3 biggest Blue Jays takeaways from this year’s GM meetings

The early indications through the first week of the offseason — with the opening of the free agent market and MLB’s General Manager Meetings in San Antonio, Texas — are that the Toronto Blue Jays are not going to be pushing things. Rather, they appear to be in “information gathering” mode and are “checking in” on multiple free agents, i.e. business as usual.

Recall that in his postseason post-mortem a month again, Toronto Blue Jays CEO Mark Shapiro lamented the fact that “we're not creating the opportunity for fans to build memories around October baseball.”

To put that in context, after the Blue Jays traded away players on expiring contracts, Shapiro tried to reassure fans in early August that “We believe that there’s enough talent in place to build a contending, championship-caliber team next year. Had we not, we would have made a different set of decisions [at the July Trade Deadline].”

For a team that disastrously bet on “internal improvement” ahead of the 2024 season, slow playing the current market might not suggest to Blue Jays fans that the front office will be capable of building a “contending, championship-calibre team” for the 2025 season.

Toronto finished 20 games behind the eventual American League pennant winner, the New York Yankees, who scored 144 more runs and allowed 75 less runs than the Blue Jays this year.

3 biggest Blue Jays takeaways from the GM meetings

1. Payroll constraints might actually limit who the team can sign

According to Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi, given Shapiro said he didn’t see the payroll for next year “either growing or decreasing in a big way”, then that might be in the $230~235M range based on an end of 2024 competitive balance tax (CBT) payroll of $235M (based on Cot’s Baseball Contracts). That’s only $20~25M above their current projected CBT payroll for 2025 of $211M.

2. There doesn’t seem to be any urgency to ‘win’ the offseason

Despite very obvious needs to rebuild the bullpen, add power to the lineup and add starting pitching depth with Yusei Kikuchi traded and Alek Manoah recovering from UCL surgery, according to Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet, it appears unlikely the Blue Jays will be setting the market early: “… while the likes of [relievers Tanner] Scott, [Jeff] Hoffman, Clay Holmes and Carlos Estévez surely haven’t been crossed off [their list], the scenario where they land in Toronto is likely one where their markets develop more slowly than expected. In fact, that’s probably a good guess for the off-season as a whole, starters included… they have lots of needs to address and finite dollars at their disposal. That might mean they choose to stay patient now in the hopes that better deals emerge later.”

3. Ross Atkins is talking up “internal improvement” again

Sure Bo Bichette should be healthy again next year, and hopefully George Springer still has something left in the tank, but the starting pitchers will all be a year older, and they’ll be counting on Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to replicate a Silver Slugger worthy season at the plate. So it may cause some indigestion when fans hear what Atkins said at the GM meetings this past week: “If you just looked at our projections and the performance of players and did the math on that, you could make the case that we have 10 wins within our roster right now to close (the gap), if we deploy them appropriately and put them in the best positions to be successful.” Come again? Internal improvement for 10 wins when you missed the final Wild Card ticket by 12 games, and were 20 games back of the American League pennant winner?

Budget constraints?

To reiterate, the Blue Jays may only have $20-25M in payroll capacity to add players this offseason. That number could be higher should they not offer contracts to (non-tender) arbitration eligible players including closer Jordan Romano and relievers Erik Swanson, Dillon Tate and Zach Pop, who MLBTR projects would earn a combined ~$14M in arbitration salaries next year. They’ve already parted ways with lefty Génesis Cabrera, who was projected to earn $2.5M in 2025. The non-tender deadline is November 22.

Within that limited budget, they need to offer a long term contract extension to Guerrero, who’s projected to earn $30M in arbitration next year, rebuild the bullpen from scratch (especially if they cut ties with Romano), add at least one big bat (if not two), add a starter to bump Yariel Rodriguez to the bullpen, plus additional starting pitching and relief depth given a lack of MLB-ready arms down on the farm.

