The MLB trade deadline is business, unless you play the game. Then it is family, and family gets hard to say goodbye to.
Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Daulton Varsho told reporters that he, Kevin Gausman, and George Springer broke down crying on the team plane the night Gausman was traded to the Cubs. Mitch Bannon of The Athletic reported the moment. It was raw, and it landed hard.
Then Toronto turned around and traded Varsho to the Astros for Spencer Arrighetti. So three grown men who cried on that plane together, one is now on the Cubs, one is now on the Astros, and one is still in Toronto wondering what the last 48 hours were.
The Blue Jays also moved reliever Jeff Hoffman to the Twins for three prospects. All three of those players were part of the 2025 American League championship team that came within a game of the World Series. That is the group that grinded through all those losses together and then almost pulled the whole thing off. Now they get to finish 2026 wearing different uniforms in different cities.
Gausman especially loved Toronto. He said it constantly. He talked up the city, the fans, the ballpark, the routine, the whole thing. Nothing about his time as a Blue Jay felt like he was counting down the days. Then the deadline hit and the front office decided the future was more valuable than the present.
This is the part of the trade deadline that gets missed in the loud reactions online. Fans see prospect grades. Front offices see roster construction. The players see the guy in the locker next to them, the guy they eat dinner with on the road, the guy whose family they know.
Springer is the veteran who has been through this before. Varsho is the guy losing a close friend and then, in a plot twist worthy of a soap opera, getting told a day later he is also going somewhere else. Gausman is the guy who has to fly to Chicago and be a professional and pretend the emotional carnage of the last 24 hours never happened.
Toronto’s front office had a plan. Ross Atkins and Mark Shapiro clearly decided the current roster was not going to catch Boston or the top of the AL East, and they cashed in veteran assets while they still had value. Whether the prospect returns pan out will define the trades in five years.
Right now, though, the story is not the prospects. The story is three friends crying on a plane at 1 a.m. because their season together just ended in a group text.
Baseball is a business. It is also, sometimes, a heartbreak.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
