Blue Jays: Management will need to spend wisely this off-season

With some veteran contracts off the books and a younger squad, the Toronto Blue Jays will have an influx of money to play with this offseason compared to the previous years.

With the 2019 season in the books, it is time for Blue Jays fans, writers and front office staff to set their sights on the upcoming offseason.

The offseason is a turbulent time for fans, players, and the organization, as each team looks to outdo the others to acquire and trade players to build a better squad than the previous season.

The Toronto Blue Jays are a young team in the midst of a rebuild, one that will test the fans faith in the front office and management, but also test the ability of the front office to succeed and set up the team for the long run.

This upcoming offseason is going to be a trying time for Ross Atkins and his front office staff, as he looks to improve his young squad in multiple different areas. The 2019 season was a good proving ground for the top prospects in the Blue Jays system, and realistically, it appears that the 2020 season will be the callback audition for young prospects looking to make the MLB on a full time basis.

There will be battles in the starting rotation amongst the top prospects in the Blue Jays organization, as well as an audition for the starting centre field role that is up for grabs amongst a trio of prospects who need to snag a spot on the roster, risking a waiver wire transfer if they fail.

When the dust finally settles and spring training roles around in 2020, the Toronto Blue Jays will be a team that is still trying to figure out the future roster amongst a smorgasbord of prospects, but a team that has the potential to bring playoff baseball back North of the border with some development and some wise additions outside of the current roster within the next few years.

Payroll for 2020

The Blue Jays will head into the 2019 offseason with only two players who have long-term contracts in Randal Grichuk and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Their salary next year plus Troy Tulowitzki’s salary (which the Blue Jays are on the books for one more year even with his retirement), means the Blue Jays have a total monetary commitment of $29,928,571 before arbitration factors in.

Using the MLB Trade Rumours arbitration projector, and factoring in the high probability that the Blue Jays non-tender players like Devon Travis (injury problems), Luke Maile (Reese McGuire wins the second catcher spot) and Ryan Dull (no room on 40 man roster), the organization will most likely owe another $17-20 million to a total of five players.

The arbitration players the Blue Jays will most likely keep include Matt Shoemaker, Ryan Tepera, Brandon Drury, Derek Law and Ken Giles. There is some obvious discretion with this analysis considering the Blue Jays could offer arbitration to all or maybe sign players to longer term deals (avoiding arbitration), but let’s stick with this scenario.

I should note that MLB Trade Rumours states Derek Law is heading to arbitration this offseason, but Sportrac and Baseball Reference both say he is pre-arbitration eligible. If he is indeed arbitration eligible, it would factor in roughly $1-1.5 million against the salary, and I will include him as arbitration eligible for this scenario per the MLB Trade Rumours source.

Sportrac also has listed that Buddy Boshers, Ryan Feierabend, and Brock Stewart are also arbitration eligible while MLB Trade Rumours has not listed them as such, as well as Baseball Reference only having Feierabend listed as arbitration eligible out of the three this offseason. This most likely has to do with Super Two designation and service time (with all being minor league players at times over the season), which you can find more information here.

I am just going to consider them all non-tendered, as this will most likely happen anyways if they were arbitration eligible and assumes the following scenario stays as such. If they were pre-arbitration eligible, they would factor in another $1.5 million if all three were to remain on the Blue Jays roster.

The Toronto Blue Jays also have three players going to free agency in Justin Smoak, Clay Buchholz and John Axford. With the rebuild and the controllable years being a big deal to the Blue Jays front office, the probability that any of these three will be re-signed is very slim. They will not be factored into this scenario.

The Blue Jays have the advantage of a significant amount of roster players who are pre-arbitration eligible, which is codeword for “the Blue Jays front office can pay the player what they want for the upcoming season”. The typical practice from teams across the league is to offer the league minimum, which is $555,555.

With that in mind, the Blue Jays would fill out the rest of the roster with pre-arb players if they were to not sign any free agents this offseason. With the above scenario factored in at seven players committed to the roster, there will be 19 spots filled with pre-arb players due to the roster expansion next year to 26 players.

Mathematically, the Blue Jays will approximately sit at an estimated $30 million for two players (plus Tulo’s money), $20 million for five arbitration players (high side evaluation for risk factor and possibly extensions for one or two players I said they would not offer but did), and $10.5 million for pre-arbitration players.

This is obviously not going to be the exact number considering the Blue Jays will work some magic and probably throw in some surprises, but given the above scenario and all the sources I could find on the web, the organization will have a total financial commitment to the 2020 season at roughly $60.5 million dollars.

Again, I understand this will change given players not being tendered, not making the team out of spring training, free agency, etc., but these values are what we have to work with given the current roster moving forward and give an accurate representation of the general consensus: the Blue Jays have money to play with this offseason

Off-season Plans

With the scenario and payroll schematics finally out of the way, we can get to the real nitty gritty of the article.

