BURSTDALLAS — Regardless of the outcome, the Toronto Blue Jays’ pursuit of Juan Soto, a year after the similarly ambitious courtship of Shohei Ohtani, is a crossing of the Rubicon for the franchise.
In decades past, the staggering financial commitments needed to land such superstars would have represented an immediate barrier to entry for the organization. Think back to how former general managers Gord Ash, J.P. Ricciardi and Alex Anthopoulos — the latter of whom only a decade ago nearly signed Ervin Santana after five star players offered to defer salaries to fund the move — had their hands tied by limited spending power.
So merely bidding for the likes of Ohtani and Soto would have been unfathomable for those regimes, as you can’t take a seat at the big-boy table without enough money to buy in.
Now, though, the Blue Jays no longer have that excuse, as they clearly have the financial resources to compete for any free agent they believe in enough, and the shift’s implications are significant.
First and foremost, that places the onus squarely on the front office to not just drive up the price for the winning club, as may very well have happened with Soto’s industry-shifting $765-million, 15-year agreement with the New York Mets, but to find ways to land the player.
Easier said than done, of course, as sometimes free agents are locked in on a city or region or coast, for personal or professional reasons, and there’s nothing that can be done to sway them.
Ohtani, for instance, needed Los Angeles for his off-field business interests and the other clubs pursuing him really were competing to be the first option if the Dodgers stumbled, and they didn’t stumble.
In Soto’s case, while the belief is that he’s wanted to end up in New York all along, perhaps there was more opportunity to lure him elsewhere, with he and powerful agent Scott Boras seeking a contract that would push salaries forward across the industry.
Even then, to capitalize on such opportunities, non-marquee teams need to have the other prime elements — good major-league team, strong farm system, good organizational reputation — in place.
Lined up against the incumbent Yankees, cross-town Mets, ascendant Red Sox and World Series champion Dodgers, the Blue Jays lag in each category.
Let’s start with the big-league roster.
While GM Ross Atkins told reporters last week “it does not feel like” his club’s 74-88 stumble in 2024 “has hurt us in our pursuit of free agents,” any player considering the Blue Jays can look at the core’s expiring window and rightly wonder what they’re signing up for.
The unresolved long-term status of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, both potential free agents next winter sure to be benefit from the goalpost-moving Soto deal, plays directly into that. Even if they had signed Soto, their hopes of competing over an extended period would have rested on extending the duo or finding suitable replacements.
And you don’t have to be a free agent in Soto’s stratosphere to be thinking along those lines. One agent who has talked to the Blue Jays was asked by his mid-market clients to gauge whether the team was really trying to win.
Not an ideal starting point.
Then, layer in that of the five teams involved, the only other contender not in the playoffs this year, the Red Sox, is sitting on one of the deepest farm systems in baseball and has Rafael Devers locked up long term. The Blue Jays, on the other hand, at least based on third-party rankings, have the worst farm system of the group, so there isn’t a wave of talent ready to resupply and level up the big-league roster.
Finally, between the Jose Berrios debacle in Game 2 of the 2023 post-season, last year’s 74-88 wipeout and industry questions about the club’s long-term direction, some of the supportive tissue needed to lure top players away from top clubs in free agency isn’t helping to close the gap the way it needs to be.
To a reasonable extent, all of the above is within a front office’s control, which is why at this crucial juncture for the franchise, a clearer vision for what’s next is essential.
One rival executive, for instance, asked if the expectation was for the Blue Jays to be especially active, said, “from what I hear, they’re in on everyone.”
Other executives have said similar things, while there are also suggestions of a more patient approach — not jumping the market and letting opportunities develop before acting.
In that way, so far this off-season, they’ve been anything and everything someone else wants them to be.
That’s not the posture you want to be projecting, as just because a team has the money to bid for prime free agents, it doesn’t mean it’s going to get them.
Take the San Francisco Giants the past few winters, who finished as runners-up for Aaron Judge, Ohtani and others under former president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, who struggled to get top talent to take the team’s money. His recently hired replacement, former All-Star catcher Buster Posey, has tried to reshape the organization’s vision and already this winter reached agreement with one of the market’s top free agents, shortstop Willy Adames, on a $182-million, seven-year contract.
Soto, like Ohtani, was a shot worth taking, but now the Blue Jays must pivot in a far more effective way than they did a year ago, revitalizing an organization that needs to either extend its core or reset it.
For a franchise that for years didn’t compete for such top-of-market free agents, it’s up to the front office to take advantage of these new pathways.
