Blue Jays: Five best trade deadline moves by Ross Atkins

The Toronto Blue Jays will be buyers in the quickly approaching trade deadline.

For the sixth time since becoming the Blue Jays’ general manager, Ross Atkins will buy at the trade deadline. The needs are clear: a starter, a handful of relievers, and a right-handed power bat who can either play third base or the outfield, that’ll give them an A+ at the deadline. Simply put, the Blue Jays have to go all in.

You’d be hard pressed to find a trade the Blue Jays have lost since Atkins took over. When they were sellers, they traded 2015 MVP Josh Donaldson for Julian Merryweather, probably their worst trade since taking over. But as a buyer ahead of the trade deadline, Atkins tends to win trades.

In this article, we’ll look at the five best trades Atkins has made as a seller before the trade deadline.

5. Acquiring Adam Cimber and Corey Dickerson (2021)

The reason the Blue Jays didn’t make the postseason in 2021 is due to their bullpen’s early season struggles. At the end of June, the Jays traded minor leaguer Andrew McInvale and third baseman Joe Panik to the Miami Marlins for Adam Cimber.

McIvale most recently pitched with the Kansas City Royals’ Double-A team, while Panik had 134 more plate appearances before calling it a career. Dickerson was a slightly-above-average outfielder for the Jays, slashing .282/.329/.450 with four home runs in 140 plate appearances for a 107 wRC+.

This trade ranks fifth because of Cimber. With the Jays, he pitched in high leverage, authoring a 1.69 ERA and 2.82 FIP in 37.1 innings pitched. While the Jays didn’t make the postseason in 2021, he was a big part of their bullpen in 2022, where he finished with a 2.80 ERA and 3.47 FIP in 70.2 innings pitched.

Cimber struggled with poor performance in 2023, but spent the majority of the season on the Injured List. He was non-tendered after the 2023 season and struggled with the Los Angeles Angels in 2024.

Still, Cimber was an important reliever for a season and a half for the Jays, pretty good value for what they gave up.

4. Acquiring Whit Merrifield (2022)

The next season, the Jays sent prospects Max Castillo and Samad Taylor to the Kansas City Royals for second baseman Whit Merrifield.

Merrifield wasn’t the same player he was in his prime, but he was a big reason why the Blue Jays made the postseason in 2022, as he slashed .281/.323/.446 with five home runs in 130 plate appearances for a 120 wRC+. Merrifield made his third All-Star Game in 2023 and moved around the field as a useful utility player. The former Blue Jay co-hosts the 6ix Inning Stretch alongside Lindsay Dunn.

Castillo had shown promise with the Jays, authoring a 3.05 ERA and 4.42 FIP in 20.2 innings pitched, but struggled after the trade and now pitches in Mexico. Taylor has had a cup of tea with the Royals and Seattle Mariners, but hasn’t been able to figure it out at the major league level yet.

3. Acquiring José Berríos (2021)

The biggest trade deadline day move the Blue Jays have made is sending two top 100 prospects, Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson, to the Minnesota Twins for José Berríos.

The right-handed pitcher has been a mainstay in the Blue Jays’ rotation since the trade, posting a 3.98 ERA and 4.25 FIP in 736.2 innings pitched. Aside from struggling in 2022, Berríos has been a reliable middle-of-the-rotation starter. This season, he has a 3.53 ERA and 4.05 FIP in 112.1 innings pitched, right around where he has average in his Jays career when removing the outlier season in 2022. Consistency is key.

Of the five trades we’ll look at, this is the only one where the Jays gave up notable assets. This season with the Twins, Simeon Woods Richardson had a 4.08 ERA and 4.34 FIP in 68.1 innings pitched. Over his last five starts, Woods Richardson has a 1.38 ERA and 3.20 FIP in 26 innings pitched.

Martin, the Jays’ fifth overall pick in 2020, hasn’t found the same success in the big leagues. He made his debut with the Twins in 2024, slashing .253/.318/.352 with one home run in 257 plate appearances for a 93 wRC+. He hasn’t appeared in a big league game this season, and only has 93 plate appearances as a whole due to injury.

2. Acquiring Robbie Ray (2020)

Ahead of the 2020 season in the weird pandemic year, the Jays traded Travis Bergen to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Robbie Ray.

The left-handed pitcher had shown flashes of dominance in the past, earning National League Cy Young votes in 2017, but had mediocre results in the ensuing two and a half seasons with the Diamondbacks. In fact, he didn’t have a great stretch of games after the trade, authoring a 4.79 ERA and 5.32 FIP in 20.2 innings pitched, giving up an earned run in his three postseason innings that year.

So why is he here? Well, Ray re-signed with the Blue Jays during the 2020-21 off-season, something that may not have otherwise happened if they hadn’t acquired him. As you know, Ray went on to post a 2.84 ERA and 3.69 FIP in 193.1 innings in 2021, winning the American League Cy Young and turning it into a big payday with the Seattle Mariners.

As for Bergen, he pitched six and two-thirds innings with the Diamondbacks in 2020, authoring a 4.05 ERA and 6.34 FIP. The kicker? Less than a year later, the Jays acquired him for cash considerations and had an acceptable 1.69 ERA (and 6.08 FIP) in 10.2 innings pitched before being designated for assignment.

1. The Drew Hutchison trade in 2016

You have to go back 10 seasons to the best trade in recent Blue Jays memory. At the 2016 trade deadline, the Jays traded Drew Hutchison to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Francisco Liriano, Reese McGuire, and Harold Ramírez.

Before the trade, Hutchison had a 4.97 ERA and 6.54 FIP in 12.2 innings pitched with the Jays, similar to Lirano’s 5.46 ERA in 113.2 innings pitched with the Pirates. The difference is, Lirano finished with a 2.92 ERA and 3.98 FIP in 49.1 innings pitched with his new team, while Hutchison had a 5.56 ERA and 4.73 FIP in 11.1 innings pitched with the Pirates.

Liriano helped the Blue Jays make the 2016 postseason, as the team turned to him as a sixth starter. That doesn’t even mention the two prospects they acquired. While in hindsight, McGuire and Ramírez didn’t have too big of an impact in the league, McGuire was ranked as Baseball America’s 95th-best prospect in baseball, and Ramírez was a top-10 Pirates prospect. Again, this was for Hutchison.

The trade got better as well, as the Jays flipped Liriano to the Houston Astros before the 2017 trade deadline for Nori Aoki and prospect Teoscar Hernández, a win-win for both teams as the Astros went on to win the World Series.

Eventually, the Jays traded Hernández to the Seattle Mariners for Erik Swanson and Adam Macko. Hernández was an average hitter with a ton of swing and miss in his one season in Seattle, while Swanson had a good 2023 season before struggling with injuries the past season. He was eventually designated for assignment and released. Macko remains in the system and hey, maybe this trade tree grows even larger on July 31st.