Top-Ranked Starter Targets for the Blue Jays If They're Buying at the Deadline

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I'm still not ready to entertain the possibility that the Blue Jays will be sellers at the trade deadline.

As I write this, the Jays are six games below .500 with a -38 run differential. They're only three games back of a Wild Card spot, but they would have to surpass three teams (and stave off several more) to put themselves in the playoff picture. If Toronto can't stop losing over the next couple of weeks, eventually Ross Atkins will have to face reality.

But we're not there yet.

For now, this is still the team that made it to Game 7 of the World Series last year. This is still the team with a top-five payroll in the sport. This is still a team that should absolutely have eyes on the playoffs.

Of course, if they're going to get there – and give themselves the best chance to advance when they do – they'll have to bring in some reinforcements.

The Blue Jays need another starting pitcher. Dylan Cease is a stud and Kevin Gausman is a horse, but I'm worried about Trey Yesavage and Spencer Miles running out of steam down the stretch. I'm also concerned by what we've seen from Shane Bieber so far, and I'm not counting on anything from Max Scherzer at this point. Patrick Corbin can rejoin the rotation as needed, but the Blue Jays can and should aim higher.

I know I just named seven guys there, but if the 2026 Blue Jays have taught us anything, it's that we shouldn't ever worry about having too much starting pitching. If the Jays ever end up in a situation where they do have too many guys, they can figure it out then, but that possibility shouldn't affect their deadline strategy.

So, Toronto needs to shop for a starter. There are plenty of options to consider, but thankfully, DiamondCentric has a list of the top 40 trade candidates I can use to narrow my search. Let's take a look at some of the top-ranked names.

Tarik Skubal (No. 1)

Not happening. I'd love to see the back-to-back Cy Young winner in Toronto, but the Blue Jays aren't in a position to make this kind of blockbuster. We can reconsider Tarik Skubal if they go on a 15-game winning streak.

Joe Ryan (No. 2)

DiamondCentric's second-highest-ranked trade candidate is a much more realistic target for the Blue Jays. The Twins ace might cost nearly as much as Skubal in terms of prospects; he's making a lot less money, and he's still under team control through arbitration in 2027. However, that's exactly why he makes sense for Toronto. If the Jays were to trade for Skubal and still miss the playoffs, it would be a disaster. If they trade for Joe Ryan and miss the playoffs this year, it would be disappointing, but they would go into 2027 with Cease, Ryan, and Yesavage atop their rotation. That's a great top three to build around, and even in his final year of arbitration, Ryan will come significantly cheaper than re-signing Gausman (or an equivalent free agent replacement).

Here's what DiamondCentric's Matthew Trueblood has to say about Ryan:

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There’s no actual evidence that starting pitching becomes more important in the postseason than it is for the rest of the year, but that doesn’t stop teams from pining for starters who clear a certain bar for reliability and bat-missing capability. When he’s right, Ryan is that kind of starter. He’s tracking toward what would be his second straight All-Star appearance, and despite a minor elbow scare in early May, he’s taken the ball every turn through the rotation. He doesn’t throw as hard as many of the game’s elite starters, but he has two fastball shapes, multiple breaking balls, and sometimes a splitter that can devastate lefties. He’s always racked up great strikeout rates with his wide arsenal’s disparate movement, and he’s so good at inducing chases that he rarely walks people. So far this year, he’s also toned down what was his bugaboo in the past: giving up too many homers. It hasn’t been enough to truly keep the rebuilding-on-the-go Twins afloat, though, and everyone involved knows the team would prefer to maximize the value they get from him by trading him this summer, rather than waiting until the winter (when teams will cough up much less) or next summer (by which point they’ll have had to pay him another several million dollars). Ryan’s career has followed an unfortunate pattern whereby he often peters out a bit in the second half, but if he holds up well through the All-Star break, he’ll be one of the hottest names on the rumor mill on the other side of it.

Reid Detmers (No. 4)

Reid Detmers is under team control for two more seasons after this one. The left-hander would bring some much-needed variation to Toronto's rotation; the only lefty on their depth chart right now is Corbin.

The downside with Detmers is that he's never pitched a full, qualified season. He threw a career-high 148.2 innings back in 2023. The next year, he technically threw 165.1 frames, but almost half of those were at the Triple-A level. In 2025, he threw 63.2 innings, all of them out of the bullpen.

