What Would a Controllable Starter Cost the Blue Jays?

The past couple of weeks have been dominated by discourse that the Toronto Blue Jays are trending towards being sellers. At 5.5 games out of a Wild Card spot entering Tuesday, it seems at this point that selling would be a wise course of action.

Over the past day, however, chatter has begun to swirl about them using the upcoming trade deadline to acquire a controllable starting pitcher, something they theoretically could do regardless of whether they commit to buying or selling. Mitch Bannon of The Athletic made a bold prediction Monday morning that such a trade would come to fruition over the next few days. MLB's Mark Feinsand said Tuesday that he too "wouldn't be surprised" if something like that went down.

With Dylan Cease, Trey Yesavage, and Cody Ponce locked in, the Blue Jays' starting pitching depth chart has a good foundation for next year. Prospects such as Johnny King and Nolan Perry are trending in the right direction in the minors. Despite that, the rotation is about to enter a state of flux. Kevin Gausman and Shane Bieber are not under contract next year. Questions continue to surround the future of Max Scherzer.

Controllable starting pitching is traditionally not cheap to acquire, so let's look at three possible targets and see if it's feasible for the Jays to go that route before Monday's deadline without compromising their future.

Nick Lodolo, LHP

Nick Lodolo, who won't hit free agency until the end of next year, is a curious case because he's currently on the IL and has been injury-prone for a chunk of his career. He's also in the midst of a down year, which would put pressure on him to bounce back in the event of a trade to a team hoping to contend in 2027 like the Blue Jays. His price tag is down from its peak as a result. In 2025, he recorded a 3.33 ERA across 28 starts. His xERA, FIP, and xFIP were all between 3.50 and 3.81. The year before, he was a 2-WAR guy through 21 starts. That would make any rotation better, hands-down.

Until 2026, he's had a better-than-average strikeout rate every season of his career, and he truly broke out last year because he walked just 4.8% of the batters he faced (95th percentile). He has an interesting repertoire: four-seamer, sinker, changeup, and curveball, and he throws each pitch around 25% of the time, so it's hard for opposing hitters to sit on anything. His curveball is one of the nastiest in the game according to the Stuff+ model hosted on FanGraphs, and because he's 6-foot-6 with a 15° arm angle, he gets unique movement on everything he throws.

Cincinnati, as has been the case in recent years, is starved for offense. The Blue Jays have the tools to help them out in both the short term and the long term without pillaging their system. Sean Keys's stock has soared this year, but he won't have much room to play with Kazuma Okamoto and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on the corners through 2029. Jesús Sánchez, whose return from an ankle injury appears imminent, figures to have a little more upside if Great American Ball Park were his home stadium. With Addison Barger poised to be ready for spring training and the Jays presumably desperate to salvage whatever they can from Anthony Santander's contract, Sánchez will be expendable heading into 2027.

Much of this trade proposal would hinge on the Reds' evaluation of Keys as a prospect. If they view him closer to the 40+ FV tier than FanGraphs' evaluation, this deal becomes more of a coin flip. If they're optimistic enough to consider him a 45-FV guy, it tilts in Cincinnati's favour from a projected value standpoint.

Reid Detmers, LHP

Unlike Lodolo, the Blue Jays, if they were to take a big swing like this, would be acquiring Reid Detmers at the peak of his powers. Counting 2026, he also has three more years of control as opposed to two, so I would expect that if the Angels saw this offer, they'd try to snag a third quality prospect or a role player who's big league ready. Even as he's transitioned back to the rotation, Detmers's peripheral numbers are simply outstanding (27.6% K rate, 7.5% BB rate, 3.28 FIP, 3.67 xFIP, 3.32 xERA). His 4.05 ERA seems bound to tumble soon, especially if he's traded to a better defensive team. He's already eclipsed 3.0 fWAR on the season. 

He's a fastball/slider guy from a 3/4 arm slot, and he's introduced a new changeup this year that has 10.5 mph of average velocity separation from his four-seamer. The slider (+14 run value, 110 Stuff+, 35% whiff rate, .174 opponent AVG) has been simply devastating. He's averaging just under six innings per start. Sacrificing multiple high-quality pitching prospects in a year where selling seems like the most practical option, just as the farm system has come back to life, may be tough to stomach. On the flip side, pitchers of Detmers' quality simply are not available for trade very often.

Despite some serious struggles in Triple-A recently, the industry remains high on Jake Bloss. FanGraphs gave him a 50 FV grade and ranked him the third-best prospect on the team in the preseason, and Baseball America had him as a 55-grade prospect in their post-draft update (although they view him as a high-risk guy, so his adjusted FV grade is 40, hence the 45+ grade you see here). At 25 years old, Bloss figures to be less than a year away from being a big league contributor. If the Angels are skeptical after his rough stretch in Buffalo (his last two starts have been much better, for what it's worth), I'd once again expect them to ask for more than just him and Perry in an effort to cash in on Detmers while his value is high. At this moment, he has more potential to be a game-changer than Lodolo.

José Soriano, RHP

It's tough to say whether Detmers or his Angels teammates, José Soriano, would cost more. They both hit free agency following the 2028 season, yet Soriano is earlier in his arbitration eligibility status according to Spotrac, which means his salary projections in 2027 and 2028 come out lower. Combine that with a slightly more optimistic forecast from ZiPS, and Soriano seems to be more valuable on paper given his combination of contract status and projected value.

However, I feel more conviction that the Angels could demand a king's ransom for Detmers instead, because Soriano was quite ineffective in May and June after a dominant April (he's since improved through four July starts). Even in the best of times, he battles control, with a walk rate within a few tenths of 11% each of the past two seasons. His groundball rate, while still very good, has come down to earth after being otherworldly last year. Most of his struggles in the two months preceding this one had to do with over-reliance on his four-seamer, which isn't too hard to fix in the short term, especially on a new team.

FanGraphs' projections are obviously different from what the Blue Jays and Angels use internally, so it's entirely possible Soriano isn't this much more valuable than Detmers in the eyes of these two teams. Since I'm not privy to that info, I've added Yohendrick Piñango to a pitching prospect package that's similar to the base of what the Angels are likely to ask for in a Detmers deal for the purposes of balancing things out here.

Takeaways

Whichever one of these options is best comes down to personal preference. If you like wide arsenals and value the potential for elite command, Lodolo's your guy. If you'd rather somebody more durable with more team control and you're less of a prospect hugger, Detmers is probably the more appealing lefty. If groundballs, bowling ball sinkers, and the chance for Pete Walker to play around with an arsenal that hasn't yet been optimized is intriguing to you, then you might prefer Soriano.

Regardless, it's important to understand that, especially since MLB expanded the playoff field, the price for good pitchers at the trade deadline has been quite high in recent years, leading to many trades that even the simulators that use the most up-to-date calculations of dollars per future value, dollars per WAR, and projected performance would classify as overpays. Acquiring any of these three arms would considerably detract from a Blue Jays prospect pool that hasn't been above average in years, and their lack of MLB-ready depth in the upper minors has hurt them a few times in recent years.

Ross Atkins and company are no doubt aware of this, but if an opportunity presents itself to bring in another high-end starter that would allow the stars to align once again in 2027 and beyond, they will capitalize.

All stats entering July 28, 2026.

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