Gabriel Moreno just won a batting title, and Blue Jays fans have to reckon with it.

The former Toronto top prospect hit .311 for Arizona, edging Luis Arraez's .310 to win the National League crown.

Moreno became the first player in Diamondbacks history to win a batting title and only the fifth catcher ever to do it. Across all of baseball, only Yordan Alvarez finished with a higher average among qualified hitters.

This isn't about wishing Toronto had chosen Moreno over Alejandro Kirk. Kirk has become an excellent catcher in his own right and remains genuinely valuable to this roster.

The sting comes from watching Moreno blossom into one of baseball's best catchers after Toronto used him, alongside Lourdes Gurriel Jr., to acquire Daulton Varsho, a trade that eventually ended with Varsho being flipped again for Spencer Arrighetti.

Why the math on this trade looks increasingly lopsided

Toronto entered the 2022-23 offseason with a genuine catching surplus, Kirk already established and Danny Jansen also on the roster, making a trade involving Moreno a sensible way to address other needs.

Varsho fit what Toronto wanted at the time too, elite center field defense and real power potential coming off a 27-homer season in Arizona.

Varsho did provide real value in Toronto, winning a Gold Glove and helping the Blue Jays reach the 2025 World Series. Calling his four seasons a failure wouldn't be accurate.

But it's fair to call the overall return underwhelming. Varsho has produced 12.0 bWAR since the original trade. Moreno alone has already surpassed that total, adding a 6.7-bWAR batting title season in 2026. Gurriel contributed real value too, including an All-Star nod during Arizona's run to the 2023 World Series, before being DFA'd this year.

Now that Varsho has been flipped to Houston for Arrighetti, Toronto has essentially turned Moreno and Gurriel into four years of Varsho and however long Arrighetti lasts in Toronto, a pitcher who's struggled badly in his brief time here, carrying a 6.35 ERA and 6.85 FIP over seven appearances.

The frustration compounds when considering the rest of that offseason. Toronto also traded Teoscar Hernandez, signed Kevin Kiermaier, and added Brandon Belt that same winter.

Kiermaier supplied elite defense, and Belt helped replace some of the power lost in the Hernandez trade, making the Varsho acquisition feel redundant in hindsight, since its strongest skill overlapped with another move made the same offseason.

The roster had other obvious needs at the time too. Whit Merrifield, Cavan Biggio, and Santiago Espinal split second base duties, while George Springer remained the regular right fielder, areas where a premium infielder or middle-of-the-order bat would have addressed a bigger long-term gap.

Arizona had exactly that kind of player on its own roster in Ketel Marte, not necessarily available at the time, but a clear example of the caliber Toronto should have targeted for a package built around Moreno and Gurriel.

Since the start of 2023, Marte has been worth 18.5 bWAR, compared to 19.8 combined for Moreno and Gurriel, a genuinely close comparison that underscores how even that alternative path could have been.

None of this means committing to Kirk was wrong. Teams have to make real choices, and keeping two elite young catchers was never the only sensible path forward. But Moreno's batting title is still a difficult reminder of how this specific trade has played out.