TORONTO — There’s an advantage to being patient as an MLB off-season unfolds: if you’re willing to wait, deals often emerge.
But there’s also a downside to playing the long game, as the Toronto Blue Jays are now experiencing first-hand. The more you wait, the more chances others have to use you as leverage. The more measured your offers are, the more likely it is you’re going to finish second or third.
Where it all leads for this roster, we’ll eventually find out. In the meantime, here are some thoughts and notes on a Blue Jays team that still has lots of work to do:
• There are no silver medals in free agency. That’s clear. But the Blue Jays’ efforts to land Roki Sasaki do reveal a lot about this organization, its players and its staff. Let’s start with the players. Quietly, Bo Bichette, Daulton Varsho and Chad Green all made the trip to Toronto to pitch Sasaki on the Blue Jays last week.
And say what you will about the Sasaki chase, those three players really deserve credit for making that a priority. The baseball off-season is short and Toronto in January isn’t exactly a vacation destination, but all three wanted to do their part to recruit an impact player. It’s especially noteworthy that Bichette made the trip, since he’s now less than a year away from free agency and not necessarily a Blue Jay beyond 2025. But to his credit, he did what he could for the organization, showing up to tell Sasaki that he’d be welcomed to Toronto.
• Zooming out for a moment beyond the frustration surrounding the controversial Myles Straw trade, some notable things have changed here for the Blue Jays. A decade or more ago, they were rarely in the conversation for top Japanese and Korean recruits. While they pushed for Yu Darvish, the Red Sox, Yankees and Rangers were better positioned to obtain the best players from the Pacific Rim. It wasn’t just about money, it was about relationships and understanding that market.
But thanks in large part to the dedicated work of Pacific Rim coordinator Hideaki Sato, the Blue Jays got Sasaki’s attention. Those efforts were also driven forward by longtime front office execs Andrew Tinnish and Ryan Mittleman plus Frank Herrmann, the former MLB pitcher who pitched with Sasaki in Japan before joining the Blue Jays as a pitching acquisitions specialist. This was a project that took years of focused work.
Again, no one involved wants a silver medal here. But just as the Straw trade drew a lot of criticism within the industry, some neutral observers have noted the growth for the Blue Jays in this area.
It’ll matter more when that leads to a deal, no one’s saying otherwise, but it’s a notable shift — and a positive one. The next step, a necessary one, would be finding a way to out-do the Dodgers. If you recruit well enough to become a finalist, but your roster’s worse you’re rarely going to win. So either the roster has to improve, the recruiting has to improve or both. Like in any business, it matters most when you close the deal.
• Speaking of silver medals, the Blue Jays were indeed showing interest in Tanner Scott before he signed with the Dodgers, as Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported. Which, once we move past the understandable sighs of exasperation, is actually an interesting concept. Building a super bullpen with Scott and Jeff Hoffman would have shortened games, and suggests the Blue Jays are open to different ways of building out their pitching staff. For instance: if they’d somehow landed Sasaki, they might have had a six-man rotation with 20-25 starts from the Japanese phenom.
• In baseball, deadlines tend to drive action which is why the final few days leading up to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s Feb. 18 extension deadline are going to be critical. The sides avoided arbitration earlier this month, but the Blue Jays still have lots of work to do if they’re going to get a long-term deal past the finish line.
• One reason beyond the obvious that it’s a good idea for the Blue Jays to complete a deal with a slugger such as Anthony Santander or perhaps Pete Alonso: it would make the Blue Jays a more appealing destination for a pitcher like Max Scherzer, someone who’s drawing interest from the Blue Jays. As currently constructed, the Blue Jays might be a tougher sell for the future Hall of Famer.
