Jays trade Liriano, Smith
Liriano and Smith join AL contenders as Toronto bosses start looking to next year
Jose Bautista bit his tongue and smiled when was asked if he thought the Toronto Blue Jays front office did enough at Monday’s trade deadline.
In 2014, the star outfielder let his disappointment be known on trade deadline day. The veteran slugger said club management didn’t do enough to upgrade the team as they fought for a playoff spot.
This year, the Jays’ front office got rid of two veteran pitchers — left-handed starter Francisco Liriano to the Houston Astros and right-handed reliever Joe Smith to the Cleveland Indians — for future prospects. There is no genuine plan for a playoff spot in 2017, and rightly so.
But even though the Jays were eight games behind the New York Yankees for first place in the AL East heading into Monday’s games and seven out of the second wild card spot, some of the veterans in the clubhouse were likely hoping the team would be given the old college try, and some help would be acquired for a final push.
When approached at his locker at Guaranteed Rate Field, Bautista made it clear he would not comment on anything to do with the trade deadline. When reminded he had commented before, Bautista replied: “I commented in the past because I was asked. I never tried to go out of my way to insert myself in those conversations.”
He was asked if he still likes the look of his club and if it’s a team he’d like to come back to.
“Season’s not over yet,” he said. “There’s still a lot of things that can happen from now until then. I like the makeup of our club as we sit here right now. Eight games out? I wouldn’t count ourselves out.”
There was talk that the Jays were going to make multiple deals on Monday as general manager Ross Atkins and president Mark Shapiro start rebuilding their aging team. But they made only two deals, starting with Liriano to the Astros for outfielders Nori Aoki and Teoscar Hernandez.
Hernandez is the key part of that deal. At 24, he has major upside with speed and power. He was recently ranked eighth on Baseball America’s list of top Astros prospects. The Dominican is 6-2, 180 pounds, and signed with the Astros as an international free agent in February 2011.
“Teoscar’s a guy that we’ve liked for a while, someone that we feel can make an impact in the short term and long term,” Atkins said. “If we had a need for him to come up tomorrow, he could fill in immediately as an everyday major league player.
“He’s a well-rounded player that runs well and throws well, gets on base, has some power. He can play all three outfield positions. It’s extremely difficult to acquire talent that you can say all those things about that you will have five-plus years of control and can potentially be someone you can count on year in and year out.”
The Jays also traded righthanded reliever Smith, a native of Cincinnati, to the Cleveland Indians for prospects Samad Taylor, a second baseman, and left-handed pitcher Thomas Pannone.
Smith, a 33-year-old sidearmer, pitched with the Indians from 2009 to 2013 and was having a good year in Toronto. He logged a 3.28 ERA in 38 appearances and totalled 51 strikeouts and only 10 walks in 352/3 innings. He held right-handed hitters to a .211/.238/.289 slash line. The Indians had sought bullpen help to ease the burden on Andrew Miller, Cody Allen and Bryan Shaw.
Pannone, 23, posted an 8-1 record and 1.96 ERA in 19 starts between high-A Lynchburg and double-A Akron this season. He tallied 120 strikeouts in 110 innings while limiting the opposition to a .197 average and a .558 OPS.
Taylor, the Indians’ 10th-round draft pick last summer, turned 19 earlier this month. The second baseman was batting .300 with a .795 OPS for short-season Mahoning Valley.
Neither minor leaguer is ranked on mlb.com’s list of the Indians’ top 30 prospects, but Atkins is high on Pannone and Taylor. Atkins and Shapiro drafted Pannone while in Cleveland.
“Taylor is a young middle infielder that is an above-average runner and has had some success already who is a very well-rounded athlete that could complement a major-league team one day,” Atkins said. “Tom has a low90s fastball with a good breaking ball and a feel for a change-up.”
As for where the new acquisitions land, Hernandez will likely start at triple-A Buffalo, Aoki will join the Jays on Tuesday and Pannone goes to double-A New Hampshire.
“(Aoki) complements our team speed and contact and (is) someone who can start a game, he can pinch run, he can pinch D, come in and pinch hit, so he’s someone we feel is a good complement to our team,” Atkins said.
The 5-9 Aoki is 35 and earns US$5.5 million, and obviously is not in the Jays’ long-term plans. He is arbitration eligible one more time this winter.
He played in the 2006, 2009 and 2017 World Baseball Classics and also represented Japan at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Aoki has a career MLB batting average of .285 with 92 stolen bases and 29 home runs in 720 games.
Atkins said trade deadline day was a buyer’s market for pitching, relief pitching particularly.
Marco Estrada was reportedly one veteran starter the Blue Jays were looking to move, but suitable trades didn’t present themselves.
“We’re happy to keep Marco Estrada a Toronto Blue Jay and we’ll start thinking about not only how he impacts us now and how he could potentially impact us beyond 2017,” Atkins said.