins sent the Twins two of their top ten prospects in exchange for the electric right hander.

It worked out as neither of those prospects (Austin Martin and Simeon Woods-Richardson) have panned out so far and Bérrios stuck around with the Blue Jays, signing a long-term extension. And that was a season in which the Blue Jays didn't even make the playoffs.

In 2016, 2020, 2022 and 2023, Atkins made several deals, to "bolster" the Blue Jays chances at getting to the post season, but none of them resulted in what could be considered a star player coming over to Toronto, rather, it was players like Whit Merrifield, Francisco Liriano, and Jordan Hicks joining the Blue Jays. All of them were players that could raise the floor and fix the edges of the roster as opposed to being an impact player in the middle of the lineup or rotation.

Sticking with the evaluation of players, a lot of the deals Atkins looked to make in these years was for players who had multiple years of control, which made parting with prospects a little easier to swallow. Looking back on all those deals though, Atkins has not yet made a trade where a prospect dealt at the deadline has come back to haunt the Blue Jays...yet

Reason two he'll swing for the fences: Suddenly healthy farm system gives Atkins options

The Blue Jays farm system isn't even close to being regarded as one of the best in the big leagues, but this year they have been graduating players at a healthy rate. Whether that's Addison Barger bursting his way on to the big league team, or pitchers like Khal Stephen and Trey Yesavage moving up to Double-A just one year removed from being drafted.

All of a sudden, Toronto has players on the farm that are turning heads and that bodes well for a team that wants to be aggressive at the deadline. It doesn't mean they have to give away everything, but it does mean you can go into negotiations feeling more confident about dealing one prospect you might really like, while holding onto another.

There's no telling where the market might be 11 days from now. Certainly the Rafael Devers trade doesn't appear to have set the market, looking more like it will be an outlier than a premonition of how GM's view what they should be getting for their star players. But even if prices seem a little steep, Toronto have more depth to deal from than they may have had at the start of the season.