As part of yesterday’s last-minute deal involving Francisco Liriano and Drew Hutchison, the Blue Jays also received two prospects in C Reese McGuire and OF Harold Ramirez.

McGuire was the 14th-overall pick in the 2013 draft because he had a favorable profile as a glove-first catcher with a plus arm and a chance to grow into viable offense. He hasn’t. McGuire’s body has matured but his bat speed is below average and his swing is completely devoid of any power-creating loft. He tracks okay and has some bat control, but I don’t think he’s going to hit enough to play everyday and he profiles as more of a back-up catcher or low-end starter than as an average everyday player.

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The trade of reliever Mark Melancon by the Pittsburgh Pirates to the Washington Nationals sent a clear message: the Pirates are in retool mode. Not rebuild mode — they’re too good for that. And certainly not go-for-it mode — the Pirates barely had a 1-in-10 shot of making the playoffs, and you don’t go for it by trading away one of the best relievers in the game. No, the Pirates were retooling, selling from the immediate future to improve in the very short-term future, and, to a lesser extent, the long-term future. The crux of the return, left-handed reliever Felipe Rivero, will contribute for the Pirates both immediately and moving forward. That’s the difference between he and Melancon — he’ll be sticking around for more than one season. Prospect Taylor Hearn is the longer-term play; small-market teams like the Pirates live for long-term plays.

Which is what makes Monday’s last-minute deal for broken pitching prospect Drew Hutchison — one which allowed them to dump Francisco Liriano’s salary on the Toronto Blue Jays but also cost them prospects Reese McGuire and Harold Ramirez — so puzzling on the surface. While neither prospect cracked Baseball America’s recent top-100 update, McGuire and Ramirez are both legitimate prospects, the type of pieces that can be essential to a franchise like the Pirates by providing cheap value, allowing them to continue chugging along at an affordable operating cost while retaining the pieces that really matter. McGuire is regarded as one of the best defensive catching prospects in the minors, one whose receiving ability alone gives him a near-certain path to the majors. Ramirez is an athletic bat-to-ball outfielder with a plus hit tool who’s playing center in the minors even if he’s likely to move to a corner.

In Hutchison, the Pirates get back a Ray Searage reclamation project, and little more. Hutchison’s still just 25 with some former prospect shine, but the career ERA in more than 400 innings is nearly 5.00, and he’s got a serious home-run problem. Maybe Searage can coax some ground balls out of him.

But Hutchison’s not so much what this deal was about. The motivation behind this deal was clear. It was a straight salary dump. The Blue Jays are taking on the entirety of Liriano’s salary, which amounts to roughly $17 million through the end of next season. They had the space available to take on the money — though it is interesting to wonder how this could impact their ability to re-sign Jose Bautista or Edwin Encarnacion in the offseason — and they were willing to do so for the price of the prospects.

To rationalize this deal from the Pirates’ perspective, you’ve got to believe the organization thinks it can do more with the $17 million and Hutchison to help it win next year and moving forward than it could with Liriano and the prospects. It may be a tough sell, but it is what it is. And to believe that, you’ve got to believe the organization views Liriano as broken.

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As it has been the past few years, the 2016 non-waiver trade deadline brought about a flurry of activity that was hard to keep up with even if it was the only thing you were doing. Since most of us have other things that we have to or would like to occupy our time with, we figured we would save you some hassle and create an omnibus post with all of our trade deadline content so that you have it all in one place. For clarity’s sake, I’m going to limit this to articles about trades that actually took place.

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Here’s some things that happened. The Blue Jays got a swingman in return for a swingman:

#bluejays getting Mike Bolsinger for Jesse Chavez from #Dodgers

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) August 1, 2016

And then minutes later, they gave up a Chavez to get another Chavez:

Source: Astros are getting Guadalupe Chavez from the Blue Jays for Scott Feldman.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 1, 2016

The “other” Chavez, in this instance, being Scott Feldman, an early-30’s swingman himself. Both are free agents at the end of the year. It doesn’t make total sense, and it’s not the most interesting thing that happened at the trade deadline, but bear with me.

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San Diego’s sole return for Melvin Upton Jr. is 19-year old Dominican righty, Hansel Rodriguez. This trade’s roots run back to 2013, when the Blue Jays selected LHP Brian Moran in the 2013 Rule 5 draft and immediately flipped him to the Angels for $240,000 worth of international pool money, which was added to the yet-to-be-spent $127,000 they had remaining from that year’s original pool amount. Early in 2014, Toronto signed Rodriguez for $330,000. Moran is currently pitching in Indy ball.

Rodriguez spent the early portion of 2016 in extended spring training before moving on to Toronto’s Appalachian League affiliate in Bluefield, where he had thrown 32.1 innings over six starts. He allowed 25 hits and 11 walks while striking out 26 hitters during that span, sporting a 3.06 ERA.

The strikeout totals aren’t mind-blowing because Rodriguez’s stuff simply isn’t very good yet. Instead, this is San Diego betting on a body and delivery. Rodriguez has a solid pitcher’s frame at 6-foot-2 and a listed 170 pounds. He’ll likely fill out a bit more — at least enough to counterbalance the increased workload he’ll undertake as his pro career moves forward. He has a loose, quick arm and incorporates his hips into his delivery, though he can fly open a little too hard at times and loose some command. It’s possible we see Rodriguez makes some changes to become more direct to the plate and create better extension, but his arm speed is impressive.

