Last-minute swap adds top prospects but inflates payroll
HOUSTON— On the first trade deadline of his career, Blue Jays rookie general manager Ross Atkins was wheeling and dealing right up until the final bell.
The headlining trade of the day for the Jays was consummated “literally” with a minute to go before Monday’s 4 p.m. deadline, Atkins said, as Toronto acquired veteran left-handed starter Francisco Liriano from the Pittsburgh Pirates, along with a pair of top prospects, for 25-year-old righty Drew Hutchison, who has spent most of this season in Triple-A Buffalo.
“The nature of deadlines is people wait for them,” Atkins said, laughing, on a conference call with reporters. “It’s human nature to wait for the last second, and we took it up to the last second.”
Liriano, 32, was not having a good year in Pittsburgh — he has walked more batters (69) than any pitcher in the majors and is lugging around a burdensome 5.46 ERA — but Atkins and the Jays are hoping he can return to his form from 2013 to 2015, when he had a 3.26 ERA and helped the Pirates to three straight post-season appearances.
The Jays are hopeful that reuniting Liriano with catcher Russell Martin, who caught the lefty for two seasons in Pittsburgh, will help.
From the Pirates’ perspective the deal was a salary dump, and in exchange for taking on the roughly $18 million Liriano is owed for the remainder of this year and next, the Pirates also threw in two of their top-10 minor-league prospects: catcher Reese McGuire and outfielder Harold Ramirez.
The inclusion of prospects — afforded by the Jays’ ability to take on salary — made the deal lopsided in the Jays’ favour in the eyes of many evaluators, not to mention Pirates’ fans.
Atkins said he didn’t set out to add to the farm system at the deadline, “but we were opportunistic when it presented itself.”
Liriano will eventually take Aaron Sanchez’s spot in the rotation as the Jays plan to shift their prized young arm — who has arguably been the best starting pitcher in the American League to this point — to the bullpen in order to limit his workload and protect him from injury.
Manager John Gibbons said Sanchez will make his next scheduled start on Friday in Kansas City, but after that it’s unclear. Atkins said they’re still “working through the timing” of Sanchez’s shift, but it will happen in the near future.
Also on Monday, the Jays acquired veteran right-hander Scott Feldman from the Houston Astros for 18-yearold pitching prospect Guadalupe Chavez, while dealing another Chavez — struggling reliever Jesse Cha- vez — to the L.A. Dodgers for Mike Bolsinger, who has spent most of this season with the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate.
In essence, Feldman replaces Jesse Chavez in the Jays’ bullpen as a reliever who can throw multiple innings and serve as depth for the starting rotation; while Bolsinger, who has made six major-league starts this season, replaces Hutchison as a fringy major-leaguer further down on the depth chart who could make a big-league start in a pinch.
“It’s always weird getting traded to begin with, but this was kind of convenient, actually,” Feldman said Monday, before he played his first game with his new team against his former one. “Just drove to the field today like normal and then switched clubhouses.”
Feldman, 33, has made five starts and 21 relief appearances for the Astros this season, posting a 2.90 ERA in 62 innings. Out of the ’pen he has pitched to a 2.41ERA, while posting a 50 per cent ground-ball rate. He is owed about $2.5 million for the remainder of this season and is set to become a free agent.
“I’m really just looking forward to pitching in front of the crowd in Toronto,” Feldman said. “I know last year really rejuvenated that whole city with the success that the team had.”
In the last two months, the Jays have added veteran relievers Jason Grilli, Joaquin Benoit and Feldman, plus Liriano to the rotation and Melvin Upton Jr. to their bench.
“I liked our team to begin with,” Gibbons said before Monday’s game. “I really like the way it looks now.”