Blue Jays 2024 post-trade deadline analysis
Nothing personal in 8 trades as Jays sneak under tax threshold
The Blue Jays’ front office saw an urgent need to shed salary from its existing 2024 payroll and in the simple act of trading away all six expiring contracts of pending free agents, along with reliever Nate Pearson and utility stud, Isiah Kiner-Falefa in return for 13 prospects, plus one veteran LH Ryan Yarbrough, the Jays, according to GM Ross Atkins, have managed, by a “razor’s edge”, to slip under the $237-million threshold for heavy luxury-tax penalties. Mission accomplished.
Sending Kiner-Falefa to the Pirates was the final salary slash needed, in order to limbo under that penalty bar … which is the true reason that even with a year left on a reasonable contract and with a clearly defined role, IKF was traded.
What it means for the upcoming 2025 season is that the Jays’ presence on the luxury tax penalty log has now been erased and that when the Jays now go out and spend money this winter to add missing offence and another starting pitcher, MLB will not be able to hold over their heads the luxury tax threat and its exponential accumulation of fines as three-years-in-a-row offenders. At the deadline, on July 30, the Jays were not dumping contracts just to save money. There was method.
BLUE JAYS TRADES JULY 26-30:
1- RHP Jimi Garcia ($6,333,333 in ’24; Free Agent ’25; 3-0, 2.70 5SV, 0.800 WHIP) to Mariners for OF Jonatan Clase and C Jacob Sharp
2- C Danny Jansen ($5.2-million in ’24; Free Agent ’25; 61G, .212/.303/.369, 6HR-18RBI) to Red Sox for IF Cutter Coffey, IF Eddinson Paulino and RHP Gilberto Batista
3- RHP Nate Pearson ($800,000 in ’24; Free Agent ’28; 0-1, 5.63 ERA, 2 SV, 41G, 1.550 WHIP) to Cubs for SS Josh Rivera and OF Yohendrick Pinango
4- DH/1B Justin Turner ($13.0M in ’24; Free Agent ’25; 90G, .257/.351/.373, 6HR-31RBI) to Mariners for OF RJ Schreck
5- LHP Yusei Kikuchi ($10.0M in ’24; Free Agent ’25; 4-9, 4.75 ERA, 22G, 1.340 WHIP) to Astros for RH Jake Bloss, OF Joey Loperfido and IF Will Wagner
6- RHP Trevor Richards ($2.15M in ’24; Free Agent ’25; 2-1, 4.64 ERA, 0SV, 1.146 WHIP) to Twins for IF Jay Harry
7- IF Isiah Kiner-Falefa ($7.5M in ’24; $7.5M in ’25; Free Agent ’26; 82G, .292/.338/.420, 7HR-33RBI) to Pirates for IF/OF Charles McAdoo
8- OF Kevin Kiermaier ($10.5M in ’24; Free Agent ’25; 81G, .195/.236/.310, 4HR-18RBI) to Dodgers for LHP Ryan Yarbrough
JAYS DEADLINE ANALYSIS:
*Don’t call it a Blue Jays rebuild. In sports, those rebuilding processes usually take several years and the Jays don’t have that amount of time. What the Jays did in the week leading to the ’24 deadline served two major purposes. There was an obvious white-flag surrender giving up the current season. That was connected to concern on how to best handle 2025 payroll. They have avoided a severe luxury tax penalty. In addition, there is the need to inject life into a farm system whose depth had been decimated by five years (2020-24) of their effort to be contenders. In fact, in a Zoom call an hour after the deadline, Atkins admitted the miscalculation of ignoring offence for run-prevention and directly apologized to the fans.
*Purpose One: Restocking the farm. Ever since the pandemic-shortened ‘20 season, reaching the wild-card, at a time when they clearly indicated, via the signing of Hyun Jin Ryu, that they were entering a perceived window of contending, the farm system has been over-harvested by trading off assets in pursuit of more MLB-ready talent.
They aren’t the first to use all assets to reach for the Grail. Because of that five-year strategy of being perennial “buyers”, the numbers show the Jays traded away 29 prospects since ‘20, from what had once been a Top 14 system, returning just seven young prospects. At the same time, the results of the amateur draft had been sketchy.
But, judging by the Jays decision to make eight veteran player trades for prospects during deadline week, the organization clearly had realized the problem and the goals had clearly changed. Atkins made sure that when he dealt his eight veteran players in separate deals, it brought back a haul of 13 young prospects, albeit with various ceilings, to sprinkle throughout the various levels of the farm system. They surrendered zero. This current Jays regular-season failure, followed by the subsequent trades, has provided a chance for the farm system to plant new seeds. Since 2020 it’s now been 29 prospects out and 20 in. The Jays, because of the current, thin and decimated bullpen and reliance on young position players, no longer can care about the win total for 2024. It’s become about young players trying to prove to management they should be a part of the team in ’25. Standings won’t matter.
