The Blue Jays’ 2022 Trade Deadline — One Month Later

To say the very least, the Blue Jays had an interesting deadline this year.

The overwhelming seller’s market convinced the team to take a ‘raise the floor’ approach, adding Whit Merrifield, Mitch White, Zach Pop, and Anthony Bass, all at a low acquisition cost. Much was made of the Blue Jays’ decision to not pursue more significant additions at the time.
One month later, does the deadline look better or worse? Well…
For all intents and purposes, it’s hard to view the deadline as anything but the front office choosing to punt on a high variance season. At times, the Jays looked unstoppable, at times, dreadful. Punting was an interesting move considering that this was a team full of players expecting more.

It was a captive audience of #Bluejays players in front of the TVs in the visitor’s clubhouse at the Trop this afternoon. Have to believe they were expecting more than what they’ve seen thus far.
— Rob Longley (@longleysunsport) August 2, 2022

Regardless of whether or not the team took that perceived disinterest from the front office as personal, they’ve really not shown any signs of improvement post-deadline. A month of August that ended 13-14 has been followed up by a hot start to September, a month in which the Blue Jays haven’t lost a game thus far, but it remains to be seen how long the latest hot streak lasts. Even though the team hasn’t been performing to expectations, how have the additions themselves performed?
In some ways, it’s really tough to say. Zach Pop got “caught in a numbers game” (as Dan, Buck, and Pat have put it on Sportsnet), a game that resulted in his demotion to AAA on August 23rd. He’s only pitched 7 2/3 innings as a Jay. Whit Mer …

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Author: Tate Kispech / Blue Jays Nation