Stray Thoughts... - Atkins Speaks, Soto Decides

Atkins on the Special Juan (sort of), the competitive window, Jordan Romano, plus the latest Soto chatter, new coaches, minor moves, Sasaki, Teoscar, Vlad, prospects, and a whole lot more!

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Forgive a little bit of navel-gazing off the top here folks, but whenever anything to do with the BBWAA—the Baseball Writers’ Association of America—comes across my desk, a paraphrase of that famous, old, and never quite precisely written Groucho Marx quote flickers in my brain: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have Steve Simmons or Rosie DiManno as a member.”

HEYO!

Even though the 2025 season will somehow be my eighteenth covering Blue Jays baseball, and my sixteenth doing so full-time since joining theScore in late 2008, I’ve never been a member of the BBWAA. I’ve never asked to be, I’ve never been asked, I’ve never looked into it myself, and I’ve never had it looked into on my behalf by an employer, despite working for a number of accredited organizations over the years.

This, I assure you, is not a complaint. I could have filled out the dang form at some point if I’d really wanted to, and maybe even been granted membership. But it’s never been necessary for me since I don’t do my work in the press box, and I’m more than happy not to have to think about voting on awards, having a Hall of Fame ballot, or anything like that.

So, why bring it up? Well, first of all, because it’s fun to take potshots at Simmons and DiManno. But also because the local BBWAA chapter had a meeting this week to name their annual award winners—Zzzzzz—and, as is tradition, they were paid a visit by GM Ross Atkins. Had I been there, you’d already be reading an “Atkins Speaks” piece here. But, obviously, I was not.

Ross won’t be getting off quite so easy, though. In addition to many excellent things that have already been written based around his quotes by reporters who were there, we have one from theScore’s Brandon Wile, which seems to simply provide Aktins’ full comments verbatim. Or at least a bunch of them. MY HERO!

Now, I could just copy-and-paste those quotes in full, add in my reactions, and we’d have ourselves a proper post. Unfortunately, I think that would be a shitty thing to do—and I’d think that even if I didn’t happen like a whole bunch of people at theScore or still think back very fondly on the years I spent there myself. I’d like you to give Brandon’s post a click. So I’m only going to go through some highlights below.

In other words, here’s (an abbreviated version of) Atkins Speaks! Followed by today’s Stray Thoughts…

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Atkins Speaks!

I’m on Soto, so leave me alone

Understandably, the conversation with reporters began with questions about Juan Soto and the club’s second winter in a row going after a player who is about to sign a record-breaking contract. Atkins didn’t offer much about that specifically, so we'll skip it here and move on to part of what he said about managing fan expectations while in pursuit of another lofty long shot via free agency.

“We understand that certain pursuits may create a level of excitement, and then that may intensify the level of disappointment. But I don't know a better way to pursue it than to do the best possible job we can to improve our team.”

Ross is absolutely not wrong here. A ridiculous number of fans have become so utterly terrified of disappointment that they have managed to get it in their heads that the Jays are only ever going to get played by agents using their bids for leverage—which, by the way, is how the free agent process works necessarily and for everyone. But the team should unquestionably be doing everything it can to go after the best talent available. It would be offensive if they didn’t. I’m offended on behalf of fans of all the other teams whose executives have basically already come out and said they’ll only be getting crumbs.

What the Jays are doing, even if it’s tough to watch and will almost certainly end in more heartbreak, is a whole lot better than that kind of trash. And fans here would do well to remember that Kevin Gausman wasn’t just using the Blue Jays for leverage. George Springer could have stayed much closer to his Connecticut home and gone with the Mets, but he took the Jays’ bigger offer. Chris Bassitt wasn’t without suitors, and nor was Hyun Jin Ryu.

This feels like it shouldn’t have to be said! And yet I understand that we live in a world where people out there are actually talking themselves out of wanting a Juan Soto at all—a player who has been a 26-year-old for fewer than six weeks and already has a higher career fWAR than José Bautista!—so… I guess it actually does.

That said, it is nevertheless funny for a man to talk about doing “the best possible job we can to improve our team” when it’s been less than a year since the offseason “haul” of Kiermaier, Turner, and IKF. Fortunately, with more teams involved in the Soto chase, and it seemingly nearing a much earlier end, there appear to be a lot more appealing options to pivot to this winter after the inevitable happens.

It’s a Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad World

We next have a question about what the front office is trying to accomplish this winter and why fans should be excited for that, which provokes from Ross a list of good stories the club had despite a rough 2024 overall—Vlad, Bowden Francis, the system-replenishing deadline trades—and ends up on the hopeful side of realistic: “We could be in a stronger position but it is, by no means, one that could not build into a contender.”

Ross is then asked if an extension for Vlad would change the tone of conversations with prospective free agents, which ends up in a similar place as the previous answer, though maybe an even more overly hopeful one if the subtext is about Soto specifically.

“I think what I can tell you is that we have had a good number of players that like this market, they love this city, they love this country. They’ve seen the success this group has had. Obviously, they’re also aware that we’re coming off a disappointing year, but I don't think that’s been anything that has been an inhibitor.”

I mean… the main guy you seem to be chasing hasn’t signed yet, and you haven’t signed anyone else who has come off the board, so how would you know whether that’s an inhibitor, really?

Like, I’m obviously fully against the awful kind of flood-the-zone-with-negativity thing that some people do to try to keep their brains—or, when they’re real cretins, to keep other people—from ever feeling all those scary feelings of hope, but there is simply no way it isn’t a whole lot easier to sell the market, the city, the country, and the success the group has had when the team isn’t coming off of an awful season, or it doesn’t look like a year from now its most dynamic offensive player might well be Spencer Horwitz.