Regardless of whether my math is off by a few millions of dollars, the Blue Jays will head into the off-season with a significant amount of money to throw around if Rogers Communications has given them the go ahead to spend. Rogers has given the Blue Jays the green light in previous seasons to spend past $150 million on their payroll, but that may be a stretch in 2020 given how the team is still rebuilding and keeps dropping in attendance over the past three years. We as fans usually do not find out the exact number, just rumours from sources within the organization.

Even if Rogers was to give the Blue Jays a payroll commitment of $120-$150 million for the 2020 season, that is still a significant amount of money to use towards free agency or acquiring higher paid players in trades with other teams.

With this generous amount of playing room also comes a great deal of financial responsibility that needs to be exemplified by the front office. Just because Ross Atkins and co. have millions to play with doesn’t mean they need to go spending money on areas that don’t need improving, or overpaying for players designated for bench roles or a mid-summer release.

Every fan, scout, writer, and front office staff member knows that the Toronto Blue Jays need to improve their starting rotation, as well as taking a look at some established veteran options in centre field. There will most likely be some additions to the bullpen as well, with Elvis Luciano heading down to the minor leagues with his Rule 5 status over and some relief pitchers getting lost in the shuffle of spring training.

Free Agency

Some interesting candidates arise at starting pitching this offseason, with Gerrit Cole, Zack Wheeler, Madison Bumgarner, and Hyun-Jin Ryu leading the free agency pack. I wouldn’t get your hopes up for Cole to join the Blue Jays, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Jays went after Wheeler or other less flashy options like Jake Odorizzi (he may get a qualifying offer which would be a huge deterrent) or Dallas Kuechel.

They could kick the tires with the likes of Bumgarner and Ryu as well, but even if the Blue Jays are heavily interested in these pitchers, do they even want to play in Toronto? There is also possible options in Stephen Strasburg and Yu Darvish, but both players would have to exercise their opt outs to be free agents and want to play in T.O.

Heading to the outfield, there are a few options the Blue Jays could look at, but unfortunately, the best outfielders this offseason are corner options rather than established centre fielders. Starling Marte is the only centre fielder who really jumps off the page, but he has a club option that the Pittsburgh Pirates are most likely going to exercise rather than buy him out at $2.5 million.

This would require someone to move positions, which can lead to mix results depending on who moves over. Marcell Ozuna, Brett Gardner and Nicholas Castellanos are intriguing outfielder options, and the Blue Jays could go looking at some less sought after options like Yasiel Puig and Avisail Garcia as well. Someone would have to move to centre field for this to work (whether free agent or possibly Grichuk), but it’s something to look at. Ozuna and Castellanos will be in high demand this offseason given their 2019 performance, age, and stats, which is why I mention the possibility of Puig and Garcia as suitable alternatives for the Blue Jays.

Do Nothing

The organization could also sit on their hands this offseason and let some of the younger players fight it out over the 2020 seasons for major league positions, staying out of the free agent market.

Players like Derek Fisher and Anthony Alford are out of options and need to earn a roster spot next season without going through waivers, while others like Richard Urena, Jonathan Davis, and Billy McKinney have seen MLB action but have never cemented their spot on the roster. Teoscar Hernandez could see his starting role change to a bench position if a free agent outfielder is signed this offseason, or if one of the above mentioned players excels in spring training.

They could also let some of the prospects fight for full time in the major leagues like Jacob Waguespack, T.J. Zeuch, Sean Reid-Foley and Anthony Kay, while also keeping top prospect Nate Pearson on the back-burner, fully aware that he will make an impact on the 2020 roster at some point in the season. This would kind of go against the scenario of “trying to improve the starting rotation”, but giving some internal options a deeper look given how the 2019 season played out is certainly not out of the question.

2021 Free Agency

The front office could also choose to forego 2020 free agency and go after free agents in 2021, a group that would include Masahiro Tanaka and possibly Jake Arrieta, but this free agent class is noticeably weaker than this year. I really don’t expect this to be a huge factor in decision making, but you never know.

Saving Money on Internal Future Players

By not spending any payroll money on frivolous and not needed players (which the Blue Jays have done before), the team could also look to be saving some money for when the future prospects reach arbitration in 2-3 years. When these players progress further along in their careers and reach arbitration and free agency, Blue Jays will require increased payroll flexibility to keep their star prospects around long term.

While this is quite a few years away, this is something that the front office will need to consider if the likes of Bo Bichette or Vladimir Guerrero Jr. are going to stay with the club past arbitration. If they do indeed keep improving and producing at the MLB level, they will be looking for serious money in the future.