FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Sports

Internal Moves Made at Trade Deadline Will Shape AL East Race

The battle for the AL East title promises to remain a three-team dogfight, as none of the division's heavyweights—the Blue Jays, Red Sox and Orioles—made a big external splash to separate themselves from the pack.
Photo by Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports​

The trade deadline has come and gone, and as the dust settles, we're seeing a race in the American League East that hasn't dramatically changed in shape, but one that yet might.

The division had no team with a deadline to compare to the Texas Rangers, who made an enormous upgrade behind the plate by adding Milwaukee's Jonathan Lucroy (who had a day earlier spurned Cleveland by refusing a trade to the AL Central leaders), and an outstanding switch-hitting DH in the form of the Yankees' Carlos Beltran. But with starting pitching at a premium, and nobody of the calibre of David Price or Cole Hamels (both of whom were moved at last year's deadline) changing teams, one could argue that the best the three AL East contenders—the Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles, and Boston Red Sox—could do was make incremental improvements to rosters already loaded with positional talent.

Advertisement

Boston had already made its big pitching move, betting big on starter Drew Pomeranz two weeks ago, sending top pitching prospect Anderson Espinoza to the Padres in exchange for the left-hander. But Pomeranz was never going to be a difference maker for a Red Sox team that will need to hit its way into the playoffs—and so far he's struggled to live up to even the most conservative expectations. Baltimore, meanwhile, added back-end starter Wade Miley from Seattle, while the Jays picked up the struggling and expensive Franscico Liriano from Pittsburgh, and all three made a handful of other relatively small moves not likely to dramatically shift the odds of any of them making the postseason out of this three-team dogfight.

READ MORE: Aaron Sanchez Debate Roars on, but No One Knows What's Best for Him

The Orioles, the current division leaders, seem poised now to stay the course and hope that the small upgrade from the atrocious Ubaldo Jimenez to Miley will help to keep what little distance remains between them and their pursuers. For the Red Sox and Blue Jays, however, the balance of their season hinges less on external additions than it does in the decisions made this week about players who were already in the organization.

Anything is better than Ubaldo, even the wildly inconsistent Wade Miley. Photo by Kevin Sousa-USA TODAY Sports

On Tuesday the Red Sox promoted outfield phenom Andrew Benintendi straight from Double-A to the majors, and while his debut was statistically inauspicious (he struck out and grounded out in two plate appearances), the Red Sox evidently feel he's ready for Boston in the thick of a playoff race. Benintendi was drafted only just last summer—the seventh pick overall—and has made just 657 plate appearances in the minors, but he's hit at every level, risen to every challenge the organization has thrown in front of him so far, and is the rare prospect who comes loaded with both big power and a low strikeout rate.

Advertisement

Writing on him Wednesday at FanGraphs, Chris Mitchell surmised that "given his track record, there's little reason to think Benintendi won't enjoy big-league success right away. Not only has he crushed minor-league pitching, but he's done so with a single-digit strikeout rate, which suggests he'll have little trouble against better pitchers. Throw in his defensive prowess, and it's easy to envision Benintendi becoming a difference-maker for Boston in their playoff push."

Adding a fully formed star in Benintendi to an already outstanding outfield would be an absolute coup for the Red Sox—if that's what he is—allowing them to move former All-Star Brock Holt to a utility role he's better suited for, with lefty-masher Chris Young giving the left-handed hitting Benintendi some cover against same-sided pitching. No pressure, kid!

Boston's newest weapon: Andrew Benintendi. Photo by Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

And then there are the Blue Jays. New president Mark Shapiro, and GM Ross Atkins, inherited a club that had traded away many of its best prospects in the lead-up to its magical 2015 playoff run, and so didn't have anything remotely like a Benintendi to come in and buttress the roster. In fact, the Blue Jays added a pair of prospects in their deal with the Pirates, which also brought on Liriano (and his $13 million salary for both this season and next).

Liriano is here to replace Aaron Sanchez in the rotation, as the club continues to insist it will try to protect the arm of its young ace by transitioning him to the bullpen as he gets deeper into uncharted waters with respect to innings pitched in a single season. The controversial move isn't backed up by anything in the way of publicly available scientific study, but Blue Jays officials feel they'll be doing Sanchez's career a huge disservice if they continue to ride his arm hard all the way through October, and their team a disservice if at some point they have to shut him down. The compromise is to use him as a tremendous weapon out of their otherwise thin bullpen, with the hope being that he can at least provide a little bit of the value he gave them as a starter, and that they'll catch lightning in a bottle with Liriano, who turned his career around three years ago throwing to Jays catcher Russell Martin when they were both in Pittsburgh.

If that doesn't happen, though, the Blue Jays—who may be the best team of the three in terms of talent and the way their roster is balanced, and briefly held first place over the weekend—stand to get at least marginally worse, if not more so. The Red Sox very well might get better, especially if Benintendi is what they think he can be, and if Pomeranz starts to look more like the pitcher who had a great deal of success this season in San Diego (and not the one who bounced through two organizations prior to that). And with Baltimore's acquisition of Miley, and the other small moves these clubs made, an already tight race seems to genuinely have gotten tighter.

In other words, it should be a fantastic final two months of the regular season in the AL East. And these teams, and their fans, would do well to take it all in and savour it, too. Because with the moves the Yankees made to add big-time prospects in exchange for players like Beltran, Andrew Miller, and Aroldis Chapman, they're likely to be a much bigger part of this conversation next year, and especially in the years to come.