Blue Jays Mail Bag: Martin-Tulo Trade Value and Prospect Talk

The Blue Jays have shown signs of life! Is it too little too late to save their season? Probably not! But it was certainly too little too late to save this mailbag from a whole bunch of rebuild and prospect talk.

Fortunately, with things looking slightly upwards at the moment, my answers aren’t quite as soul-crushing as they might have been otherwise! So let’s dig in!

And if you have a Blue Jays question you’d like me to tackle for next week, be sure to send it to stoeten@gmail.com. As always, I have not read any of Griff’s answers…

Well, let me start by saying that I’m not sure the club will necessarily be looking to move either of them.

For one, let’s maybe cut the woe-is-us bullshit just a little bit. The Blue Jays have 13 losses right now; the Red Sox, who everybody wants to hand the division to, already have eight. A good week from the Jays and the hole doesn’t look nearly so deep.

Secondly, on Friday at Blue Jays Nation, I wrote about a potential Blue Jays rebuild taking the shape of what they’ve done in Boston, trying to remain competitive while continuing to build from within.

In such a scenario—which I’d argue they’re already in, given the way they approached this past offseason—they can still use guys like Tulo and Martin, whose contracts are full-on heading deep into their ugly phases, but who still certainly have utility on the field, and maybe in the club’s thinking a lot of value off it. Granted, I’m just guessing on that bit. And the fact that the pair are somewhat injury prone at this stage (though Martin doesn’t necessarily miss games because of it) is perhaps reason enough for the Jays to want to get out from under their deals. But the fact of the matter, to get back to your question, is that you probably can get something for them, but I don’t think you’re going to get much, especially without eating a lot of money.