Blue Jays: Should they make reactionary moves?

For years we watched the Yankees and Red Sox make moves to counteract one another. Should the Blue Jays prepare to do the same thing?

Throughout the 2000’s, being a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays took a little more dedication than it has over the last three years. The main reason for that was because the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox reigned supreme over the American League, and specifically over the AL East.

The last decade or so has brought far more competitive teams in Baltimore and Tampa Bay, and more recently the Blue Jays have been a playoff team as well. However, with Saturday’s move by the Yankees to bring in Giancarlo Stanton for the Marlins, the feeling is that the arms race in the AL East is going to come back with a vengeance.

The Red Sox are poised and ready for a return to that dynamic as well, as they qualified for the playoffs last season and have one of the more talented rosters in baseball as well. They’re also expected to pursue an option like J.D. Martinez or possibly others, both as a needed improvement in their lineup, and also as a reaction to the Stanton trade. They’ve never been a franchise to sit around idly while the Yankees make big moves, and I wouldn’t expect that to change under Dave Dombrowski any time soon.

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So with this in mind, how do the Blue Jays react going forward? We had a piece from our own Brendan Pannikar on the topic published yesterday, and he looked at the ramifications of Saturday’s news, and how that might affect the Blue Jays’ handling of their own star, Josh Donaldson. There’s an argument to be made that the Stanton trade both positively and negatively affects the Donaldson situation in Toronto, and it’s hard to say how that will play out until it does.

For the Blue Jays (and for the rest of the AL East for that matter), throwing up the white towel is not an option, not unless you’re prepared to wait for another 5-10 years before being relevant again. The Yankees not only have a scary talented lineup, it’s also one that features a great deal of contract control, and affordable assets. For example, Aaron Judge won’t be a free agent until 2023 at the earliest, which means he and Stanton will be New York’s version of the “Bash Brothers” for at least half a decade (assuming Stanton doesn’t utilize his opt out clause in three years).

It might seem like a daunting task, but the Yankees have to play out their 162 game schedule just like everyone else, and with that comes the potential for injury, underperformance, and anything else that could hold them back. They’re about as guaranteed to win next year as the Blue Jays were in 2013, when Vegas had them as World Series favourites in the pre-season, only to watch them flop to a 74 win campaign, so surrendering in December is obviously ridiculous.

Instead, the Blue Jays will need to continue on their own path to building a winner, and can’t let the actions of another franchise push them into a short-sighted decision. Will it affect what type of pitchers they pursue in free agency? Perhaps, especially if they want to have favourable matchups against the powerful right-handed bats in New York. That type of trickle down effect only makes sense, especially when you play against a division rival 19 times throughout the course of a season.

However, it shouldn’t affect foundational decisions like whether or not to extend Josh Donaldson, or whether or not they see themselves as a possible playoff team. I’ll concede that the task just got more difficult after Saturday, but it’s far from impossible.

Next: Donaldson trade rumours are bound to fire back up