SAN DIEGO – The pitching market is moving at the baseball winter meetings and the Toronto Blue Jays, still working on their next move of an off-season in which they need to bolster their rotation and add a left-handed bat, are adjusting their order of operations accordingly.
Take this sampling of what they’ve been up to at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego from people who’ve met with them.
“They’re all over the pitching market,” said one agent.
“They’re big on pitching right now,” said another.
“Aggressive” in pursuit of pitching, added a rival executive.
So, a theme then, underlined by another unsuccessful run at AL Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander, who reached agreement Monday morning on a two-year deal with the New York Mets worth a reported $86.66 million, and also includes a vesting option for a third season.
Having lost Jacob deGrom on Friday when the ace righty signed a $185-million, six-year deal with the Texas Rangers, the Mets essentially took everyone else out of the running. Still, it’s telling of what the Blue Jays can do financially this winter that they were involved at all, but more pertinent now is where they go next.
On that front, an interesting prediction from a third agent on what happens next for them is that they use a catcher to acquire a left-handed hitting outfielder and sign Andrew Heaney, whom Ben Nicholson-Smith reported had received an offer from the Blue Jays.
That’s not surprising, since that’s been an available track for GM Ross Atkins to follow all off-season. But given the way the Blue Jays map out various scenarios around their preferences so that if one piece of their plan develops before another, the agent’s belief that they’ve settled on a course and are in the midst of making it happen is intriguing, at minimum.
Now, this is the winter meetings where rumours fly fast and things change quick, so grain of salt, always. But when asked if the Blue Jays were close to anything during his daily media briefing, Atkins said, “there are a lot of things that we could do.”
“We have an understanding of where there are different opportunities that are not quite in the just-say-yes-to mould,” he added, “but not far off.”
