2026 Trade Deadline Thread

[Brownie19]

4 minutes ago, metafour said:

Again, you aren't answering my question. It is a simple question:

Why are they acquiring these players, when the base-level statistical understanding suggests that there is little to no likelihood of MLB success?

I literally don't have an answer for that question. However, I'm not going to pretend that a major league front office hasn't looked at Bateman's GB rate or Max EV. This is a comically silly suggestion.

And arm-chair "stat-heads" fall victim to this all the time. No, you aren't uncovering data or coming to conclusions that an MLB front office hasn't seen or considered themselves. Again, I am not suggesting that the Blue Jays are correct, but they are making player acquisition decisions FOR A REASON. Sometimes you are trading nothing so you're just getting back whatever, but I don't believe that they viewed trading Gausman as one of those moves regardless of his "decline" or contract status.

I'm pretty sure it's because they think they can help them change their profile and unlock new skills.  I think they believe they can teach (and/or train?) increased bat speed and thus increased power. 

They think it's easier to take a better "hitter" (bat to ball skill guy) and teach him to hit for more power, than it is to take someone with big power and teach them to hit.

Now that said - that "Should the Blue Jays Re-Evaluate Their Offensive Identity?" article that was just posted seems to suggest those bat speed increases we saw last year haven't carried over to 2026 (not sure where you find info on this).  I find that quite odd and would be curious to know why.  It certainly seemed that the teams offense greatly benefited by the increased bat speed as the season progressed last year - it made us an offensive juggernaut.  

Isn't that the logical explanation?

[Brownie19]

13 minutes ago, bronson44 said:

Dub Gleed might be an example of this. 2 home runs all of last year and already has 15 in our system this year.

Jay Harry has gone from 5 HRs and a 0.089 ISO to 13 HRs and a .243 ISO this year too.

[metafour]

6 minutes ago, Brownie19 said:

I'm pretty sure it's because they think they can help them change their profile and unlock new skills.  I think they believe they can teach (and/or train?) increased bat speed and thus increased power. 

They think it's easier to take a better "hitter" (bat to ball skill guy) and teach him to hit for more power, than it is to take someone with big power and teach them to hit.

Now that said - that "Should the Blue Jays Re-Evaluate Their Offensive Identity?" article that was just posted seems to suggest those bat speed increases we saw last year haven't carried over to 2026 (not sure where you find info on this).  I find that quite odd and would be curious to know why.  It certainly seemed that the teams offense greatly benefited by the increased bat speed as the season progressed last year - it made us an offensive juggernaut.  

Isn't that the logical explanation?

Yes, of course. That is clearly their thought process.

But what we don't know: is there a real track-record of this type of development leading to noticeable improvements at the MLB level? Are they potentially more equipped than other organizations when it comes to actuating this type of strategy?

Furthermore: is this a "better" strategy than targeting guys who hit the ball in the air really hard, but maybe have extreme upper-cut swings and very poor contact rates and hoping to "develop" them backwards to a less extreme swing?

A lot of this is locked behind closed doors, so all we can do is observe and see what happens. Maybe they are on the cusp of the new breakthrough trend, or maybe this is all a fool's errand and we end up with a ton of bad slap-hitters.

 

[glory]

A writer on Fangraphs said "the Blue Jays are extremely good at developing strength, so they may get more out of him than another organization might" when discussing Bateman. My guess is that contact rate is an extremely difficult skill to develop, so the Jays double down on that, and figure they either can or can't fix strength/power. It's a profile that they are willing to take a risk on. The opposite (power/strength that can't make contact) is probably more difficult to fix. The good news is we are seeing some benefits to that (the aforementioned Jay Harry and Dub Gleed, for starters). Whether they actually turn into big leaguers is a different story. It will be interesting to track how good the Jays can be with this approach. 

[Olerud363.354]

1 hour ago, Orgfiller said:

Yes, of course the super duper elite contact guys like Arraez, Freeman, Kwan are going to have more stable, consistently high rates. Picking and choosing anecdotal players where it works is not how these things work.

Yes it is how it works.   Most guys have a line drive rate of about 20%.  Random variation is explaining all of the differences between them because the mean is the same.  

Picking and choosing anecdotal players is exactly what you want to do and run statistical tests on them.  Is Freddie Freeman's line drive rate really 26% ?  Or is it just a cosmic run of luck and it's actually 20% like everyone else? 

It's a bit of a mess because it might be bimodel.  Freeman, with Arraez, Howritz, Kwan and a few others (Jack Wilson?) is in the low bat speed group.  

So you might have this large group, following the high bat speed strategy, and their line drive rate is 20% and the variation random, then you have this smaller low bat speed, 25% line drive rate group.  So line drive rate, is more predictable then we think but there is a bimodal distribution depending on bat-speed strategy they are using. 

OK.  Getting obtuse again, but just saying if some complicated bimodal distribution this gets hard.   And you have to start doing data exploration and picking and choosing, try to think through whether have 2 classes. 

