Early Returns Are Positive on the Blue Jays Deadline Deals
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If the season ended today, four of the five teams in the American League East would make the playoffs. The only team that wouldn't is the Toronto Blue Jays.
But the Blue Jays are only one game behind Baltimore in the AL Wild Card race, which is more congested than Highway 401 at rush hour.
There are five teams within 1.5 games of the Orioles for the third Wild Card spot and a sixth, the Mariners, who are just 2.5 back.
Those teams took very different approaches at the trade deadline.
Toronto, along with Detroit and Baltimore, appeared to be conceding the 2026 season as a lost cause at the trade deadline. Cleveland and Minnesota were buyers.
Toronto was thought to be waving the white flag in 2026 by unloading free agents Kevin Gausman and Daulton Varsho along with reliever Jeff Hoffman.
They acquired Jose Soriano, but even that was considered a future-oriented move aimed at 2027 and 2028.
And that was supposed to be a referendum on the final two months of the season. The teams that folded would drop in the standings. The teams that bought would rise to the top.
Not so fast, my friends.
One of the best things about baseball is its unpredictability.
What was once considered a lost season for the Blue Jays may now be found.
The Early Returns Are Positive on the Deadline Deals
The Blue Jays might ultimately regret trading away veterans like Gausman, Varsho, and Hoffman, but so far, the players they acquired have vastly outperformed the players they traded away.
It is still early; we are just two weeks past the deadline. But so far, it looks like Toronto did well at the deadline.
Jose Soriano Has Outperformed Kevin Gausman
Toronto paid a steep price for Soriano by trading away second-ranked prospect Arjun Nimmala. In the most recent MLB Pipeline rankings, Nimmala ascended 39 spots from his pre-season ranking as the 77th-best prospect in baseball to now ranking 38th.
But Soriano has paid immediate dividends. The Blue Jays have Soriano's starts. While he wasn't the winning pitcher in either game, he helped the Blue Jays win by allowing only one earned run in each start for a 1.69 ERA.
On the other hand, Gausman's two starts have been a mixed bag. He pitched seven innings in his Cubs debut, giving up only one run, but then was blitzed by the Nationals, allowing 6 ER in 4.2 innings in a Cubs loss.
Both starts were on the road, so he has yet to pitch at the friendly confines of Wrigley Field, where the Cubs torched him for seven first-inning runs on June 19th.
One point of caution here, though: Gausman's strikeout-to-walk ratio is 11:2 while Soriano's as a Blue Jay is 7:5. Expect some regression here on both sides.
Brett Bateman Has Outperformed Daulton Varsho
Initially assigned to Triple-A Buffalo, Bateman played all of two games with Buffalo before winging his way to Toronto. Bateman has been comparable to Varsho in center field defensively and is outperforming him at the plate since the trade.
Some Minor Trades May Also Help Toronto
Jeff Hoffman was the other core player Toronto traded away. He has appeared in five games with Minnesota, pitching to a 3.60 ERA with six strikeouts versus five walks.
Josh Smith, acquired from Texas, has struggled offensively with Toronto but still accumulated .3 WAR with the Blue Jays as a versatile defender who has filled in primarily at third, while Adam Macko, who was traded to Texas for Smith, has yet to appear in a Major League game with Texas.
Toronto may also get a boost to its rotation from Spencer Arrighetti, who has pitched six innings in Buffalo but will need at least one more rehab start in Triple-A before the Blue Jays consider promoting him. His velocity was also down a couple ticks to just 90.5 mph in his last start with the Bisons.
Ty Southisene, the other player the Blue Jays acquired for Kevin Gasuman, has a .861 OPS in High-A Vancouver, while Dasan Hill, acquired from the Twins for Hoffman, has a 4.50 ERA with Vancouver.
A Looser Clubhouse
One other factor may be behind the Blue Jays' improved play since the deadline. Before being dealt, Kevin Gausman said the Blue Jays clubhouse wasn't nearly as tight as it was in 2025, and that frustration had started spilling into team dynamics. Expectations were high for a club that now may be looser and playing with house money.
And the trade deadline acquisitions are certainly helping the cause.
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Adam Steinmetz writes about the Toronto Blue Jays for On SI. Adam is also the editor and publisher of the Boston Sunday Sports Section, a weekly digital publication covering the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. A two-time winner of the Best Collegiate Sports Writer award in Philadelphia, he began his career with freelance work for The Philadelphia Daily News and The Palm Beach Post before building a successful career outside of journalism. He returned to sports writing last year, contributing to Pitcher List—including coverage of the Toronto Blue Jays—before launching Authorenticity on Substack, where he explores the human stories within baseball. The Boston Sunday Sports Section is his most ambitious project — the thinking fan’s modern Sunday Sports Section focused on the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins.