Toronto Blue Jays Rumours: 4 trade destinations for J.A. Happ
New York Yankees
Everybody knows how tough the Yankees lineup is but they have questions with their pitching staff and have been the top landing spot for Happ as a rental team.
What makes this a tough deal for the Blue Jays is that New York will be looking at many options at the trade deadline like Michael Fulmer, Cole Hamels, and Jacob deGrom. They are also kicking the tires on Manny Machado which might take some of the focus off of Happ for the time being.
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A lot of people pointed to Happ’s recent start against the Yankees as a reason why New York shouldn’t be looking to trade for him but one rough outing shouldn’t eliminate a strong body of work for Happ.
So how should the Blue Jays play this? Do they wait for the Yankees to come to them with an offer after exploring the other options available or do they get aggressive and try to get something done sooner rather than later?
General manager Brian Cashman said that he would not want to trade top prospect Clint Frazier in hopes of landing an impact starter. While it would
"“We’d like to hold on to him,” Cashman said to Mike Mazzeo of New York Daily News. “I know he’s someone that we’re going to get asked a lot about, and so far we’ve been able to say no and hand-check everything, but I’m a big Clint Frazier fan. “He was a big piece of that trade of Andrew Miller along with some others and I think he’s got a lot of really good baseball ahead of him. He’s going about his business perfectly right now. He’s impacting us in a positive way and saying all the right things. “But it’s got to be frustrating for a talented player like that to be obviously at times either not playing at the major-league level or stuck at Triple-A.”"
The problem with trying to keep a prospect like Frazier in the minors when he’s more than capable of playing in the major leagues is that the prospect becomes discouraged by the situation. As Mazzeo reports, that’s exactly the case so that could play into the Blue Jays favour.
It might take adding something else along with Happ to get a deal done but Frazier would be the ideal player to get back in a deal especially with the ties to Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins who drafted him when they were in Cleveland.
Considering how Frazier’s path to the MLB is blocked by players like Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, the Blue Jays should be doing whatever they can to try and get him from the Big Apple.