Andrus is a really solid player, but it's hard to think of him as much of an asset on that contract.
Very similar to Jose Reyes right now. Makes wins happen on the field, but financially you might as well have done nothing. Very likely that at some point that contract becomes a chunk of change that you wish you could re-appropriate (as the Rangers might be realizing at this moment).
Here's a trade that would absolutely never have a chance of happening, but makes sense in a nerdy trade vacuum:
Andrus for Melky + Buehrle + cash to balance the short term (2013) books.
All of these players are functional non assets at this point, at least IMO (and being a bit loose with that "non-asset" label).
- Buehrle projects for 0.6 fWAR (ZIPS) the rest of the way, which is an improvement on Martin Perez, their current #5 SP, who projects for a 5.05 FIP and replacement level pitching.
- Melky projects for 0.5 fWAR the rest of the way, and provides corner outfield depth that Texas craves, since they currently have David Murphy in left and the soon to be suspended Nelson Cruz in right.
- Texas replacing Andrus with Profar is a very tiny short term projected wins loss (-0.2), but it carries massive long term potential gains. They stand to gain very much by running with Profar as a full time player, and from a developmental perspective he needs the reps.
So Texas basically just moves money around, in the short term, to get a better distribution of investment with a mind on both a) short term winning, and long term franchise player development. In the long term, Texas frees up quite a bit of cash.
I think the gains to Toronto are obvious. They don't shed much (if any) payroll, but Andrus is younger and helps fill the middle infield blackhole currently glaring it's ugly face at 2B (where Jose Reyes would move). In LF, going from Melky to a Davis/Gose/Rasmus platoon thing probably sees the Jays actually gain a bit of wins. In the rotation, the Jays lose (sadly) their best current SP, but there might be some depth coming through there in the short term in Nolin, Hutch, Drabek, Stroman, Happ, etc.