Clase is a fairly good return for Yimi Garcia. Grades have been fairly good for the Jays in the few I have seen.
He was the #10 prospect in Seattle's system per MLB.com, and enters the Jays Farm system as their #7 prospect.
22 year old AAA player that has played about 20 MLB games this year, the Jays are looking at him as a player that can contribute by next year as they try to re-tool quickly.
Unfortunately other FA's like Kikuchi and Richards have sputtered (in the case of Richards, heavily sputtered) as we get to the deadline. About 45 days ago Kikuchi looked like someone who could fetch a really good prospect ( a top 5 system type). Hopefully we can get somebody the value of Clase for him, but he is going backwards. Richards went from not much value at beginning of 2024, to (about a month ago) some solid value as a swiss army knife type pitcher who could do any role. And now he is close to being back to no value.
I had mentioned earlier that I think Atkins is quite capable of doing deadline deals for pending FA's. There is not much big picture vision (where Atkins seems to struggle) involved in those deals ... you have no choice but to get rid of a player and get prospect value.
The bigger concern is what "vision" is being used at the deadline for guys like Green, Bassitt, Gausman, Bichette, Guerrero, maybe even an IKF, all who have some value and are not pending FA's .... I'm pretty convinced Atkins has no intent to move any and will try to run back a re-tool next year. Obviously you can't bring in somebody new this week to consider those bigger picture trades - would have needed to be done by beginning of July at the latest.