Payroll constraints could potentially limit their ability to go shopping at the top end of the free agent market, where 13 players received qualifying offers from their 2024 team. That list includes players who could really help Toronto field a contending, championship-calibre team next year: Juan Soto, Alex Bregman, Anthony Santander, Teoscar Hernández, Willy Adames, Pete Alonso, Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and Christian Walker.

And sadly, the fact that Toronto doesn’t have as much international bonus pool money as other teams, including the World Champion Dodgers, means they are unlikely to sign 23-year-old Japanese pitching phenom Roki Sasaki, who features some of the best pure stuff on earth.

Where’s the focus and urgency to ‘win’ the offseason?

Hot off the heels of an impressive run to the NLCS, David Stearns, the New York Mets president of baseball operations is laser focused on signing Juan Soto and Corbin Burnes. He has almost $70M in payroll capacity to work with before the Mets were to even trigger the luxury tax again above the $241M CBT threshold for next season.

But instead of a clear focus and urgency to improve his team like Stearns, we’re getting the same old status quo waffling about “info gathering” and “checking in” on free agents to understand the market from Atkins.

Recall that this front office did act early both in 2016, when they signed free agent Kendrys Morales on November 11 that year before Edwin Encarnación even had a chance to reject his qualifying offer, as well as in 2022, when they traded Teoscar Hernández to Seattle on November 16.

Encarnación’s agent at the time, Paul Kinzer, said the Blue Jays' signing of first baseman Morales to a three-year, $33M contract "came as a surprise."

"We weren't expecting them to move so quickly," he said, adding later that "we weren't going to make a move without talking to the Blue Jays."

So they can move quickly when they want to; that just doesn’t appear to be the case this year. Which comes across as an odd strategy when the needs are so obvious to even the most casual of fans. If there is a true commitment to fielding a contending, championship-calibre team again in 2025, there is much work ahead.

If they can’t sign one of the qualified free agents due to budget constraints, there are plenty of big names not attached to a QO, like Red Sox OF Tyler O’Neill and catcher Danny Jansen, Cardinals 1B Paul Goldschmidt, Dodgers RHPs Jack Flaherty and Walker Buehler, Guardians LHP Matthew Boyd and RHPs Shane Bieber and Alex Cobb, Padres closer Tanner Scott, OF Jurickson Profar and utility infielder Ha-Seong Kim, Astros LHP Yusei Kikuchi and Yankees 2B Gleyber Torres. This year’s free agent market is absolutely stacked with difference making talent.

The dreaded “internal improvement” rears its ugly head again

Yes, the Blue Jays finished 12 games behind the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers for the final two American League Wild Card slots this year. But shouldn’t this front office be aiming higher than that after nine seasons without an AL East title? The New York Yankees, who won both the AL East title and the American League pennant, were a full 20 games better than Toronto this year.

The Yankees hit 81 more home runs than Toronto in the regular season, and slugged another 22 postseason blasts. Their bullpen allowed 58 less runs than the Blue Jays in 15.2 more innings. In the American League, Royals, Astros, Mariners and Guardians relievers all allowed less runs than even New York. The younger Baltimore Orioles swatted 79 more dingers than the Blue Jays.

So to hear Ross Atkins make the case that the Blue Jays “have 10 wins within our roster right now to close [the gap], if we deploy them appropriately and put them in the best positions to be successful” does not inspire much confidence. After all, it was their flawed projections and analytics that predicted internal improvement for 2024, when we all know that the team regressed by 15 wins to a total of only 74.

In other words, 10 more wins doesn’t even get them back to the 89 wins they’d posted in 2023. And while this year was an outlier, 90+ wins are usually needed for a Wild Card berth. That implies the Blue Jays likely need a margin of at least 16 more wins to even win a Wild Card next year; and frankly, that’s a low bar for a team with a likely top ten MLB payroll again in 2025. Sadly the 2024-25 offseason is off to a slow start for a team that should be in a big hurry to fulfill the promise Shapiro made in August to build a contending, championship-caliber team for next year.