TORONTO – Once the dollars start flying and trade proposals flowing, the baseball off-season can break in so many different ways, with only informed speculation and educated guesses on how it’s all going to actually play out.
This past week really demonstrated that for the Toronto Blue Jays, who Monday followed up their weekend agreement with centre-fielder Kevin Kiermaier by settling on terms with right-hander Chris Bassitt for $63 million over three years. Both deals are pending physicals.
Combined, the duo should dramatically improve the Blue Jays’ ability to prevent runs, a goal GM Ross Atkins has emphasized time again in his public comments this winter.
The impact in that regard of Bassitt, a hard-contact suppressing master who shreds bats with his dominant sinker, is self-explanatory. Putting him behind Cy Young Award finalist Alek Manoah, Kevin Gausman and Jose Berrios gives the Blue Jays a rotation foursome that logged 725 innings in 2022, slightly more than half the club’s total of 1,441.1.
In terms of building a base for team success, that’s a pretty good place to springboard.
Kiermaier, meanwhile, should help tighten up the grounds behind them and the rest of the pitching staff, shifting George Springer over to right and gobbling up balls that might have touched green when Springer was in centre flanked by Teoscar Hernandez to his left.
Think back to the eighth inning of Game 2 in the wild-card series against Seattle and imagine what a difference that might have made.
Now, the offence minus Hernandez has taken a hit and GM Ross Atkins, speaking last week just before the bedlam began at the winter meetings in San Diego, acknowledged that “we did subtract Teoscar and we’ll have to factor that in. But we would also want to make sure that we’re thinking about improving our defence and as we’ve talked a lot about, the run-prevention side.”
So, they’ve accomplished that, acting swiftly after nearly taking a very different road in search of the same destination.
The Blue Jays, who scenario-plan their off-season pursuits in ways that lead them into slates of moves, nearly landed righty Kyle Gibson just before the winter meetings and then lefty Andrew Heaney during the frenzy at the Manchester Grand Hyatt.
Had they landed Heaney, who at one point was said to be on the verge of joining the Blue Jays, mulling their offer right down to the very end before opting for the Texas Rangers, speculation in San Diego was that they’d pair the move with another outfielder. Cody Bellinger reached terms on a $17.5-million, one-year deal with the Cubs on the same day and if you put the two contracts together, you’re looking at roughly $30 million for the two players.
The $20.25 million average annual value on Brandon Nimmo’s $162-million, eight-year deal, agreed to just after the winter meetings, also would have fit into that sphere, although it’s pretty clear the Mets were intent on locking that down no matter what.
While details of the Kiermaier agreement aren’t known, industry speculation has him falling into the $8-$10 million range for one year. Combine that with Bassitt’s AAV of $21 million and the Blue Jays are suddenly back within that $30 million range.
In that way, Heaney’s choice may have closed off one set of options and opened the door to another. Which combo the Blue Jays preferred is, in some ways, irrelevant, because the market forced decisions on the former prior to the latter.
Asked during the winter meetings how the Blue Jays approach situations when secondary parts of their plan develop before the primary ones, and acting may cut them off to some preferred possibilities, Atkins said: “By working through that before it happens. And making a decision before it happens on what you would do, and what it means in terms of opportunity.”
The Blue Jays certainly tried to force the issue with Heaney last week but they seemingly stayed true to their valuations on Bellinger and Nimmo and then adjusted to Kiermaier and paired him with Bassitt.
There’s probably more upside and risk in the various permutations of the first duo, more stability and floor-raising in the second, with a pretty compelling case to made for each. Still, even with their payroll pushing back to $200 million, there may very well be more on the way.
As the Bassitt deal was settling, the next phase of the catching market began to play out with Oakland sending Sean Murphy to Atlanta in a three-way deal that landed William Contreras and others in Milwaukee and Manny Pina and others in Oakland, while the Minnesota Twins reached an agreement with Christian Vazquez.
Should the Blue Jays move one of Danny Jansen, Alejandro Kirk or Gabriel Moreno, they would seem to now hold the high card in the market. The Arizona Diamondbacks have a surplus of left-handed hitting outfielders and make sense on paper, while Cleveland (if they aren’t going to run with Canadian prospect Bo Naylor) and the Cubs, among others, could also be in the market for catching.
Adding another offensive piece makes sense as does further lengthening the bullpen, with Liam Hendriks making some sense for the Blue Jays if the Chicago White Sox chose to switch over their core. They could also get creative in that regard, betting on Zach Britton, who resumed pitching last September before a setback, or Chad Green to bounce back from Tommy John surgery.
All of course depends on how an ever-shifting market evolves, as some teams get their targets and others miss out and adjust, a fact of life the Blue Jays were on both ends of in the past week.
