Blue Jays Winter Checklist: What else do they need?

After signing Kevin Gausman and Yimi Garcia over the last day or so, what else do the Blue Jays need to complete their offseason checklist?

It’s a huge development that they were able to replace Robbie Ray at the top of their rotation by agreeing to a five year, 110 million dollar contract with Gausman. You can debate over which pitcher would have been the better choice, but there was always the possibility that the Jays ended up with neither. Thankfully they have another ace-calibre arm to pair with Jose Berrios at the top of the rotation.

Now that they’ve managed to take care of one major offseason need, and also agreed to a two-year contract with Yimi Garcia to boost the bullpen, what else do the Blue Jays need to do to complete their winter work? We know that it won’t be a storybook ending now that Marcus Semien has agreed to a seven year contract with the Texas Rangers, and even with the Gausman deal and the Berrios extension, there is a lot of work to be done to help the Blue Jays become legitimate World Series contenders.

That said, I feel like Jays fans should be thrilled with the work of Ross Atkins and the front office team in Toronto, and there should be a fair bit of excitement about the moves that have yet to be made. It’s clear that the Blue Jays mean business, and that means that there are a lot of options on the table. We’ll see if anything else happens before the current CBA expires and an offseason freeze begins, but so far so good.

Let’s have a quick look at the areas that they need to address, and who knows, Atkins may just decide to make the roster better in ways that we didn’t see coming either.