Blue Jays out of the running for Shohei Ohtani

The Toronto Blue Jays have been officially informed they are out of the running for Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani as he is leaning toward a smaller market west coast team.

Shohei Ohtani‘s camp informed a number of teams including the Blue Jays that they will not be invited to an in-person meeting this week to negotiate with the 23-year old. If there is a silver lining to the unfortunate news, it is that the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are rumoured to be out of the running as well for Ohtani’s services.

The Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants are said to be the favourites to land the big fish from Japan thus far. There is no indication as of yet how many prospective teams remain in the sweepstakes but the Mets, Twins, Athletics, and Pirates have all been ousted from negotiating as well.

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Ohtani has been the talk of the offseason with all 30 teams speculated to be vying for his services. The Ohtani posting process and the Giancarlo Stanton trade talks had slowed the offseason hot stove to a crawl, however, both appear to be sorting themselves out in short order. The Giants are in the running for both players and would be an offseason of the ages if the Giants end up scoring both uber talents.

The Jays will now be able to focus on their offseason vacancies as they are still in search of an outfielder and starting pitcher now that the Ohtani vision is officially dead in the water. The Jays brain trust was willing to allow Ohtani to both pitch and hit so he definitely affected how they planned for next season and beyond.

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We still don’t know where Ohtani will land but we do know it, unfortunately, won’t be north of the border this offseason. Bad to the drawing board Blue Jays.