Detmers has looked great this year, but ultimately, the Blue Jays need a high-floor guy more than they need a high-ceiling guy right now.

Kevin Gausman (No. 6)

The next-highest starting pitcher on our rankings is a very familiar face, given that he already pitches for the Blue Jays. Jim Scott wrote an interesting piece about the possibility of Toronto flipping Gausman at the deadline, but I still think DiamondCentric's No. 6 trade candidate is staying put.

Freddy Peralta (No. 7)

My gut reaction here was no. The Blue Jays should stay away from Freddy Peralta. He's a rental, and he's pitching uncharacteristically poorly.

Then I reconsidered. For one thing, Peralta won't cost anything close to the kind of prospect return the Tigers will demand for Skubal. And even in a down year, he has already reached 100 innings with a mid-4.00s ERA. His upside is similar to Ryan's, and his floor would still improve Toronto's staff.

Here's what Matthew Trueblood wrote about Peralta:

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During trade deadline season, three things make a player more valuable than they are in the winter: team control beyond the year in question; a low salary; and a clear path to having an impact in the postseason. Peralta is a rental arm, but he checks the other two boxes nicely. It’s been an uninspiring half-season in Queens, but he has a 1,000-inning track record as a sturdy mid-rotation starter who has days on which he’s more like an ace. The team-friendly extension he signed with the Brewers long ago will leave less than $3 million owed to him by the time the deadline comes, and he has both the experience and the raw stuff to be trusted in October. The Mets began their unofficial surrender when they traded David Peterson to the Cubs and fired manager Carlos Mendoza. Peralta is as sure to be dealt as almost any player in baseball, and he should fetch more than this year’s standard stats would imply.

Sonny Gray (No. 8)

I'm a big fan of Sonny Gray, who has been one of the more underrated frontline starters in the game for years. Since 2019, he has made 200 starts with a 3.44 ERA. In that span, he ranks fourth in FanGraphs pitching WAR behind Zack Wheeler, Gausman, and Logan Webb. His ERA right now is a career low, and his underlying numbers are as strong as ever. His strikeout rate is down, but he hasn't had any trouble compensating in other ways.

Here's the problem: Gray is a very expensive rental. He'll have about $10 million in 2026 salary remaining at the deadline, plus a $10 million buyout on his mutual option at the end of the year. The Blue Jays could probably get the Red Sox to eat some of that money, but the way to do that would be to offer some enticing prospects to a division rival. I don't see that happening.

José Soriano (No. 10)

There's a lot to like about José Soriano, who owns a career 3.77 ERA and 4.13 xERA in 430 innings. The 27-year-old has come back to earth since his phenomenal March/April, but he's a reliable pitcher with plenty of skills the Jays would love to build on. Like his teammate Detmers, Soriano is under contract through the 2028 season, and I'm more convinced of his high floor. However, I'm less convinced the Angels will be shopping him. I think they'd only give him up for a price higher than the Jays might be willing to pay.

Here are Trueblood's thoughts:

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One of the hardest-throwing starters in the game, Soriano also gets tons of ground balls, because that triple-digit heater (the main one, anyway) is a very heavy sinker. He occasionally shows command of a plus splitter and a plus knuckle-curve, which allows him to strike out hitters at a healthy clip, in addition to the grounders and the sheer power of his profile. That’s the good news. The bad news is, he’s going to walk people, and you can’t be sure how well he’ll hold up to his current workload. He threw 169 innings last season, but that more than doubled his career total, and he’s on pace for over 180 in 2026. He started the season like gangbusters but has struggled of late. The list of guys with a higher ceiling who might be dealt this summer is very short. The list of guys with a better chance of being useful for a pennant contender is longer.

Casey Mize (No. 12)

This is another one where I'll say, "Let's reconsider if the Jays go on a winning streak." Casey Mize is a free agent after the year, and the Blue Jays cannot give up too much for a rental unless their playoff odds are significantly higher three weeks from now.

What's more, the other rentals I've discussed so far (Skubal, Peralta, and Gray) all have longer track records of success. When it comes to Mize, the Tigers will be hoping his old prospect pedigree and excellent first-half results convince a team to pay a frontline-starter price for a pitcher who had never warranted that label before. Some teams might be willing to do that, but Toronto shouldn't be one of them.

Leo Morgenstern is the managing editor of Jays Centre. You can read more of his writing here, and you can find him on Bluesky ‪@leomorgenstern.bsky.social‬

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