Most people have never been traded. Most people find a job and go there until they find a better one (or until they move or they get fired or they can’t take it anymore or they die). I don’t have any friends or relatives who showed up for work one day only to be told, “Oh, you don’t work here anymore. We’ve decided you work for the competition.” It must be even weirder for Joey Loperfido, who got traded from the Astros to the Blue Jays at the deadline in 2024 and is now getting traded back. Somewhere out there is an elephant who got pregnant the day the Astros traded Loperfido to the Jays, and that elephant won’t give birth until June.
The 26-year-old Loperfido is headed back to the Astros in a one-for-one lefty-hitting corner outfielder swap for Jesús Sánchez. Sánchez must be feeling like the subject of buyer’s remorse, too, as the Astros traded for him at the 2025 deadline, a mere 197 days ago. Any humans who got pregnant the day of that trade still have another month or so before they actually have to assemble the crib. As starkly as it outlines the differences between the life of a baseball player and the life of a human with a regular job, the trade makes its own sense. We’re going to start in Toronto, because although it involves a lot of platoon finagling, the situation there is simpler.
After coming painfully close to a World Series championship, the Blue Jays are chasing that winning feeling, signing Dylan Cease, Tyler Rogers, Cody Ponce, and Kazuma Okamoto. The 28-year-old Sánchez will cost them another $6.8 million in his second year of arbitration (well, actually more than twice that because of the 110% luxury tax hit). Loperfido is just two years younger than Sánchez, but he only made his debut in 2024 and he has just over one year of service time and one minor league option left. The Astros will have him for five years, and he may start the season in the minors. The Blue Jays are taking on dollars and giving up years in the hopes that Sánchez will help them right now.
Even after the Blue Jays found out they’d be losing Anthony Santander for five or six months due to shoulder surgery, Loperfido looked like the odd man out in their outfield – so much so, in fact, that at the time of the injury, general manager Ross Atkins said they weren’t looking for another outfielder. I’m just going to pull the whole paragraph from my injury roundup:
They have Daulton Varsho locking down center field, Nathan Lukes and Davis Schneider platooning in left, and Addison Barger in right, with Myles Straw as a defensive replacement and Joey Loperfido as a backup. With Santander out, George Springer is expected to get almost all of his playing time at DH rather than the corner outfield. That’s not a bad spot to be in. Our Depth Charts have the Blue Jays ranked in the top half of the league at all three outfield spots and at DH. Still, losing a player with 40-homer power hurts, especially when the team will also be going without Bo Bichette, who signed with the Mets last month.
It turns out that the Blue Jays really wanted that power. Sánchez will likely take Lukes’ part in the left field platoon, pushing Lukes into what would have been Loperfido’s bench role, and could also allow the Jays to squeeze an extra lefty into the lineup against righties, shifting Barger to third base while keeping Lukes, Varsho, and Sánchez in the outfield.
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You might think we’re talking marginal upgrades here, and to some extent that’s true. ZiPS projects Sánchez for a 104 wRC+ and Loperfido a 100, and his defense generally grades out a shade above average thanks to a strong throwing arm. The projections actually see Lukes as actually better than Sánchez, with a 107 wRC+ and better defense. This isn’t just about the margins; it’s about upside.
First, Sánchez has upside because he definitely has the power the Jays are looking for. Despite a disastrous stretch after arriving in Houston at the deadline, he has one of the higher bat speeds in the league, and in previous years, his exit velocity numbers were nearly as remarkable. The projections expect him to bounce back and be a bit above average at the plate, making him a surer thing than Loperfido, especially if the Blue Jays deploy him correctly.
