Blue Jays Trade For David Price, Are Coming For The AL East

Just two days after trading for all-world shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, the Toronto Blue Jays have gone and pulled off another blockbuster. According to multiple reports, the Jays have landed Tigers ace David Price in exchange for a package built around top pitching prospect Daniel Norris.

This is not how .500 teams that are seven games back of the division lead are supposed to act, but the Blue Jays clearly don’t consider themselves to be a normal 51-51 team. GM Alex Anthopoulos is buying in, and clearly believes that Price and Tulowitzki are going to help carry the Jays through a huge second half and into the playoffs.

He has good reason to feel that way, too, because the Blue Jays aren’t a normal .500 team. Their run differential—the statistic that is most telling of a team’s true talent level—is sitting at +100, the best mark in baseball. Baseball Reference puts their Pythagorean record at 60-42, which would put them three games up on the first-place Yankees. Even before these trades happened, the Jays would have been a good pick to surge into the playoffs. Now that they’ve added the best shortstop in baseball to the league’s best offense and a top-tier starter to what was previously a middling rotation, they look like legitimate juggernauts. They Jays have everything they need to go out and fuck shit up and hunt down the Yankees, and watching them try to do it is going to be fun as hell.