Toronto Blue Jays choose your own adventure: Option 2.2

Please don’t spoil this for you, and especially not for me (I put a lot of work into this). If you landed here by accident, please start your adventure at the beginning.

Things are off to a roaring start for you so far, even if Robbie Ray won’t be back. Your analytics are telling you that Kevin Gausman will be just as good or better anyway, so let’s celebrate and move on.

The free agent market has been good to you so far, and you’ve decided to stay with that route. It was sound thinking at the time, but man, did that ever backfire on you here.

You tried to re-sign Marcus Semien and he left to join the Dodgers. You made legitimate offers to Javier Baez and Trevor Story to take his place and they went elsewhere. You even tried to convince Andrelton Simmons to move to second base, but he wasn’t having it.

In the end you panicked a bit and overpaid for Seager, so it could have been worse. No, not Corey Seager, unfortunately it was Kyle instead, and let’s just say this was Plan F or G when we drew things up for improving the infield.

You tried to salvage things by improving the pitching staff, but you should have stopped while you were ahead with Gausman. You made some really solid offers to guys like Justin Verlander and Noah Syndergaard before they signed their newest deals, but you’re left with giving Steven Matz a new two-year 26 million dollar contract, and he immediately regresses to his old form. Not even Pete Walker can save him this time, and now you’re spending 13 million for a bad number five starter.

To make matters worse, you signed Kenley Jansen to a three-year deal and handed him the closer’s job. Not only does Jansen stink in 2022, but losing the closer’s job upsets Jordan Romano, and makes Jansen demand a trade when you ask him to pitch the eighth after he struggles.

You’ve spent big money on multi-year contract for Seager, Jansen, and Matz, and none of them are providing more than league average value at best. You’ve also tied up future payroll so much that ownership is furious to be paying this much for a non-contending team, and now they want you to cut some payroll ahead of 2023. How are you supposed do that when you have young players with escalating salaries through arbitration like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, and more?

What have you done?