MLB Mailbag: Blue Jays, Starting Pitchers, White Sox, Giants, Pirates, Royals

This week’s MLB Mailbag will tackle questions on a potential (likely?) deadline sell-off for the Jays, the extent to which starting pitchers can hurt their stock with poor outings leading into the deadline, some possible White Sox targets, the Giants’ veteran trade candidates, the Pirates’ closing need, Royals outfielder Lane Thomas and more!

Let’s get into it all:

M. Brule asks:

As the Jays start to sell off players. Who do you think should be their target acquisition? It’s feeling more and more like Santander is not ever coming back, the Jays lack of power is on full show this year. Which free agent would you chase to help fill the gap? Any chance the jays can swing a trade to get Elly De La Cruz to be their shortstop next year? He would be a marked upgrade of Gimenez and brings a swagger to the team that is really missing.

Broadly, whenever a team is selling pieces at the deadline, the goal should simply be to add the best prospects possible. That’s a boring answer, but if the Jays are waving the white flag on the current season, they should care less about filling specific needs within the organization and more about maximizing talent. Even if they acquire more pieces at a position of organizational depth — say, infielders, for instance — they could leverage some of that infield glut in offseason trades.

To address the question more directly, I think that all else being equal, the focus ought to be on young starting pitchers and outfielders. Next year’s rotation has a strong starting point with Dylan Cease and Trey Yesavage, but it’s all question marks thereafter. Kevin Gausman, Shane Bieber, Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin are free agents. José Berríos is going to be out until midseason, at least, following Tommy John surgery. Cody Ponce should be back from his torn ACL to begin next season, but he only made one appearance before suffering his injury. The Jays placed a three-year, $30MM bet on his massive KBO breakout, so he’ll get every opportunity to prove himself. For now, however, he remains an unknown.

If the season ended today, Toronto would need to add at least two established starters, and probably some veteran depth options. They’ll have the final couple months of the season to take a look at some younger in-house arms — Spencer Miles, Chad Dallas, CJ Van Eyk and perhaps Jake Bloss among them. But recent trades of Khal Stephen and Kendry Rojas, coupled with ongoing injury woes for others (Bloss, Ricky Tiedemann) have thinned the upper-level pitching options. Bloss and Double-A righties Gage Stanifer and Nolan Perry aren’t terribly far from the majors, but none are elite prospects at this point.

The outfield is similarly bleak. Daulton Varsho, George Springer (who’s been primarily a DH anyhow) are trade candidates. Addison Barger has been hurt for most of the season. Nathan Lukes is 32 years old and could be a trade candidate in the next 11 days. Unless the Jays move a young infielder (e.g. Sean Keys) to the outfield, they’re looking at a pretty blank canvas out there. Yohendrick Piñango will probably get a look down the stretch, but the Jays’ system doesn’t have much in the way of upper-level prospects. The deadline could fix that.