Blue Jays overplayed their hand with Josh Donaldson

Josh Donaldson the baseball player has been absolutely outstanding for Toronto Blue Jays. It’s starting to look like Josh Donaldson the asset has been mismanaged, though.

It often feels crass and impersonal to think of baseball players as “assets” because we’re talking about human beings — but you can bet your bottom dollar that’s how front offices do it, so sometimes you’ve got to do it, too, to follow along.

As the the non-waiver trade deadline approaches it looks like Donaldson will not be healthy enough to be moved for any kind of serious return — if he’s even active. That means an August waiver trade is theoretically possible, but the most likely scenario is the Blue Jays giving him a qualifying offer and getting just a draft pick if he declines.

If you’re a seller who’s been a sub-.500 team for two consecutive seasons with one of the best players in baseball on an expiring contract and he walks for virtually nothing, you’ve gone wrong somewhere.

So, where did the Blue Jays go wrong? Although having the benefit of hindsight is awfully helpful in cases like this, it’s still clear the club overplayed their hand.

Prior to 2017, there was no reason to think about moving Donaldson. However, when things went completely sideways the argument for moving him began to strengthen. The Blue Jays were out of it, so he had essentially no value to the team for the rest of the season. For Toronto he was a 2018-only piece from a competitive standpoint. To other teams he could be a crucial cog for the 2017 playoffs and 2018. Whenever a player is worth significantly more to another club than he is to you, there’s a strong case to be made for moving him.

Granted, his value wasn’t as high as it might have been at that particular deadline. On July 31 he was slashing an uncharacteristically modest .239/.362/.428 and he’d had some calf injuries early in the season. The return wasn’t shaping up to be massive. So, the Donaldson trade can was punted down the road.

Initially that looked like a great idea. Donaldson was an absolute monster down the stretch, hitting 22 home runs in the final two months and showing that his bat was still capable of delivering precipitation with regularity.

Then came the dilemma: do you move Donaldson who only had one year left, but had re-established his elite power, or do you play out 2018? This is where the Blue Jays miscalculated. By holding onto Donaldson, they were holding onto their competitive hopes for the season. Considering they were the consensus third-best team in their division — by a large margin — they decided they weren’t going to cash in Donaldson just so they could play for one available wild card spot against an entire field of hopefuls.

Trading their star third baseman didn’t even necessarily have to mean giving up. There were some creative trade scenarios out there that could have been in the more retool mold like the this one proposed by Dave Cameron at FanGraphs that would have sent Matt Carpenter and Jedd Gyorko to the Blue Jays. Was that exact deal on the table? Probably not. Was something like it out there that would have been more of a small step back for 2018 Blue Jays than a complete teardown? You’d have to think so.

Coming into this year the Blue Jays thought they could have their cake and eat it too with Donaldson. Use him to contend, and if that fails, flip him at the deadline. As it happens, there was a third fork in the road, one that involved an injured and/or declining Donaldson not being a viable deadline piece and walking for virtually nothing. Given his age and the calf troubles he experienced in 2017, it wasn’t exactly inconceivable this is how the situation would play out, yet the Blue Jays didn’t seem to account for it.

Once again, it’s easy to identify missteps with the benefit of hindsight. However, Donaldson is the kind of talent you simply cannot let leave for nothing. He’s simply too good. By overestimating their chances of contending in 2018, the Blue Jays made a brutal asset-management error.

It’s possible they get bailed out by a waiver trade in August, but that’s a hard thing to rely on as Donaldson could be claimed by virtually anyone, and he’s not a lock to have proven he’s back in top form by then.

Instead, it’s likely Blue Jays fans will watch one of the best players in franchise history play his second straight meaningless September with the team before he heads for the exit in free agency. That’s not a good situation for John Donaldson the player, or Josh Donaldson the asset.

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