In this case, “deploy him correctly” means one thing: Never let him face a left-handed pitcher. Sánchez is a left-handed hitter whose platoon splits are about as extreme as they get. He has a career 111 wRC+ against righties and a 41 wRC+ against lefties. Since 2020, that’s the worst mark of any player in baseball with at least 300 plate appearances against lefties. The absolute worst. However, even in his ugly 2025 season, he put up a 104 wRC+ against righties, his lowest since his very brief debut in 2020. The Blue Jays are betting that if they put Sánchez in the right spot, they can let him be his best. And like the Astros before them, they’re seeing great batted ball metrics and hoping that he can finally put together the kind of 30-homer season you can’t help but imagine when you watch him take batting practice.
As for Houston’s side of the trade, we should probably start with the fact that it saved the team a bunch of money. Loperfido is cheap and has lots of club control left. We know that part for sure. It’s also well known that Loperfido was beloved in the clubhouse and the organization thought highly of him. While it’s not encouraging that he hasn’t yet grabbed an everyday spot as he enters his age-26 season, it’s still a possibility in the future. He ran a wildly BABIP-inflated 148 wRC+ during his 41-game stint in the majors in 2025, but even if you ignore the batted ball luck, he still put up an xwOBA that was slightly above the league average. Projections see him as a roughly league-average bat again in 2026, and the Astros could simply stash him in the minors until they figure out what they want to do with him.
Still, it has been made abundantly clear – arguably even awkwardly clear – that Loperfido doesn’t solve any problems in Houston. In fact, when general manager Dana Brown first discussed the trade with reporters, he said point blank, “We’re not done yet.” He continued, “This is just one of those moves that we’re locking into as we continue to focus on left-handed bats and the future of this organization.” The Astros have Jake Meyers in center. That much is settled. Also settled is the fact that Jose Altuve’s adventures in left field are over. He’s going back to second base. As for the corners, please excuse the length of this next paragraph, because it’s a bit of a mess.
The Astros have Loperfido back. They also have another lefty-hitting 26-year-old in Zach Cole, who posted an excellent 151 wRC+ in the minors in 2025 and then hit four homers in just 15 games with the big club. They have the right-handed Cam Smith, who came over with Isaac Paredes and Hayden Wesneski in the Kyle Tucker trade. Smith got off to a hot start in his major league debut and was talked up as a potential successor to Tucker (despite never playing a single inning in the outfield in the minors). Then he came back to Earth and finished the season with a 90 wRC+. In fact, the reason the Astros went out and got Sánchez from the Marlins last year was that they’d hoped he’d take the right field job away from Smith. Smith is still just 22, and the projections see him as just a hair below average at the plate, but the team has already tried to give up on him once. Lastly, the Astros have Yordan Alvarez, whom they definitely want to move into a permanent DH role. However, when he arrived at spring training, Alvarez made it pretty clear that he would like to keep playing in the field. “I’ve never gotten hurt playing left field,” he told reporters through an interpreter. “All my injuries have been from different ways (and) running. But I haven’t had any serious injuries actually playing left field.” I told you it was a mess.
Complicating things further is that the Astros still have Paredes, whom they are desperate to trade. With Carlos Correa back in the fold, Altuve back at second, and Alvarez at DH, Paredes doesn’t have a clear path to playing time. There is a way to fit all four of those players into the lineup – playing Alvarez in left sometimes, and giving Correa and Altuve the occasional off day while Paredes fills in at second or third – but it’s not what the team wants. It’s certainly not the way most teams would handle a player who has put up 10.1 WAR in the past three years, and it leaves the outfield corners in the hands of some unproven young players. According to Chandler Rome of The Athletic, “Any deal involving Paredes is almost guaranteed to include a player who can provide an immediate impact to the 2026 Astros, preferably a left-handed hitting outfielder.”
Something is going to happen here. If Paredes does get traded, Loperfido, Smith, or even Cole could end up going with him. On the other hand, it’s not hard to picture Loperfido starting the season in the minors and Paredes getting traded for a left-handed outfielder who snags one corner spot and leaves the other for Smith and Cole to handle in a platoon. For now, just know that the season starts in about six weeks, and the Astros will have to figure something out sooner or later.