A good old fashioned baseball trade, as some will undoubtedly call it.
According to Jon Heyman and Ken Rosenthal, it looks like the Nationals and Blue Jays will swap good, useful, but arguably superfluous pieces in Drew Storen and Ben Revere. The former was displaced last season in his closer role after the Nationals acquired Jonathan Papelbon (for some reason … it, um, didn’t work out); the latter was a deadline acquisition by the Blue Jays for their stretch run.
Storen has just one year of arbitration left, and he’s likely to make upwards of $9 million in arbitration. Still, it makes sense for the Blue Jays to fortify their pen, after their got by there last season by the skin of their teeth.
As for the Nationals, they’ve been looking for help in the outfield for a while after the departure of Denard Span, and the continued aging of Jayson Werth. Revere could conceivably start regularly, or maybe work in a rotation with Werth and Michael Taylor.
This could take the Nationals out of the market for another outfielder, further shrinking the market for guys like Dexter Fowler and Austin Jackson, each of whom could still be a plausible – but still very unlikely – return option for the Cubs in some capacity.