Jays go back to the well in St. Louis, add Paul DeJong
We have a trade!
The Blue Jays were supposed to learn around noon about the extent of Bo Bichette’s injury. Not long after 1 PM ET, MLB Network’s Jon Morosi began reporting that the Jays were in “advanced talks” to acquire shortstop Paul DeJong from the Cardinals. The deal has since been confirmed, with cash also being sent in order to help offset DeJong’s salary, and minor league reliever Matt Svanson going the other way.
To just get this out of the way first, Svanson was a 13th-rounder from 2021. He's shown some impressive swing-and-miss ability as a 24-year-old in High-A Vancouver this year, and was recently moved up to Double-A, though he had yet to pitch there prior to the trade. The numbers are impressive, though he's been old for that level, and he doesn't have much prospect pedigree or hype. Clearly St. Louis likes him, but I think the Jays' system can take the hit.
Now, more to the point, I wrote about DeJong in my previous post, but obviously we’re going to have to get a bit deeper here. On the surface there’s not a ton to get excited about, as the price very much indicates. Clearly the Jays are simply looking at him as an upgrade as the backup shortstop, which maybe bodes well for Bichette not being out for too long — though obviously it’s still too early to speculate on that.
But the Jays already have a backup shortstop, you say? Well, Santiago Espinal, while likeable, hasn’t really given the club anything with either the bat or the glove so far this season, sadly.
One of the Jays’ needs at this deadline is a little extra oomph in the lineup, and they could particularly use some help against left-handed pitching. That's something Espinal provided well last year, putting up a 137 wRC+ in the split through 128 PA. This year, in way fewer plate appearances, that number has sunk to just 72. And defensively, though the samples are small, DRS and OAA haven't liked him much no matter where he's played this season, nor has he passed the eye test (at least in my view).
DeJong, on the other hand, ranks sixth among big league shortstops by OAA, and though his bat is quite weak overall, and his Statcast rankings ugly, he has 13 home runs to his credit this year, and — though we can't possibly expect anything like this from him going forward — seasons of 30, 25, and 19 homers in the past. He immediately jumps to fifth on the Blue Jays’ home run leaderboard this season, in a tie with George Springer, and one ahead of Daulton Varsho. We have fun, don’t we?
DeJong is also hitting left-handed pitching well, putting up a 129 wRC+ so far, although we’re only talking about 76 PA, and that’s not something he’s done well with in the past.
Still, he’s a better fit to get some run at shortstop right now than Espinal, and not a bad little backup to have around for the rest of the year.
UPDATE: Jon Heyman tweets that the Jays also checked in on Isiah Kiner-Falefa, and — much more importantly — adds “Bichette is not expected out too long.” Fingers crossed he knows something no one else has said yet!
DeJong also seems like a pretty good dude, based on this:
And this may not even be a temporary thing. We'll obviously have to see how well this marriage goes before we have to think about anything like this, and it doesn’t seem terribly plausible at the moment, but DeJong has a $12.5 million club option ($2 million buyout) for next season, and a $15 million club option ($1 million) for the season after that. He has about $3 million remaining on this year's salary.
The amount St. Louis is sending has not been reported at the time of this writing.
Jordan Luplow has been designated for assignment in order to make room on the 40-man for DeJong. Because of the Jays’ 40-man crunch, there will still be at least one more move to be made before Hyun Jin Ryu takes the ball tonight, but odds are Ross Atkins and co. won’t stop just there. For one thing, Héctor Gómez tweets that the Jays are now considered the frontrunners for Teoscar Hernández. I’ve heard of him!
Stay tuned…
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