Jay Bruce expects hasn’t heard from Reds about trade

According to multiple reports, the Reds are in talks to send Bruce to the Toronto Blue Jays as part of a three-way trade.

Yesterday, Cincinnati Reds right fielder Jay Bruce being traded to the Toronto Blue Jays was all the rage. However, the trade was pending medical reviews of each player and Saunders, who played in just 9 games last season due to a knee injury, was apparently a pause for concern.

The proposed trade, widely reported Monday night, would have sent Saunders to Anaheim and Reds slugger Jay Bruce to Toronto. Bruce’s contract now allows him to block trades to the Arizona Diamondbacks, Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians, Miami Marlins, Minnesota Twins, New York Yankees, Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays, the source said. He gets $12.5 million in the final season of a six-year, $51 million deal, which includes a $13 million club option for 2017 with a $1 million buyout. “I’m reading the same stuff you are reading”.

The dismantling of the Reds would reach its deepest nadir yet with a trade of Bruce, who didn’t carry tremendous value like Frazier or need to be dealt like Chapman, whose impending free agency and potential suspension for domestic abuse hung over Cincinnati.

“The natural emotions of me coming here a year ago, going through what I went through, really wanting to be a Blue Jay and then hearing my name come up in rumours last night, I want to be here”, Saunders said Tuesday after working out at Florida Auto Exchange Stadium.

According to Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, the medical issue involved a minor league player going from Toronto to Cincinnati. “We’ll see what happens”.

It’s called playing the market, and doing that involves risk, but hanging on to Jay Bruce and seeing how the market ultimately reacts is a risk the Reds should be willing to take.

At the Blue Jays’ camp In Dunedin, Florida, Saunders met with general manager Ross Atkins and manager John Gibbons to discuss the reports.

“That’s kind of the human element of it“, Saunders said. “Sometimes things get close”. The Blue Jays were also sending a prospect to the Reds, and that unnamed prospect was the reported source of the snag.