Griffin Conine is turning into exactly the power bat the Blue Jays have needed all season.

He's not the only former Blue Jay thriving in Miami. Otto Lopez has emerged as an offensive star, hitting .305 with 91 runs, 11 home runs, 71 RBIs, and 32 stolen bases across 152 games, earning his first All-Star selection.

But Conine's trajectory is what's really starting to sting.

Toronto sent him to Miami at the 2020 deadline as the player to be named later in a deal for Jonathan Villar, a swap that's aged about as poorly as any trade GM Ross Atkins has made.

Villar never panned out in Toronto, hitting .188 with a .481 OPS, three runs, zero home runs, and six RBIs across 22 games. He struggled so badly that Toronto limited him to just two plate appearances during that year's expanded playoffs.

Conine, the son of two-time All-Star Jeff Conine, has finally developed into a genuine impact bat this season.

Why this trade looks especially costly in hindsight

Across 88 games, he's hitting .256 with an .831 OPS, 42 runs, eight doubles, 17 home runs, and 39 RBIs.

He was on pace for 80-plus runs, 30-plus homers, and 70-plus RBIs over a full season before a left hamstring tear in April cost him time before he returned in June.

His power looks legitimate too, including a recent homer against one of the game's best closers.

Those 17 home runs would rank second on Toronto's own roster this season, behind only Kazuma Okamoto, on a team that's badly lacked power and outfield depth all year.

Atkins wanted speed back in 2020 when he pursued Villar. That swap never worked out, and nobody could have predicted Conine would develop into this caliber of player on the other side of the deal.

Conine was a second-round pick in 2018, and the canceled 2020 minor-league season likely hurt his trade value at exactly the wrong moment. Over 131 games across three levels in 2018-19, he hit 29 home runs, fourth-most among Toronto's minor leaguers in that span, with a 140 wRC+ that ranked seventh.

Without that lost 2020 season to showcase his continued growth, he became expendable.

Given Toronto's constant offensive struggles in 2026, watching Conine develop into this kind of hitter elsewhere makes this trade even harder to stomach than it already was.