With Deadline acquisitions on display, Blue Jays and Twins are playing postseason-like series

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — No team has improved as significantly at the close of MLB trading as the San Diego Padres. It’s not even close. When you acquire a player like Juan Soto — a preposterous, multi-generational talent who’s in the Hall of Fame at 23 — you’ve won not just the deadline, but the entire transaction year.

But then Padres GM AJ Preller had to, as he does, add a second superstar to the Soto trade (Josh Bell), direct a separate blockbuster with the Milwaukee Brewers, around one of the most dominant assists of the last half decade (Josh Hader) and make a quick stop for a useful utility player with a 133 wRC+ (Brandon Drury) because he was nearby anyway.

But the team that did it second Perhaps the most significant improvement to his roster was the Minnesota Twins. Not because of the brand value of their acquisitions, mind you. But because the guys so perfectly addressed them about their shortcomings.

Michael Fulmer and his turbo slider provide a much-needed source of reliable relief innings for a bullpen rocked by injuries to key contributors. Jorge Lopez makes not only reliable relief innings, but dominant ones as well, having posted a 1.64 ERA with a 27.6 percent strikeout rate this season as the Baltimore Orioles drew closer. Even Sandy Leon, the experienced journeyman catcher, provides the twins with a necessary makeshift behind the plate until Ryan Jeffers recovers from a broken thumb.

And then there’s Tyler Mahle, one of the top starting pitchers who made a deadline-day move that immediately becomes Minnesota’s best option to start a playoff game. The Twins – the leading Twins of the American League Central – went into Deadline without a starter qualifying for the ERA title on their roster, regularly giving up games for names they remember from 2015 in the weeks leading up might remember, like Chris Archer, Aaron Sanchez, and Dylan Bundy. The Twins needed a frontline starter more than perhaps any other Deadline buyer this season.

And they got one with an excess year of club control, strengthening the 2023 team in the process.

Not to mention a nearly 50 percent flyball rate that makes Mahle a much better match for Minnesota’s Target Field, which ranks in the top 10 for homers for 2020 according to StatCast’s park factors, than the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, MLB’s friendliest homer by a mile over the same span. And it doesn’t hurt that twins field Max Kepler and Byron Buxton, both of whom are among the top five outfield defenders in the game with above-average outs.

Mahle, of course, would have been an intriguing appointment option for the Toronto Blue Jays when they themselves scoured the trade market for a starter last week. Just one problem – he was blacklisted when the Reds visited Rogers Center in May. Toronto’s surprise acquisition of Whit Merrifield has taught us to expect the unexpected. But there is no indication that a similar change of heart regarding vaccination was on the table in the Mahle case. So the Blue Jays had to cross that name off their list and move on.

Was it a little strange to see the twins looking for a starter like Mahle just a year after selling a very similar local one in Jose Berrios? Maybe. But Mahle has a year more club control than Berrios before signing his seven-year, $131 million extension with the Blue Jays. And the two youngsters the twins took over from Toronto last season help offset the potential cost Mahle was now being paid.

And you also have to consider the context. The Twins weren’t a playoff team this time last year. They were almost 20 games under .500. Now? They’re capable of hosting a wildcard streak in less than two months, and they’ve just watched as their two direct competitors for the AL Central crown — the Cleveland Guardians and Chicago White Sox — stuck by the deadline. There would be an opportunity cost to not seize this moment. And so they went out and addressed their greatest needs in a targeted and effective way.

Can you argue that the Blue Jays did something similar last week? In a way yes. Anthony Bass is in the top-10 in both the ERA and FIP this season; Sinkerballer Zach Pop puts high speed into a bullpen just before it; Swingman Mitch White has advantage, control and versatility; and Merrifield raises the club’s bottom in multiple positions while adding contact and speed to an often homogenous lineup.

But consider the context again. The New York Yankees had a 12-game lead in the AL East before the deadline and added a frontline starter (Frankie Montas), a high-on-base outfielder (Andrew Benintendi), and several spare arms (Scott Effross, Lou Tivino ) added; the Seattle Mariners, who competed directly with the Blue Jays for the AL’s first wildcard spot, received their own frontline starter (Luis Castillo); The Houston Astros intelligently augmented what was already the league’s most talented team with viable veterans (Christian Vazquez, Trey Mancini, Will Smith).

Just as it’s fair to say that every trade the Blue Jays executed made perfect, logical sense in a vacuum and the team has done better this year and beyond, it’s also fair to say that Toronto’s maneuver weren’t quite as effective as the ceiling for raising the floor – lifting the teams around them into the AL postseason field.

And it’s more than fair to say that the Blue Jays haven’t thoroughly addressed their greatest need — the relief of high leverage. Toronto’s bullpen is still thin on its back end and lacks the layers of racquet-missing punch clubs they rely on to cut games short in the postseason. Fans would likely feel a lot better about Toronto’s deadline if it only received another lever arm (especially after Tim Mayza was lost to a dislocated right shoulder over the weekend). Just another option for interim manager John Schneider to call upon if he needs a strike against an imposing bag of opposition orders in October.

Lo and behold, it wasn’t a lack of effort. Before the deadline, the Blue Jays created a roster of over 80 assists they felt could move and delved deep into their performance, background and pitch characteristics to assign stats to them and create a preferred roster . And as the deadline neared, they were in talks with clubs about more than 70 of them. But in the end, only a handful of those helpers moved.

Pitching discussions came to nothing with both the Guardians and the Boston Red Sox; the Colorado Rockies inexplicably extended Daniel Bard rather than trade him; non-competing clubs who fielded effective, controllable assists like the Washington Nationals (Kyle Finnegan), Arizona Diamondbacks (Joe Mantiply), and Kansas City Royals (Scott Barlow, Josh Staumont) chose to hold on to their arms.

The same goes for the Detroit Tigers. The Blue Jays had Joe Jimenez and Gregory Soto at the top of that assist list. But in return for those high-octane, controllable arms, Detroit was looking for current MLB talent who could help them return to competition next season, a commodity Toronto, worried about how it would affect continuity, that the club has created over time, acted cautiously.

Meanwhile, Toronto was heavily involved in the Montas and Trivino sweepstakes, as colleague Shi Davidi previously reported, but finished second behind the Yankees. The Blue Jays felt they had made a strong offer for David Robertson, but the Cubs ultimately preferred the prospect offered by the Philadelphia Phillies. And the Orioles made it abundantly clear that the price of trading Lopez within the division was different from the price of shipping him to Minnesota.

And so the Blue Jays got away with what they got away with. And they met the Twins just after the deadline in an intense, hard-fought, back-and-forth weekend set that felt a lot like the first four games of a postseason series.

Bass played in three of the four games and immediately inherited leverage situations that just a week ago the Blue Jays would have asked for a less effective helper to pull them through. Lopez, pumping 99-mile sinkers and curveballs that flexed like Messi free-kicks, surfaced twice and blew a save.

Pop, leaning more heavily on a slider the Blue Jays believe is missing to the top, threw two scoreless outings. Fulmer, who throws bullet sliders that come in harder than many guys’ fastballs, threw two himself scoreless.

Mahle started against Berrios on Friday, with neither pitcher happy with his results. Merrifield did it all throughout, going 5-for-14 with three carries and a stolen base, switching defensively between the innings from midfield to second base and back, and transforming several games with his speed, especially late Sunday when he was accurate in the middle of the series’ suspenseful, controversial ending.

The series ended up being a 2-2 split, with the Blue Jays scoring more runs overall, 20-18. But even after all that’s happened, who can say with confidence which team is better? All we know is that both have the same goals; Both loaded in different ways last week. And maybe someday they’ll meet again.