Jose Bautista, Casey Janssen “frustrated” and “disappointed” by Blue Jays’ lack of trade deadline activity

Toronto was 38-24 and in first place by six games on June 6, but the Blue Jays have gone 22-26 since then and general manager Alex Anthopoulos did nothing at the trade deadline yesterday.

Several veteran players talked publicly about their unhappiness with the lack of moves, led by closer Casey Janssen telling Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com:

For us not to do anything, most of us had some ideas that we were going to
improve this club a little bit. It’s unfortunate we didn’t. At the same time, we just have to do what we have to do to win games and try to find ways to get into the playoffs. Yes, it was frustrating but we have to play tonight.

I think everyone is just kind of shocked with all the movement that happened and big names going in every direction. ... I’ve never seen anything like it, I can’t remember anything like it, that was as crazy as this was and kind of down to the wire as the deadline approached. Like I say, congrats to those teams, they did good.

Star slugger Jose Bautista had a similar but slightly less outspoken take:

Of course it’s a little disappointing that we somehow weren’t able to get anything done, but everybody around us that’s in contention somehow--and even some teams that aren’t in contention, like the Red Sox--somehow figured it out. But there’s still time to get stuff done. We still have a pretty good team put together and we’re hoping to get the guys that are hurt back and that’ll be a good injection of talent for us down the road. ... But it’s a little bit of disappointment.

According to various reports Toronto was linked to, among others, Asdrubal Cabrera, Jon Lester, Bartolo Colon, Chris Denorfia, and Alex Rios. And certainly Anthopoulos has shown a willingness to make a big splash in the past, so perhaps Bautista is right that the Blue Jays may yet add some help in August.

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