With the All-Star break approaching and the Toronto Blue Jays sitting at 39-45, five games out of the second American League wild card, club president and CEO Mark Shapiro doesn't believe his team is a buyer or seller heading towards the Major League Baseball trade deadline - it could be both.

"I think it’s entirely possible that we’re buyers and sellers," Shapiro told TSN Radio 1050 Toronto's The Scott McArthur Show. "We could make trades to trade away players, but also to acquire Major League Baseball talent...we’re trying to get better. [The deadline] is one of the few junctures where you can try to get talent – It’s an opportunity to acquire all types of players."

One of those players under such trade speculation is 2015 American League MVP Josh Donaldson. But Shapiro did not rule out the possibility entirely. The 31-year-old third baseman will become an unrestricted free agent following the 2018 season.

"Josh Donaldson is one of the best players in Major League Baseball," Shapiro said. "I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s hard for me to see a scenario wehre you trade JD and get better."

As for the Jays' poor first half of the season, Shapiro cites a couple of contributing factors: their defence - ranked last in MLB - and offence, the fourth-worst.

"Having one of the lower offences in Major League Baseball is not something we would have foreseen," Shapiro said.

The team's injury issues, however, is something Shapiro acknowledges might have been predicted. The Jays have the highest average age in the major at 30.4 and have sent 20 players to the disabled list this season.

"We have been a time above the average MLB age and disproportionately so," Shapiro explained. "When you’ve not balanaced and skew older, you run the risk of the age impacting [the team] disproportionately and that’s what’s happening."

One of the team's players snakebitten by injury this season isn't among the Jays' elder statesmen - 26-year-old second baseman Devon Travis. Currently on the 60-day DL following a knee procedure, there's no guarantee that Travis will return to the team this season.

Shapiro says he and the rest of the club are rooting for him.

"Nobody cares more, nobody works harder; there’s not a better teammate in the clubhouse," Shapiro said of Travis. "You desperately want to believe he will come back."

Now in his second season at the helm of the club, Shapiro says that the Jays' strong fan support will play into any personnel decisions the team makes going forward this season. The Jays sit second in the American League and fifth overall in Major League Baseball in attendance this season, averaging 39,335 a night.

"I looked out at the crowd last week on Canada Day, over Canada Day weekend," Shapiro said. "We will factor that into our baseball decisions. This team has had such an incredible level of electric support, it’s important to factor that in integrally into our decisions."

The Jays return to the Rogers Centre on Thursday night when they open a four-game set with the American League-leading Houston Astros.