Blue Jays miss out on opportunity for Tomoyuki Sugano

Thursday evening it was announced that highly profiled pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano was going to stay in Japan and forgo playing in North America for now.

Early Thursday afternoon, Jeff Passan announced that Tomoyuki Sugano’s posting window had expired and as such he would return to the Nippon Professional Baseball League in Japan.  Then later in the evening, Ken Rosenthal announced that Sugano had come to an agreement on a four-year deal with Yomiuri Giants for $40 million dollars.  The contract appears to have three opt out years if he wishes to make an attempt at Major League Baseball in the near future.

Sugano was arguably the top free agent pitcher left on the market and with starting pitching being the biggest hole on the Blue Jays they will have to step up to find a front of the rotation starter.

Fans will be disappointed as speculation was coming out early in the week that the Blue Jays were Sugano’s likely number one choice if he did decide to leave his native country.

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While the Blue Jays did acquire Sugano’s teammate Shun Yamaguchi last offseason, the two pitchers are on different spectrums of talent level.  Sugano is a two time MVP and has also won the equivalent to the Cy Young Award Twice in Japan.   The Giants will get their star pitcher back who has combined to go 57-21 over his last four seasons and led the team to the Championship Finals last year after taking the regular season title.

Fan could feel disappointed as many got their hopes up when they thought the Blue Jays were signing another Japanese superstar in Ha-Seong Kim, but he signed with the San Diego Padres.  Also, earlier on Thursday the New York Mets announced they had acquired Francisco Lindor, a player that appeared to be on the Blue Jays radar.

While the Blue Jays have yet to really improve on the season, many free agents are still available on the market and management has proven over the tenure that they have improved the team dramatically.  Management does have the obstacle of bringing in free agents without being able to tell them where their home will be next season.

What free agent would you like to see the Blue Jays go all in on?