Jays added to bullpen but couldn't acquire a starter
The Toronto Blue Jays couldn't make a big splash before the trade deadline. The best they could do was cause a couple of ripples when they traded outfielders Travis Snider and Eric Thames for relief pitchers Brad Lincoln and Steve Delabar.
Back on July 20, they made a 10-player deal that brought them reliever Brandon Lyon and starter/reliever J.A. Happ from the Houston Astros in another deal that did not cause a lot of excitement.
"The way we look at the trade deadline is it's not so much about focusing on one area," general manager Alex Anthopoulos said Tuesday in a conference call. "There's no doubt the bullpen for 2012 could be improved and even beyond that in 2013. I don't think it's any surprise when you look at the number of free agents we had in the bullpen before these trades. We were going to need to try to solidify that somehow, and getting some guys with power arms and swing-and-miss stuff and a lot of years that are under control, it had a lot of appeal for us.
"Ultimately we had to go into an area of depth (outfield). You don't necessarily want to trade the guys we did, but you also understand that we were going to have give up value one way or the other."
He had hoped to get a starting pitcher, but that did not work out.
"We were involved in a lot of things, starters, position players, anything that we felt could help our club," Anthopoulos said before the Blue Jays' 7-2 loss to the Mariners at Seattle on Tuesday night. "It does get a little frantic, I guess, especially when you get to (Tuesday's deadline). Ideally you don't want to have a lot of dialogue on the last day just because things seemed to get a little bit rushed. I think we had pretty healthy dialogue on a number of areas because obviously we still have a lot of areas we can improve on this club.
"Again, we added two big-league players to our bullpen (Lincoln and Delabar). I think we improved our club because of where we're positioned right now. I don't think there's any doubt about that at all."
