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Originally Posted by TheAlpineOracle
So basically what your saying is that the Jays should never strive to win a championship? There's never a 100% guarantee and they are in win now mode. If you aren't willing to move prospects to add that last piece or two you need, than you aren't ever going to win championships unless your name is the Yankees or Red Sox who can afford to bring in any piece they want during free agency on 7 and 8 year deals.
I would tend to agree, that last year should have been the year a move like this was made if it was going to be made, but I don't agree with the Jays shouldn't be willing to move prospects in years they could compete. As it's been said many times in this thread, prospects are a dime a dozen in baseball. Any prospect the Jays trade now, can be easily replenished by trading someone next year or the year after (Tulo, Martin, Donaldson, whatever star they acquire). Don't kid yourself either, these guys will start to be moved the first season we don't make the postseason.
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I'm not sure where you got that conclusion based off my comments.
There is a time to bundle up prospects and make a trade that for a key piece that pushes you over the top. There are a couple of scenarios where I'd see this making the most sense:
1) Veteran team that's poised for a playoff appearance. A team that does not have much for youth in it's core, so trading prospect capital to give them that final piece makes sense since they would be headed to a full-blown rebuild anyway if they don't win a championship.
2) Young team with cheap, controllable talent, and a deep prospect pool (i.e Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers). As we've seen with these teams, packaging prospects makes a ton of sense since they have young, controllable position players in their core and are built to be a sustainable winner.
The Jays were most recently in the 1st bucket, but I believe that time has passed and it's now time to start stocking up on prospects rather than using them in deals to acquire more veterans.
With this approach, we're looking at a much shorter rebuild. Dealing the likes of Vlad Jr.++ to get McCutchen would be impatient, short sighted, and IMO set the franchise back a fair bit for when the inevitable rebuild comes, which is coming sooner than we all care to admit.