*Purpose Two: By trading all six expiring contracts leading to free agency, plus two more players, still with control, Pearson and IKF, they are waving the white flag on a season that had recently and realistically spiralled away from any thought of contending for a wildcard. They, at some point, changed their priorities.
With the front office seeming to leave their ’24 version in the rearview mirror of non-compete in August and September, the goal at this deadline was to avoid being left with a penalty-filled bloated payroll that sat well in the range of luxury tax and would have stood in the way of off-season spending. Remaining at that pre-deadline level would have left open the pain of three consecutive years of the Jays as luxury tax violators. All of those trades were very necessary to dip under the penalty threshold. It was nothing personal against any of those traded players. It’s about allowing the Jays the ability to reach out for free agents ands expensive trade pieces that may exceed the threshold again in 2025. That should encourage the fanbase.
TRADE DEADLINE NOTES
Updated MLB Pipeline Rankings: Here are the updated prospect rankings, including the recent deadline additions and where they now stand in the Blue Jays Top 30.
#3 RHP Jake Bloss, #8 OF Jonatan Clase, #14 IF/OF Charles McAdoo, #21 IF Eddinson Paulino, #27 IF Will Wagner, #29 IF Cutter Coffey, #30 OF RJ Schreck. Note that Joey Loperfido due to his Astros time in MLB does not qualify for the prospect list.
Who is Joey Loperfido? The hype machine is in high gear for lefthanded hitting 25-year-old New Jersey native, Loperfido. The Duke University product has promise, but there is nothing guaranteed in MLB when it comes to developing hitters. In examining past young Jays outfield acquisitions in the nine years of Ross Atkins, is Loperfido more likely to be like Teoscar Hernandez, or more like Derek Fisher, Bradley Zimmer, Socrates Brito, Alen Hanson or Jordan Luplow?
An Early Look at Jays 2025 Payroll: The Jays 2024 opening day payroll as per 26-roster players (not the payroll used by MLB for luxury tax) according to the reliable Cot’s Baseball Contracts, was $225,632,500, ranking sixth among 30 franchises.
The eight Jays players traded before the July 30 deadline, plus other soon-to-be disappearing salary commitments to Tim Mayza and Daniel Vogelbach, looks like a combined ’25 payroll savings of $55.8M. The only pending free agent will be newly acquired, Yarbrough, while eight Jays are eligible for ‘25 arbitration, led by Vlad Guerrero Jr. while Bo Bichette is signed and in line for a $5.5M raise for his final season, pre free-agency. There exists $10.5M in built in raises for current Blue Jays.
Thus, before any off-season player movement, using those numbers, the Jays would have about $45.3M to spend, simply to match this year’s opening day payroll.
Did Jays Play Mind Games with AL West? Much is made by insiders and analysts of the impressive haul the Jays received from the Astros in return for just two months and 11 starts of Kikuchi. Of the Jays’ three-prospect return, 25-year-old OF Joey Loperfido already started in left field on Wednesday vs. the O’s and collected his first hit. RHP Jake Bloss, 23, already in his first full pro season has three big-league starts. After the trade, he reported to Dunedin for a little meet-and-greet and may be in the Jays’ MLB rotation by next week. The Triple-A infielder, Will Wagner, 26-year-old son of former all-star reliever Billy Wagner, may be the last to arrive in the bigs, slowed, perhaps, by being a virtual clone of some of the Buffalo Boyz already there.
Examining the trade-week timeline, there was a series of extraordinary, perhaps linked coincidences leading to the Astros deciding to fork over the impressive prospect haul, but since I’m known as a conspiracy theorist from way back, here is how I might explain it, if it was, indeed, an intricate plan by the Jays to take advantage of rivalries in the AL West.
It’s a three-team race, in which one wins and the other two that don’t are not likely to earn a wildcard. With that one-spot pressure, three things fell into place for the Jays. Part 1: The Jays swept the Rangers in three games at home, setting their hopes back, leaving the Mariners and Astros to quickly turn their attention to one another. Part 2: The Jays then sent RH Yimi Garcia and DH Justin Turner in separate deals to strengthen the M’s, a move clearly noticed by Houston. Part 3: The Jays would then have called Astros GM Dana Brown and say, “what have you got for us,” viewing Kikuchi as the answer to staying ahead of Seattle.
There is a little tongue-in-cheek here, but also an interesting linking of events.