Reports That the Jays Are Listening on J.A. Happ

Well this is interesting:

I’m not going to lie, seeing what the Jays have just done with the Astros makes me a little more open to the idea of trading J.A. Happ than I might have been previously.

Previously, as in: at the point when the tweets above hit my feed. My response then was that if the Jays are looking to move Happ, everybody ought to be in play. He seem so central to the idea that they’re going to try to contend in 2018 that moving him would signal a real change in that idea — something that it feels a little late for at this point, with only about an hour left until the deadline.

However, if you could move him for a big league ready starter? And another piece that could help the 2018 version of the club? And a lottery ticket prospect? And you then took the money you were going to pay Happ next year and used it on, say, a free agent like Marco Estrada? And you actually fixed your outfield with a bunch of young pieces — like the ones already in the system, and the one just acquired from the Astros, Teoscar Hernandez — and had a bunch of José Bautista’s money freed up to use as well?

Uh… that could work.

I’m not sure I’m quite seeing it — I’d expect it’s Estrada who gets dealt. But the Jays, for all their posturing about 2018, know the value of team control, and with Happ only having a year left after this one, I completely get the temptation if there’s a contender out there that really feels like he’s a guy worth going after hard. And I don’t think it would be the death knell for 2018 that it maybe feels like — or has felt like most of these last few weeks. If there was something still to realistically fight for in 2017, that’d be one thing, but since there basically isn’t… it’s intriguing…