Using past trade deadlines to anticipate Blue Jays’ next moves

TORONTO — Like most general managers, Ross Atkins keeps his public comments pretty tame this time of year.

If a GM shares too much of their strategy, they could lose leverage in trade talks. If they raise expectations only to disappoint, they risk the ire of fans. Even an off-hand remark can backfire, as Atkins knows first-hand from 2019, when he spoke a little too candidly about adding 42 years of control.

As a result, many executives lapse into GM speak this time of year, Atkins included. For instance: 

“We have some key contributions from different areas and some good balance to our 40-man and our our 26-man,” Atkins said last week at Rogers Centre. “So I think we’ll be more focused on, (and) have been focused on, how we can improve the 40-man roster, how we can incrementally improve the 26-man roster.”

But even when GMs prefer to say little of note on the record, their actions speak for themselves. That’s certainly the case for Atkins, who’s now the second-longest-tenured GM in Toronto Blue Jays franchise history, trailing only Pat Gillick.

Over the course of the last nine and a half years, Atkins has made hundreds of roster moves, though not all of those are relevant when it comes to anticipating what the Blue Jays will do ahead of the 2025 trade deadline. Let’s instead focus on the Blue Jays’ work at the trade deadline under Atkins, specifically in years the Blue Jays were buyers.

Of the nine summers Atkins has been the team’s GM, the Blue Jays sold four times. That leaves five times the Blue Jays have been buyers under Atkins: 2016 and 2020-23. Using those years as a starting point, let’s look for patterns that might shed light on what’s ahead this summer:

Busy deadlines are the norm

Each of the five times the Blue Jays have been buyers, they’ve completed at least three trades.

The busiest deadline Atkins has had to date was his first, back in 2016, when August waiver trades were still permitted. That summer, the Blue Jays acquired seven players and two prospects in a series of seven trades.

Then, from 2020-23, the Blue Jays bought every year, acquiring at least three players every time.

Multiple pitchers are the norm

As buyers under Atkins, the Blue Jays have acquired at least two pitchers at every single deadline. In fact, every year but 2023, the Blue Jays acquired at least three pitchers at the deadline.

On the position player side, the Blue Jays haven’t added as much volume, but they have added a bench bat every single year they’ve been buyers, from Melvin Upton to Jonathan Villar to Corey Dickerson to Whit Merrifield to Paul DeJong.

The Jays add years of control when possible

With Atkins as GM, the Blue Jays have consistently used the deadline to acquire players with additional years of control:

2016: Francisco Liriano

2020: Ross Stripling 

2021: Adam Cimber, Trevor Richards, Jose Berrios

2022: Whit Merrifield

2023: Genesis Cabrera  

In a couple instances, those additional years proved valuable because the Blue Jays flipped Liriano for Teoscar Hernandez in a 2017 trade that ranks among their best in recent memory, and they extended Berrios into a core piece of their team after the trade with Minnesota.

No regrettable prospects moved

Of the 29 prospects the Blue Jays have traded away at the deadline, none have come back to haunt the Blue Jays. 

In fact, it’s hard to find even one player whose absence has hurt the Blue Jays much at all. Rowdy Tellez, Ryan Noda, Riley Adams and Simeon Woods Richardson have all played in the majors, and Tellez has a 35-homer season to his name, but the Blue Jays got big-league talent in return and don’t regret those deals.

The action happens late

This isn’t so much a Blue Jays pattern as it is an industry pattern, but Atkins makes his moves late.

Not counting the 2016 acquisition of Dioner Navarro — an August trade that would no longer be permitted under the current rules — the Blue Jays have made 21 trades as summer buyers under Atkins. Of those 21 deals, 17 occurred within a week of the trade deadline, after sellers have a clearer picture of their options.

Applied to 2025

To be fair, the Blue Jays aren’t destined to keep behaving the way they have in the past. They’d never made a three-year guarantee to a free agent reliever — and then they signed Jeff Hoffman. They’d never spent more than $150 million on a player — until they locked up Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for $500 million. 

So we have to allow for the possibility that Atkins operates differently now than he has in the past. The front office is much bigger now than it was in 2016, composed of different people and run according to different principles.

“I hope we’re evolving,” Atkins said. “I hope we’re getting better. I certainly feel as though that we are every day. We’ve learned a great deal as a group and I would rather not tell 29 other teams things that I’ve gotten better at or parts of our process that we feel strongly about. But, if you’re not learning and getting better, then (you’re getting worse).”

Even so, the last decade still offers hints at what’s ahead. Based on the data in front of us, we can safely say the Blue Jays tend to make three or more trades when they’re buyers, they tend to add multiple pitchers and one bat, ideally with additional years of control, and the action tends to happen in the few days leading up to the deadline.

So we’ll see — but it won’t be a surprise if those trends persist in 2025.

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