Teoscar Hernandez trade opens the floodgates for the Blue Jays

Call it a salary dump. Call it a move to get less right-handed. Call it a trade to open up a roster. But the Toronto Blue Jays traded their former All-Star outfielder Teoscar Hernandez to the Seattle Mariners.

On paper, this deal doesn’t look so hot for the Blue Jays. Despite a “down” year for the 30-year-old outfielder, Hernandez hit .267/.316/.491 with 25 home runs in 131 games for the Blue Jays this past season. Not his best campaign, but certainly still a productive one.

But with only one year of team control remaining and a salary likely to move past the $14 million mark in 2023, the Blue Jays deemed him expendable, and now they suddenly have an opening for a starting outfielder.

The Blue Jays gave up a big bat, but the greater need on their roster right now lies in the bullpen. Toronto receives reliever Erik Swanson and pitching prospect Adam Macko from the Seattle Mariners.

Swanson’s Baseball Savant page features some eye-popping metrics, most impressively the fact that he struck out 34% of the batters he faced during the 2022 season. He was part of a murderer’s row of bullpen arms that gave the Mariners one of the best relief cores in MLB.

In most cases, it doesn’t bode well to trade a position player for a reliever, but in this instance, the Blue Jays could afford to move a hitter like Hernandez off their roster. More interesting than the trade itself is how it will trigger a domino effect of more transactions.

This opens a path for George Springer to shift over to right field full-time, which was inevitable. Because of the injuries he suffered the last two years, that time has come much sooner than most expected.

Freeing up Hernandez’s salary also opens up the potential for the Blue Jays to enter the free agent outfielder market. Before this move, they didn’t have the playing time to add another full-time player onto the roster (without making another trade or shuffling playing time).

To me, this trade foreshadows another move by the Blue Jays for a left-handed outfielder. Whether that’s a centre fielder or right fielder remains to be seen, but this trade is the first step to balancing out the Blue Jays’ redundantly right-handed lineup.

On the free agent market, there are plenty of intriguing left-handed outfielder options: Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, Andrew Benintendi and Jurickson Profar, to name a few. On the trade market, there’s Bryan Reynolds, Lars Nootbar, Ian Happ, Cody Bellinger and Daulton Varsho.

This Blue Jays-Mariners trade can’t be viewed in a vacuum, because another shoe (or two) has yet to drop. Toronto has a little outfield depth and may roll into Opening Day with what they have currently, but it’s not enough to compete in the American League East.

This Hernandez trade was their first attempt at diversifying their lineup, and they had to clear the tracks first before finding their replacement on the free agent or the trade market.

“We continue to look for pitching, continue to look for a more versatile offense and to compliment our defence,” Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins said during the post trade press conference. “A lot of our focus has been on the run prevention side, and this created an opportunity for us.”

Atkins’ comments indicate the team is really focusing on shoring up the defence this year, and while Hernandez made some nice plays in right field this past season, defence was not his strong suit. On the Outs Above Average leaderboard, Hernandez ranked 33rd among 38 right fielders in 2022.

Shifting Springer into right field not only decreases his workload with less ground to move in right field, but that opens the path for the Blue Jays to bring in a defensively minded centre fielder to replace Springer next year.

From their Mariners’ perspective, they probably feel like they made out like bandits because they gave up a reliever with three years of team control for a top-20 power hitter dating back to the 2022 season.

Hernandez would be an impact bat on any team, but in a lineup littered with 30+ homer power and high strikeout numbers, the Blue Jays needed something different in their lineup if they want any chance of making the playoffs again and advancing beyond the Wild Card round.

Even though he’s moving from the hitter-friendly confines of Rogers Centre to the pitcher-friendly stadium of T-Mobile Park in Seattle, don’t be surprised if Hernandez has another impressive season in 2023. But the versatility and flexibility was more valuable to the Blue Jays this year.

For all their offensive highs and lows, the Blue Jays posted the second-highest wRC+ and the third-highest OPS among all 30 MLB teams last year. It’s hard to envision subtracting a player like Hernandez will cause the Blue Jays to tumble down that list. he wasn’t even their most productive player offensively in 2022.

In the end, the Blue Jays parted with one of their longest-tenured Blue Jays in order to free up a spot on the diamond. This likely clears the runway for another signing or trade to happen in the coming weeks or months.

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