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Since there isn't a whole lot of Blue Jays news being thrown around these days, I thought it'd be fun to get thinking about our favourite baseball team again. The Toronto front office stayed relatively quiet during the season in terms of trading players, but there were many names on the Blue Jays' roster that were floated around as possible trade bait. With only four teams left in the playoffs this season, it seems like a good time to consider which player from Toronto would most help each squad at this point of time.
Detroit Tigers
It seems the obvious weakness of the Detroit Tigers is their shaky bullpen and lack of obvious closer. Case in point:
The Blue Jays biggest strength this season was their bullpen, so I think the Tigers would be happy to just take the whole group of relievers Toronto had, but if they had to choose one I think it would be Casey Janssen. Around the trade deadline there was rumours this move might actually happen, but alas it never did and the Tigers might be regretting it. If we were to consider contract details as well in this exercise then the team-friendly option that Janssen has for next year wouldn't be a bad catch for the ever-contending Tigers.
Boston Red Sox
Unfortunately, the Red Sox don't have a whole lot of weaknesses and match up pretty well with all of the teams remaining in the postseason. If we had to pick a place of need for the team, it would probably be the middle relief before getting to Koji Uehara in the ninth. The obvious player that Boston would take from the Blue Jays in this case would be Steve Delabar. The first time All-Star was fantastic in the 7th and 8th innings this year and would be a sturdy bridge to the Red Sox closer.
Steve Delabar's future contract situation is just as attractive as Janssen's as he has another year of pre-arbitration money before three more years of team control. The Red Sox would gladly take Delabar from Toronto to solidify the back-end of their bullpen for many years to come.
St. Louis Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals happen to not be able to hit left-handed pitchers at all. During the regular season they had a .238 average against southpaw pitchers and in the postseason that average has dipped to .144 (90 ABs). In my eyes, the most likely player St. Louis would pick would probably be Rajai Davis. The speedy outfielder hit .319 with a .383 OBP against left-handed pitchers this season along with going 45-51 in stolen base attempts. With the left-handed Cardinals' centre fielder Jon Jay hitting .220 against southpaws this season, Davis would offer the perfect pinch hitting opportunity for Mike Matheny and the Cards. Davis is a free agent after this season so his role would most likely be as a high impact rental player.
Los Angeles Dodgers
The Dodgers are a team with very few weaknesses as well so some defensive tinkering might need to be done to make this work. Juan Uribe has had a great year at third base for the Dodgers, but it's been an outlier when compared to his recent years with Los Angeles and San Francisco. A possible solution would be sliding Hanley Ramirez back to third base where he played last year in Miami. By doing that, the shortstop position would be opened up for Jose Reyes to come into the team and provide an all-Dominican left side of the infield.
The contract situation is not too attractive for Reyes, but the Dodgers don't seem to mind spending more money than a small nation does on a regular basis.
Those are the players I would predict each remaining playoff team would pick if they had the choice of the Blue Jays roster. I'm quite interested in seeing what other people have to say on the topic, so comment below with your predictions for each team.