TORONTO – There are parallel tracks for the Toronto Blue Jays to focus on with less than a week remaining to the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, and the 2017 season essentially pooched. On one end, there’s scouring the market for controllable pieces that can contribute to a 2018 team general manager Ross Atkins feels will be able to contend. On the other is maximizing the returns for their pending free agents, with starters Francisco Liriano and Marco Estrada drawing the most interest.
Liriano may have helped things in that regard Monday by allowing two runs on two hits and two walks with five strikeouts over five tidy innings of a 4-2 victory over the Oakland Athletics. Pitching on three days’ rest after a two-inning, five-run, four-walk clunker against the Boston Red Sox last week, the left-hander was his effectively wild self against a much weaker opponent, getting strikes with his fastball and had his slider around the zone just enough to get the chase he needs.
"My fastball was moving a lot, both sides of the plate but mostly inside to righties," Liriano said through interpreter Josue Peley. "Russ (Martin) and I worked a lot in there, and it worked out pretty good."
For teams considering a rental that won’t plunder through their prospect capital, the key question is whether it was enough to make them trust that Liriano can help them. Part of his appeal is that his stuff could play out of the bullpen – think of his performance in the wild-card game last year against the Baltimore Orioles – but some teams might prefer the track record and post-season success of Estrada.
The Blue Jays have received interest from some teams considering both starters, things move along a bit every day, and each outing at this point has the potential to swing the market one way or another.
"I’ve been part of this before," Liriano said of the speculation. "I try not to pay attention to that, I try to concentrate on what I can control."
Each trade that’s made also advances the market and a couple of more teams made moves Monday. The Kansas City Royals, who had been speculated on as one potential landing spot for Toronto pitchers, acquired Trevor Cahill, Ryan Buchter and Brandon Maurer from the San Diego Padres, while the Minnesota Twins picked up Jaime Garcia and Anthony Recker from the Atlanta Braves.
Those deals continue a trend of sellers packaging assets to get a better return, something the Blue Jays could do by pairing Liriano and Estrada, or putting one of them together with set-up man Joe Smith, or perhaps even a reliever with some control in Ryan Tepera or Danny Barnes, an asset in high demand.
Speaking with reporters Monday before the game, Atkins reinforced the message the team has been putting out for the past few weeks by saying "any addition at this point will be about control" and that "we still feel like we have a great team in 2018 that we’ll need to add to."
Getting there, however, "could mean subtraction from this team, it might not," but "we would need and would like for this team to remain relevant and a contending team, potentially. The odds of that have decreased dramatically but we still feel confident that we can put a quality team on the field."
Read into that what you will, but unless the market suddenly collapses for Liriano and Estrada, they’ll likely be elsewhere next week, with perhaps a few others, too.
From what remains of a team that "underperformed and underachieved offensively and defensively," as Atkins put it, the Blue Jays will try to form the guts of a 2018 team they hope will produce an outcome different from this one.
How do they make that happen?
"You certainly don’t want to say that it will happen because it didn’t and now our luck has changed. It won’t be about luck," Atkins said of having key parts rebound next year. "It’s going to be about opportunities, it’s going to be about how we’re using information, whether that’s in advance, whether that’s in health, whether that’s in durability, it’s every facet. It’s also how you complement certain pieces. We now have more information about this group and we’ll have to think about how the pieces that will be here can improve, or get better, or sustain and maintain, and how we complement them."
The subtractions to help start that process loom, with the Blue Jays seeking additions for a new sum.
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