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Although I’m a hardened cynic at heart thanks to my upbringing in the world of Philadelphia sports, even I can freely admit it’s always more fun to talk about a player who is doing well than one who is struggling. It’s even more fun to talk about a player who’s doing well and made a noticeable change prior to a stretch of success. Today, the player that fits that bill is Blue Jays left-hander J.A. Happ.

When Happ signed his three-year, $36 million deal with the Blue Jays this past winter, it raised a few eyebrows. You’d think we’d understand now that any player who can provide even moderate utility on a major-league roster is able to pull in spectacular amounts of money on the free-agent market. That said, the prospect of a 33-year-old pitcher who has rarely been more than a #4 during his career signing a multi-year deal of this magnitude still might require some getting used to. Any reflexive shock at all those zeros next to Happ’s name wore off pretty quickly, though. He was coming off a phenomenal second half with Pittsburgh and was exactly the sort of rotation stabilizer the Blue Jays needed.

Through the first three months of the season, Happ prevented runs at a reasonably efficient rate (3.70 ERA, 86 ERA-) but his peripherals depicted him as a more middling pitcher. His 16.9 strikeout and 7.6 walk rate — combined with a .270 BABIP — resulted in a slightly below league average 4.47 FIP (104 FIP-). It was difficult to find much optimism that Happ would be able to build upon his superficial success. But then something changed when the calendar flipped to July. Before we get to what’s different, let’s take a look at his numbers over his four starts this month:

That’ll do. It’s worth noting that these four starts weren’t against woefully inept offenses. His opponents were Cleveland, Detroit, Oakland, and Seattle. Oakland is clearly the weakest of those four and, for whatever it’s worth, he didn’t pad his numbers when he faced them. In fact, his outing against Oakland was his worst over this stretch by far.

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It could be argued that, when Atlanta sent Craig Kimbrel and Melvin Upton Jr. to San Diego last April, it was neither Matt Wisler nor Jordan Paroubeck nor the draft choice they received from the Padres which represented the greatest benefit of the deal for the Braves, but rather the relief from Upton Jr.’s salary. At the time, Atlanta owed more than $45 million to Upton Jr. through the 2017 season. Getting out from under the contract made sense for a club that appeared unlikely to contend anytime soon. Upton Jr., who possessed negative trade value, was nevertheless traded.

Quite a bit has changed in the meantime, it seems. Since arriving in San Diego, Upton Jr.’s on-field performance has improved as the total remaining cost of his contract has decreased. Once a liability, Upton Jr. became a hypothetically tradeable asset — one who was actually traded today, to the Blue Jays, for right-handed prospect Hansel Rodriguez.

There is, of course, some cost to the Padres, who will pay $17 million of the $22 million still owed to Upton Jr. through next season, per Jon Heyman. But that’s not entirely surprising: the trade market currently features a great number of outfielders, something that was true last summer and carried over into the free-agent market last winter. The cost to acquire outfielders simply isn’t very high, and Toronto is benefiting from that glut.

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Not too long ago, I wrote about how the Blue Jays have gotten back to hitting the snot out of the ball. That shouldn’t be too surprising — a year ago, the Blue Jays hit the snot out of the ball. There was something in there, though, I’ve had trouble shaking. I included it as just a throwaway remark, but with Jose Bautista sidelined for the past few weeks, Ezequiel Carrera has gotten regular playing time. And even Ezequiel Carrera has hit.

Odds are, you don’t care. At least, you don’t care much. Several of you might not have ever heard of Carrera before. He’s 29 and he’s made the rounds, and, well, low-profile players can get on good runs. Numbers like Carrera’s could be easy to ignore, but I’ve known of Carrera for years, and I dug in. Carrera has started to show something. Somethings, more like. He’s got a good batting line for the first time in his career. The Blue Jays, as an organization, seem to know something about hitting, and I’m wondering now if even Carrera is reaping the benefits.

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Most All-Stars weren’t born into baseball this way. Most of them had to alter their approach, or their mechanics, in order to find that a-ha moment. They threw a pitch differently, or decided to pull the ball more, or changed their swing, and then found a run of sustained success that put them in the All-Star game that’s being played tonight.

So, given fairly fettered access to the All-Stars from both leagues, that was the question I posed: what was the big adjustment, mechanical or approach-wise, that brought you to this podium today?

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You’ll hear some hitters say that you can’t cover both the inside and the outside parts of the plate at the same time. We heard Marcus Semien talk about the difficulty both of being able to pull for power and also take the outside pitches to the opposite field just last week. And, to some extent, the high and low fastballs require different swings that suit different players. Brandon Moss told us about his problems with high fastballs, and Brian Dozier admitted that his swing was better against the high cheese.

It stands to reason — at least for the benefit of our exploration today — that a balanced hitter would be one who could handle pitches in all four quadrants. They would produce good results against high fastballs, low fastballs, inside fastballs, and outside fastballs. Conveniently, that sounds like something we can measure.

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