SAN ANTONIO — This pivotal Toronto Blue Jays off-season began not with an addition but with a subtraction as the annual GM Meetings got started in Texas Monday night.
Now granted, it was a relatively minor one, but it’s counterintuitive given the team’s glaring need for relief pitching and it hints at even further changes ahead for the Blue Jays as they look to rebound from a frustrating 88-loss season.
The move was this: Left-handed reliever Genesis Cabrera hit free agency Monday after the Blue Jays removed him from their roster, a transaction that clears 40-man space and — perhaps more importantly — $2.5 million in projected payroll.
It’s a bet that Cabrera won’t replicate the 3.59 ERA he posted in 2025 and will regress closer to his 5.13 FIP. And evidently, the rest of the industry agrees, as 29 other teams let him pass by on waivers unclaimed. Now, someone else will sign him, taking a chance on elite fastball velocity from the left side and guaranteeing themselves some high-energy strikeout celebrations in 2025.
Of course, this isn’t really the point for the Blue Jays this winter, as much bigger questions are in play. Last year, their off-season was defined by a player they didn’t sign. This year, that’s not likely to be the case. While they’re not ruling out a pursuit of Juan Soto, industry observers see the Yankees and Mets as the frontrunners for the 26-year-old, not the Blue Jays.
One plugged-in baseball person predicted Soto’s price tag would end up around $630 million over 14 years — a commitment that might triple the second-richest deal of the off-season. Now, will the Blue Jays still express interest? Of course. Soto’s age, control of the strike zone and raw power make him the ideal fit for basically any team.
Plus, Soto’s agent, Scott Boras, also represents Corbin Burnes, Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso, Sean Manaea, Blake Snell, Yusei Kikuchi, Ha-Seong Kim, Tyler O’Neill, Matthew Boyd, Max Scherzer and Josh Bell, among many others. Whether the Blue Jays like it or not, they need to work with Boras this off-season, first to understand the market as a whole and second to offer some of those players deals.
As a measured organization that values information, the Blue Jays will show some interest in nearly all of these players. They need power and pitching, and Boras has both. But interest is one thing, and meaningful traction is another. As the GM Meetings began Monday, initial conversations with industry sources started to create an impression of how this winter might play out for the Blue Jays, particularly on the pitching side.
For one, they’re going to be involved in the market for starting pitching, not just relievers. While it was their bullpen that struggled most last year, posting an American League-worst 4.82 ERA, the Blue Jays are also expected to pursue starting pitchers in free agency.
If they sign an established starter — Kikuchi, for the sake of argument — they could move Yariel Rodriguez to the bullpen, augmenting their pitching staff as a whole while building out valuable depth behind their starting five. In theory, it would be a way to upgrade their rotation and bullpen at once.
Regardless of what happens in the rotation, the Blue Jays will be looking for relief help — and the departure of Cabrera only heightens that need. There could be further departures coming too, as Dillon Tate and Erik Swanson are non-tender candidates while Jordan Romano continues progressing toward mound work after undergoing arthroscopic surgery in July.
But while the Blue Jays must spend to improve their bullpen, they’re not seen as a likely candidate to set the market with a splashy four-year deal for someone like Tanner Scott (now that would be a Cabrera upgrade) or Jeff Hoffman in the first week of free agency. While the Blue Jays do have interest in elite relievers, their history tells us that’s not where their front office is comfortable spending.
Under the leadership of Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins, the Blue Jays have never guaranteed a reliever more than two years. The most guaranteed dollars they’ve guaranteed a free agent reliever is the $11 million they spent on Yimi Garcia before the 2022 season and their biggest bullpen expenditure yet was Chad Green’s two-year, $21 million option.
More often, they’ve been prudent in free agency signing arms like Tyler Chatwood, J.P. Howell, David Phelps, Seung-hwan Oh, Franklin Morales, Daniel Hudson and Rafael Dolis for $3 million or less.
So while the likes of Scott, Hoffman, Clay Holmes and Carlos Estevez surely haven’t been crossed off the Blue Jays’ pref lists, the scenario where they land in Toronto is likely one where their markets develop more slowly than expected. In fact, that’s probably a good guess for the off-season as a whole, starters included.
The Blue Jays intend to add, and are working through various trade and free-agent scenarios already. But they have lots of needs to address and finite dollars at their disposal. That might mean they choose to stay patient now in the hopes that better deals emerge later. In the meantime, there’s still plenty of work remaining before this roster looks like a viable contender again.
