A month after the MLB trade deadline, hindsight is doing what it always does: making some moves look sharper and others look like chances that got away. For the Blue Jays, MLB.com’s recent ranking lands in both places at once.
One deal already looks like a clear win. Two others leave you wondering whether Toronto could have pushed a little harder.
That was the challenge for Ross Atkins and the front office from the start. The Blue Jays weren’t acting like a pure buyer, and they weren’t tearing everything down either.
They tried to thread the needle, staying competitive now while also shaping the roster for 2027 and beyond. According to MLB.com, that approach produced one move that’s aging very well - and two more that could have looked even better with a slightly more aggressive hand.
The best return so far is Brett Bateman in the Kevin Gausman deal. Moving Gausman was never going to sit easily with the fan base.
He had become one of the most respected pitchers of this era in Toronto, a postseason starter who helped reset the bar for what a big-game Blue Jays arm could be. But if the plan was to move a pending free-agent starter and get younger and more athletic, Bateman has made that logic look sound.
Toronto got Bateman and infielder Ty Southisene from the Cubs, and the early results have been encouraging. Through his first 26 games in the organization, Bateman has hit .333/.403/.390 with 16 runs scored and 1.2 fWAR. The speed, defence and contact skills the Blue Jays wanted have shown up quickly, which is exactly why a deadline deal like this can age so well.
The more intriguing missed chance may have involved Jo Adell. Toronto was already dealing with the Angels, and the Blue Jays’ major move there was José Soriano, acquired in a three-prospect package headlined by Arjun Nimmala. That was a steep price, but it also brought in a controllable starter with the kind of arm talent Toronto needed for 2027 and beyond.
The question is whether the Blue Jays could have kept going and added Adell, too. He eventually went to the Guardians for catching prospect Jacob Cozart, who became the Angels’ No. 18 prospect after the trade. If that was the price, it’s fair to wonder whether Toronto could have included one more prospect from the middle or back end of its top 30 and expanded the Soriano deal.
Adell wouldn’t have fixed everything in the lineup, but he would have addressed a real problem. His game still comes with swing-and-miss and inconsistency, but the power is real, and Toronto has struggled to find extra-base damage.
Since the deadline, Adell has hit four home runs. Over that same stretch, only Alejandro Kirk, Nathan Lukes and Kazuma Okamoto have more for the Blue Jays, while Josh Smith has matched that total.
There’s no guarantee the Angels would have wanted to structure things that way, and Cleveland’s catching prospect may simply have fit their preference better than anything Toronto was willing to add. Still, once the Blue Jays paid a premium for Soriano, it’s hard not to ask whether one more prospect could have turned a strong pitching move into a bigger one.
The other comparison is more speculative, but it’s the kind of idea that sticks because of how the rotation has looked since the deadline. Instead of sending Daulton Varsho to Houston for Spencer Arrighetti, could Toronto have found a way to bring Robbie Ray back from San Francisco?
The Padres ended up landing Ray from the Giants for prospects Miguel Mendez and Joniel Hernandez, who became San Francisco’s No. 13 and No. 21 prospects after the deal. Ray has delivered 26.1 innings of 3.42 ERA ball across his first five starts for San Diego, giving that club the sort of steady innings Toronto could have used while its rotation has been held together with duck tape.
Arrighetti, meanwhile, hasn’t yet looked like the pitcher who dominated for Houston in May. The hope is still that he turns into the longer-term rotation piece Toronto thought it was getting.
But in the short term, Ray would have been a cleaner fit for a club trying to survive behind Dylan Cease, Soriano and Max Scherzer. At the time, though, Toronto also had a healthy Trey Yesavage and Shane Bieber, so the trade may have felt like overkill.
Jameson Taillon was another rotation swing, though that one was basically a flyer. The Blue Jays got him after the Cubs designated him for assignment, and he made one start before getting hurt. He returned this past weekend, only to go back on the injured list after two innings in Kansas City.
There’s also the reality of the market. San Francisco was out of the race, so Varsho as a rental probably wouldn’t have carried the same appeal in a Ray deal. Toronto likely would have needed to build around prospects instead, and after already moving Nimmala for Soriano, that path may have been a much harder sell.
So no, this doesn’t read like a deadline failure. But it does leave Toronto with a couple of what-ifs that matter: a power bat that might have fit, and a familiar former Cy Young winner who could have steadied the rotation. Those are the kinds of comparisons that hang around when one move hits immediately and the others are still waiting to prove themselves.
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