Late last night the Colorado Rockies and Toronto Blue Jays agreed on a deal that sent Troy Tulowitzki and Latroy Hawkins to the Jays in exchange for Jose Reyes and a trio of right-handed pitching prospects (doesn’t mean much considering the Jays are lakcing pitching), but the players involved in the deal is what made it a shocking deal. At first this wasn’t a shock considering that the Rox have been trying to deal Tulo for a while now and part with his contract, but that is not exactly how it played out on the table. The star shortstop may be gone, but most likely Colorado will still have to pay a good portion of the remaining $108 million of Tulo’s contract, while paying for some of Jose Reye’s remaining $44 million as well. At first, thinking about Reyes and Tulo together with Donaldson seemed like fantasy baseball, but then reality kicked in and said, “but I thought Toronto had no pitching”, so why would the Rockies jump the boarder?
Reports are now coming out that the Rockies did agree that Toronto had nothing to offer on the pitching front, so they created a new plan. Since no team has seemed to budge on giving up talented pitching prospects and taking on Tulo’s contract, the Rockies thought, well what about swapping contracts? Jose Reyes may have a large sum of money still owed to him, along with being injury prone, but it’s upwards of $50 million less. Many analysts are now saying the Rockies could flip flop and trade Reyes away for pitching; the Mets and Padres have been named according to Bleacher Report. However, this is a risky move that has not been seen a lot, but with the deadline coming up and more of an abundance of moves as usual happening, it could work. But, why trade Tulo now when he still has plenty of time left on his contract?
At least one team benefited, and that was the Jays who now have acquired arguably the one of the best shortstops in the last decade. Now the Jays will have defensive highlights from shortstop and 3rd base every night. They also managed to get a closer in the deal as well, who still has some good stuff left; in Latroy Hawkins. Could the Rockies trading Tulo be the igniter for teams like the Phillies finally pulling the trigger on block buster deals?
