With the non-waiver trade deadline just over three weeks away and the Toronto Blue Jays almost as desperate as their fans to do something to improve the starting pitching, the fantasy trade scenarios are starting to crop up with greater frequency.
One of the more popular ones suggests the Blue Jays move Edwin Encarnacion, since they have offence to spare and some are becoming enamoured of the bats of Justin Smoak and Chris Colabello as replacements. Edwin is a big-time bat, attractive to other teams, worth a good pitcher and the Jays can live without him, is the thinking.
But there are two other factors in play — major factors — and by understanding them it becomes easy to draw the conclusion that an Encarnacion trade for pitching is highly unlikely.
First of all, Encarnacion has more than 10 years of major-league service time, the last five of which have been with the Blue Jays. Therefore, he has the rights as a 10-and-5 player to veto any trade. That fact alone makes Edwin incredibly difficult to deal, as he would likely have to be bought out of his 10-and-5 rights with the trading team offering some sort of financial incentive to get him to let the trade go through, at the very least. It’s difficult to even enter into negotiations around a player who could simply turn the trade down.
More importantly, though, is the fact Encarnacion doesn’t match up well for a team that would be looking to move quality starting pitching. The 32-year-old has recently been one of the scariest hitters in the major leagues, averaging 37 home runs and a .916 OPS over the last three seasons prior to 2015. This year, the production has fallen off, and while Edwin is still among the league leaders in RBIs (a team-driven stat more than anything else) and is on pace to clear 30 home runs once again, the OPS has dropped over 100 points to below .800. He’s also already struck out as many times as he did in the entire 2013 season.
So there’s reason to believe Encarnacion’s production is declining as he ages, as it should, which is not to say it won’t be worth picking up his $10 million option for next season. Of course it’ll be worth it, he’s still a very good hitter. What it does say, though, is that he’s not a big target for a non-contending team looking towards the future.
As much as some believe (I’m not among them) the Blue Jays have enough offence that they wouldn’t miss a big bat, the oldest adage in the game is that a team can never have enough starting pitching. A team that thinks it can win this year is the only kind of team that would be interested in adding an Encarnacion, bolstering its lineup for a playoff push, and there’s no way a team in that position would trade quality starting pitching.
Edwin Encarnacion is an attractive trade commodity, but only for a team that’s "going for it," otherwise known as a team that won’t be giving up pitching. He’s also the clean-up hitter for a team that’s in the thick of a pennant race. If the Blue Jays were out of it, he might be a guy they were looking to move, but they’re clearly not.
Yes, the Oakland Athletics traded Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox for Jon Lester at the deadline last season, a case of a contender trading a middle-of-the-order bat for pitching help. The fact Oakland went into a deep tailspin after the trade, blew a huge division lead and barely snuck into the playoffs probably won’t have an impact on any general managers who would consider making a similar type of deal. The difference between trading for Cespedes and trading for Encarnacion, for one year each, is the nearly three-year difference in their ages.
If the Blue Jays do decide they can live without Edwin’s bat and want to move him for pitching, the only realistic way to do it would be to get a third team involved. A contender would take Encarnacion and send prospects to the selling team that has the pitcher and then flip that pitcher to the Blue Jays. It’s a complicated deal to try to hammer out, but Alex Anthopoulos has performed such feats in the past.
Anthopoulos’ recent comments that he’d be willing to trade players off the active roster led a lot of people to think Encarnacion was the guy he’d move, but the roster players about whom other teams are asking are far more likely guys like Devon Travis, Roberto Osuna, Kevin Pillar and maybe Drew Hutchison. And of course, there are the injured Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez, as well, and everybody wants them.