In the wee hours of the Tuesday morning in Toronto, Alex Anthopoulos pulled the trigger on a blockbuster deal, trading shortstop Jose Reyes, last year’s first-round pick Jeff Hoffman and 20-year-old pitchers Jesus Tinoco and Miguel Castro to the Colorado Rockies for all-star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and veteran reliever LaTroy Hawkins.
No one saw this coming and in a city that has been demanding a big move at the non-waiver trade deadline, this is about as unexpected a monster deal as Toronto could have pulled off.
Tulowitzki is the best shortstop in baseball, full stop. He’s an outstanding hitter and an upgrade in the field over Reyes, giving the Jays an even more formidable lineup if you can imagine. Like Reyes, the knock on Tulo has been his inability to stay healthy – he’s never played 162 games in a season and hasn’t topped 145 games played since 2009, breaking the 125-game plateau just once in the last three seasons.
Castro and Hoffman are very good prospects and losing them certainly isn’t easy, but that’s the price you have to pay for a guy like Tulowitzki, who is two years younger than Reyes and signed through 2021 on a reasonable deal for a player of his pedigree.
What makes this move even more surprising – more surprising than Toronto acquiring a guy no one knew they were looking at – is that the belief was that the Blue Jays needed to address their pitching staff, primarily their rotation, not add another bat to an already potent lineup.
Bringing in Hawkins, a 42-year-old with 21 years of Major League experience, and moving Aaron Sanchez back to the bullpen might be enough to strengthen that unit for the stretch drive (maybe), but the starting rotation still seems a little thin. After all, Felix Doubront and his 1.55 WHIP are on the bump tonight and every fifth day as of right now, so clearly, there are still holes.
But here’s the thing: a 9-8 win counts just as much as a 2-1 win and Toronto could very well keep putting crooked numbers on the scoreboard the rest of the way home.
While the conventional wisdom is to move one of the myriad bats in the Blue Jays lineup for a starting pitcher, shipping Jose Bautista or Edwin Encarnacion out of town in exchange for a front-end guy isn’t as easily done in real life as it is on PlayStation. Plus, if the right deal isn’t out there, why not swing a deal for another fourth or fifth starter type (Hey there, Ian Kennedy! Looking good, Mike Fiers!) and see if you can’t roll out the most dangerous collection of right-handed hitters in the American League night after night after night to get enough wins to make the playoffs?
Anthopoulos has a couple more days to swing more deals and continue changing the complexion of this lineup before Friday’s deadline and the consensus is that the Blue Jays GM isn’t done. But even if nothing else happens, Anthopoulos has made the kind of big splash at the deadline everyone (me included) was demanding he make and for that, he deserves a high five!