 

[Brownie19]

This type of rabbit hole is your dream conversation/debate Olerud.  You must be loving this.

[Olerud363.354]

1 hour ago, Laika said:

Nathan Lukes, the AAA Blue Jays version, was just a contact and get on base guy. And a corner outfield profile with bad age vs level. 

Ernie Clement too.  I think at 24 it would have been hard to put either in a group of 'guys who hit .230 with 1 homer but will improve'.  I think at 27 when they started hitting like .350 in Buffalo, you could group them using pulled fly balls and stuff, but you could also group them using the .350 in Buffalo. 

Batemen kind of has the .350 in Buffalo already (well maybe .320 or whatever), and if you squint the batted ball data is trending right.. maybe?  Or maybe he sucks.  No idea. 

[sliderguy35]

5 hours ago, metafour said:

Again, you aren't answering my question. It is a simple question:

Why are they acquiring these players, when the base-level statistical understanding suggests that there is little to no likelihood of MLB success?

I literally don't have an answer for that question. However, I'm not going to pretend that a major league front office hasn't looked at Bateman's GB rate or Max EV. This is a comically silly suggestion.

And arm-chair "stat-heads" fall victim to this all the time. No, you aren't uncovering data or coming to conclusions that an MLB front office hasn't seen or considered themselves. Again, I am not suggesting that the Blue Jays are correct, but they are making player acquisition decisions FOR A REASON. Sometimes you are trading nothing so you're just getting back whatever, but I don't believe that they viewed trading Gausman as one of those moves regardless of his "decline" or contract status.

its really easy man, the reason they acquired him is that they think he can play CF defensively, he has a full set of options & MAYBE they can coax some more offense out of him. straw's got a team option that they probably don't want to pick up & clase's only got 1 more option to the minors, otherwise nobody in the org is a viable big league CF defender.  i think you're getting a little caught up in thinking that every acquisition a ML org makes is intended to move the needle, arm-chair fans fall victim to this all the time.

nobody was claiming that some random poster on a blue jays message board has more insight than the front office does. the entire conversation started w/ people on the board talking themselves into bateman as a starting CF option & I (maybe ill-fated at this point) felt the need to be a bit more realistic & it kinda devolved from there. 

[Olerud363.354]

1 hour ago, sliderguy35 said:

nobody was claiming that some random poster on a blue jays message board has more insight than the front office does. the entire conversation started w/ people on the board talking themselves into bateman as a starting CF option

The criticism I had with your analysis started because it didn't match my intuition.   Didn't see Batemen as a starter but it felt like there should be a few Nathan Lukes type players that would be comparable to him.    

This team is on pace to score 625 runs or something.  There are very few bright spots right now at all.   If it was up to me I'd put you and Laika in the front office right away and have you guys monitor who-ever they have doing this crap right now for a while.  Then give us all a report as to whether this year is just the worst luck ever, or if there is some real issues with the Blue Jays high (a.k.a. low) performance analysists. 

[John_Havok]

On 8/6/2026 at 10:01 AM, Brownie19 said:

I think we may be overcomplicating this.  It seems obvious the Jays target guys with good bat to ball skills - and typically ones that have a good approach/eye at the plate.  It certainly seems like they believe they can take that player and improve their bat speed and thus power, which can transform their value.

There was an article late last year that showed stark improvements in bat speed by several Blue Jay players and they credited Popkins for helping these players increase their bat speed as the season progressed.

The current version of Bateman does raise all the concerns sliderguy points out.  There are all kinds of guys who have success in the minors backed by a passive approach, a good eye and finding holes with groundballs (v. relatively poor defense).  It's true that approach rarely plays at the ML level, as pitchers just attack them, with little fear of being burnt due to lack of power (while backed by much better defenders).

I fully expect the Jays know the floor for Bateman is some 85 wRC+ backup OFer/pinch runner.  What they hope to do is help him increase bat speed and overall power, to the point pitchers have to respect it, allowing his eye and ability to take a walk to play at the ML level.  Fingers crossed it happens.  

CFers are SO hard to find, that I certainly don't disagree with this approach.  Finding a CFer who's already a complete hitter, with power and good defense is near impossible.  Teams don't trade guys like that unless they're the Mets (PCA).

I was going to say something like this except in a few less paragraphs. Atkins likes a high-floor profile based on contact and defense for the most part, Exceptions obviously exist but it's easier to understand why. He wants the high floor guys so they can plug and play in times when it's called for to replace big leaguers who are injured and the guys they call up won't be replacement level bums and negative WAR sinkholes in a lineup. That's a decent way to operate too when you have the financial muscle to be active in the deep end of the FA pool every year and can sign some of the bigger names (not all, obviously). Then, of course you hope your performance department can make enough of an impact to get them to at least the next level with the bat and be a true major league regular for a decent stretch of years. It won't always work, but when it does it creates a lot of flexibility in the payroll they need to be able to sign the Ceases, Gausmans, Hoffmans, and Springers when they need to.