Toronto Blue Jays had genuine chance to acquire Christian Yelich

The Toronto Blue Jays reportedly had a great opportunity to trade for 2016 Silver Slugger Christian Yelich, but it fell apart due to one significant sticking point.

A few weeks back, we wrote an article proclaiming there was little chance Christian Yelich would end up in Southern Ontario. This wasn’t to be confused with saying the Toronto Blue Jays shouldn’t attempt to acquire him; it was just extremely difficult to imagine actually Yelich joining them.

As we all now know, the 2016 Silver Slugger ended up being traded to the Milwaukee Brewers as part of a five-player deal. However, it turns out the Blue Jays actually had a better chance than originally thought.

In fact Toronto was the only other team that came close. At least that’s the case, according to Craig Mish of SiriusXM.

Mish reports there were several variations of a potential trade between the Blue Jays and Miami Marlins. In the end though, there was one sticking point neither side could get around – Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

As the Boston Globe‘s Nick Cafardo had previously indicated, the Marlins were demanding a significant haul for Yelich and rightly so. Regardless of Miami’s problems as a team, he has been excellent for them, even raising his performances to another level during the last two seasons.

Regardless, when push came to shove, the Toronto Blue Jays just couldn’t justify parting company with Guerrero. Of course, this leads to the question of if Mark Shapiro, Ross Atkins and company made a mistake?