GM Atkins unsure if Blue Jays will be buyers or sellers at deadline
An accelerated market might force the front office of the Toronto Blue Jays to make a decision on how it'll approach the non-waiver trade deadline quicker than most seasons.
"I think the market is definitely moving a little bit sooner this year," Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins told The Fan 590 on Monday. "There are more teams willing to sell than typical. What we're doing is understanding where all the opportunities are, and that's on the buy, the sell, on the money swaps, and whatever those opportunities may be just to get better and understand the entire landscape."
There have already been two moves made involving rebuilding clubs over the past month. The Mariners acquired outfielder Denard Span and reliever Alex Colome from the Tampa Bay Rays on May 25, while the Arizona Diamondbacks landed outfielder Jon Jay from the Kansas City Royals on June 6.
The Rays and Royals are one of a number of rebuilding clubs that are expected to be sellers at the July 31 deadline, along with the Baltimore Orioles, Chicago White Sox, Texas Rangers, Miami Marlins, Cincinnati Reds, and San Diego Padres.
Toronto fell to 30-36 with its loss to the Rays on Monday, and finds itself 14 1/2 games back in the division and 11 1/2 out of the second wild-card spot. Still, Atkins says the front office hasn't decided whether or not his club will be buyers or sellers at the deadline.
"Ultimately we've got a little bit more time to understand where this team's going to be and at some point we clearly will have to make a more concrete decision as we had to make last season unfortunately, but we're not quite there yet," Atkins said. "In the meantime, we're pretty steady. The amount of text messages from our roughly 25-man baseball operations team that's going out to all the other baseball operations teams is a very large number - it takes a lot of time just to read through them. For me, it's just staying in regular touch with general managers and understanding how all teams are looking to improve."
Should the Blue Jays opt to sell, Atkins will have no shortage of pieces to move. Josh Donaldson, Marco Estrada, J.A. Happ, Curtis Granderson, Steve Pearce, and Aaron Loup are all free agents at the end of this season.