Hi guys, Jays fan here in peace. Not sure if this is the appropriate place to post this thread, so if not, please mods feel free to relocate.
I'm here curious about your teams situation particularly in regards to the retaining or trading of Joey Votto. Is there a serious possibility he could be available for the right price and what would that price be?
Our team has a glaring need for an elite first baseman or dh who can hopefully hit behind Jose Bautista and offer legit protection (he led the league in bb's this year and has an over 500 obp with men on base)
Unfortunately our gm has already said that the team isn't poised to add a type-a free agent (so that eliminates Feilder and Pujols), and that he would prefer to solve our team needs, via trade. That brings us to Votto, the hometown boy. Not only would he give us a potent 3/4 combination with Bautista, but along with Brett Lawrie we would have two Canadians on the corners.
Now the Jays and the Reds may not be natural trading partners or be the best fit, and from reading some of your posts many of you seem to agree. But what our gm has done in the past has been to use multiple team trades in order to get every team what they need.
But for arguments sake let's discuss what the parameters of a two team swap might look like. Keep in mind we have the third best farm system in all of baseball (only behind Texas and Tampa) according to Baseball America and the deepest out of those two.
I'll post some of our tradeable assets after I've heard some of your thoughts.