The Toronto Blue Jays have opened the second half of their season dropping back-to-back video games to the Detroit Tigers, together with Saturday’s 7-3 defeat. These two video games drop them to a season-low 10 video games beneath .500, depart them 10 video games out of a playoff spot and provides them the fourth-worst file within the American League.
With the commerce deadline (July 30) simply 10 days away, it’s fairly clear that they should change into sellers over the subsequent week and a half.
That would embrace pending free brokers for no matter they’ll get, and it might additionally embrace core gamers like first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and shortstop Bo Bichette.
If the Blue Jays are severe about utterly re-tooling their roster and re-stocking their farm system — which they in all probability needs to be at this level — Guerrero Jr. and Bichette are the gamers who can deliver again probably the most important returns. Not solely as a result of they’re nonetheless star-level gamers, however as a result of they’re each signed by means of subsequent season. Which means any contender that trades for them will get two potential playoff runs out of them earlier than they may doubtlessly change into free brokers.
That solely will increase the Blue Jays’ leverage in commerce talks and doubtlessly will increase the return.
The longer the wait, both into the offseason or into subsequent season, the lesser return they’ll count on.
That is the time to commerce them.
The issue with that mindset is the Blue Jays’ home cleansing mustn’t and cannot be restricted to only the roster and the lineup on the sector. It has to increase to the supervisor’s workplace with John Schneider and particularly the final supervisor’s workplace with Ross Atkins.
Whereas the Blue Jays have made the playoffs a number of instances in Atkins’ common supervisor tenure, the crew has failed to return near its potential ceiling and has badly regressed this season.
It’s a very flawed, poorly constructed roster that has fallen far in need of expectations. Given his hit-and-miss job with roster strikes in assembling the roster, you in all probability don’t need his entrance workplace to be the individuals making an attempt to get grade-A returns on Guerrero Jr. and Bichette. That may imply ready till a brand new entrance workplace is put in place. However that will not be supreme when it comes to maximizing the return.
The truth is that the Blue Jays appear unlikely to make main front-office adjustments in-season, particularly this near the commerce deadline.
Which means Atkins goes to be the particular person making the decision on what they do. They simply must hope he makes the suitable selections.