The Blue Jays are clearly selling off, and have already traded two relievers – Roberto Osuna to the Astros, Seung-hwan Oh to the Rockies – and there is at least one other one to whom the Cubs have been attached previously in Ryan Tepera. He might not be the only one:
As pitchers from other teams go off board, hearing Jays pitching among Cubs 11th-hour focus before 3pm (CT) deadline. Toronto had multiple arms available.
— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubCub) July 31, 2018
Here’s what we said previously about Tepera:
Tepera, 30, has been a perfectly solid reliever for the Blue Jays for three and a half years now. He came up through the system in a traditional way, converted to the bullpen at AAA in 2014, and then became a solid big league reliever. Nothing really out of the ordinary in his story – just a good reliever who will hit arbitration next year for the first time, and the Blue Jays are considering extracting value from.
This year, Tepera has a 3.71 ERA, a 3.92 FIP (mostly because of his 1.24 HR/9), a 45.5% groundball rate, a 27.0% strikeout rate, a 7.9% BB rate, and an 18.6% IFFB rate. He’s been good. Just very solidly good.
There is also Tyler Clippard, John Axford, Aaron Loup, and others who will not knock your socks off, but, if/when we are required to dig in further, explanations for interest may become more clear.
The Cubs were also previously attached to Marcus Stroman, though I don’t think they are nearly as likely to add another starter as a reliever.
Three hours until the deadline …