Favorable Blue Jays Asking Price Floated For Potential Detroit Tigers Upgrade
The Detroit Tigers need major help at shortstop and could be enticed by a favorable asking price for a major upgrade from the Toronto Blue Jays.
In his latest mailbag, The Atheltic's Jim Bowden discussed the likelihood of the Blue Jays trading away Bo Bichette and how much it would cost. The Tigers should be excited by his answers to both questions.
Bowden signaled that Toronto will both be floating interest in the former All-Star and that the asking price should be somewhere around two top-10 prospects.
Bichette is coming off of a career-worst season and is a one-year rental. It is not surprising that he wouldn't command a crazy asking price, but Detroit should absolutely be interested even if it takes two top prospects.
The Tigers have been in the process of a gathering young talent for a while now and need to eventually make substantial moves to get better. Adding Bichette would be a great step forward as they try to make another postseason push.
The 26-year-old infielder posted a .225/.277/.322 slash line with four home runs last year, only playing in 81 games. It was a definite cold streak, but he was battling injury and on a bad team with odd clubhouse vibes. It certainly wasn't a breeding ground for great results.
With just how good he was in the few seasons before that, any team with a need at shortstop should still be very interested. Between 2021 and 2023, Bichette posted a .298/.339/.476 slash line while averaging 24 home runs and 89 RBI with 14 stolen bases.
He has never been even a solid defender before, but was actually close to league average last season with a fielding run value of one. It's only the second time that metric hasn't finished in the negatives, with 2020 as the only other campaign.
Detroit currently has Javier Baez and Trey Sweeney manning the shortstop position. While that may be a passable defensive group, the results have been horrid at the plate. Seeing as though the Tigers desperately need more offense, this seems like an easy place to improve.
That spot in the batting order generated just a .190/.238/.315 slash line last season, which is simply unacceptable for a playoff team.
In terms of the asking price, that is also doable for Detroit.
The most realistic package at that point would be infielder Hao-Yu Lee and right-handed pitcher Troy Melton.
Lee is an intriguing prospect that was picked up in the Micahel Lorenzen trade, but has a hard path to the lineup with elite prospects ahead of him.
In terms of a stop-gap while the Tigers' youngsters get ready, Bichette is a much better option.
Melton is actually right outside of the top 10 prospects list in the MLB pipeline, but would be a top-10 guy for most teams.
The former fourth-round selection took a big step back last season, but still has plenty of starter potential.