The right player with the right kind of open mind could certainly be sold on the largesse of ownership or the fact that a normal season from Bo and a bullpen that’s merely average, instead of catastrophic, will very quickly add back a whole lot of wins for this team. And putting money into that player’s own pocket will go a long way to convincing him to get on board. Like, I’m not saying nobody would ever sign here—that some fans have convinced themselves the industry thinks the team is as much of a joke as they dumbly do themselves is, to put it politely, misguided—and I’m not saying I expect Atkins would or should acknowledge the problem in public. But this feels… uh… untrue. EXTEND HIM!

Sho-hei the Mon-hei

We next have a couple of questions relating back to last year’s Ohtani fiasco. One is about teams looking to add deferred money, and the other about whether there are lessons from the Ohtani negotiations that Atkins is taking forward into this winter.

On the first point he basically says that it depends on the player, and it certainly doesn’t seem as though he's opposed to the idea. I don't really have much to add to that. But on the second one he said this:

“As we become a group of people working together, we get better at talking about that, get better at presenting that, and get better at trying to execute to the best of our ability.”

Dog, you've been here nine years! Literally, the ninth anniversary of Atkins’ introductory press conference is this week. And while a whole lot of the issue fans have with the way he communicates is bad faith nitpicking that often boils down to “please do spin at me better,” I… I just… imagine Brian Cashman or Andrew Friedman saying something like this!

Anyway, to contrast that, a little later—note: I’m skipping a question that I’ll address in a section for miscellaneous stuff below—he was asked about the perception that some players don’t want to play in Toronto, and gave a much more thoughtful answer. Here’s part of it:

“Some people don't want to go to Texas either, or they really prefer to be in California, or they really prefer a Florida spring training. I’ve long said that I feel the Dominican and Venezuelan players transition better through Florida just because of the air, they’re used to the tackiness of the ball, they’re used to humidity. There’s a different Latin American community on the West Coast than there is on the East Coast. It’s just so individual and so nuanced. I do not see that as something that we would ever use as an excuse.”

Great points, and stuff we don’t always necessarily see in analysis. Plus, yeah, Ohtani clearly wanted to be in California. And Soto, it seems, may be one of those guys who prefers a Florida spring. Fingers crossed, at least.

Competitive wind-ouch!

Here’s the one place I’ll give a full quote, because this jumped out at me in a bad way. Asked whether he expects the team will be able to extend its competitive window, here was Atkins’ response:

We’re certainly going to try to. Nothing’s a slam dunk and nothing is guaranteed, but we certainly feel that’s possible, and it’s definitely our goal.

I would say probably right now, as it stands, we're better situated offensively from the trade pieces we acquired last year. Jake Bloss is a very intriguing piece for us, but we acquired a good number of position players that have impact on both sides of the ball with upside. So I think that group has more depth, and we see a good number of opportunities in both markets via free agency and trade.

Not the moment I’d have chosen for sullen realism, or whatever anyone wants to call this. But you do you, Ross. You do you.

Romano cheese

The Jays’ most significant move so far this winter has been their decision to walk away from Jordan Romano, their long-tenured, homegrown, GTA-born closer. Naturally that was asked about, and naturally Atkins called it a “very difficult decision on a personal level.”

But the real answer as to why this happened, of course, came down to money and health.

From a business standpoint, we have to operate as one. So we remain interested in him, and will be heavily pursuing his return, and hope that’s a potential reality.

I have no concerns (about his health). I feel like he will be back physically. We have no medical concerns.

Now, when I said above that I think the quotes were looking at are only most of what Atkins said during the meeting, what I was really thinking about was this. In his latest mail bag—yes, there’s a fresh Griffbag in the world!—Richard Griffin had a slightly different version of this same answer:

“We remain interested in him and will be heavily pursuing his return and hoping that’s a potential reality. You know the rules on the maximum cut and what we felt was realistic based on the dialogue we had, we felt like the pursuit after he’s a free agent was best for both parties. There are no concerns that he will (not) be back physically.”

The “maximum cut” thing here is the fact that arbitration-eligible players can only take a pay cut of 20% through that process. And that’s not only if he goes all the way to an arbitrator. Per the CBA:

A Club may not tender, sign or renew a Player under reserve to the Club pursuant to Article XX(A) of this Agreement and paragraph 10(a) of the Uniform Player’s Contract to a Uniform Player’s Contract that provides a salary for:

(a) Major League service that constitutes a reduction in excess of 20% of his salary for Major League service in the previous season or in excess of 30% of his salary for Major League service two seasons prior to the first season covered by the new contract.

I’ve emphasized “under reserve to the Club” because obviously free agents don’t have the same sorts of rights. Had the Jays tendered Romano a contract they’d have only been able to cut his salary to about $6.2 million—80% of his $7.75 million projection, per MLBTR. Now that he’s a free agent they’ll be able to get more creative.

Hopefully they genuinely will be “heavily pursuing his return,” because it really would be a shame for the club to lose him, and at a more reasonable price he's a great option to take a flier on.

That said, I still have a hard time believing the line about there being no medical concerns. Romano at full strength would make plenty of sense at $7.75 million, and I can’t help but notice that in both versions of the quote, Atkins is—shock of shocks!—a little ambiguous in what he’s saying on this. I think he’s pretty clearly saying that he has no long-term concerns, and no concerns that he will be back, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he thinks he’ll be back to start the season. And if they think he’s only going to be able to give them, say, four months instead of the full six, that’s obviously going to have to be reflected in any offer the team might make.

Of course, I also doubt that, legally, Atkins could even admit it if the club did have medical concerns. Especially now that Romano is a free agent.

Medical disclosure is no small thing. Here’s part of an Atkins Speaks post I wrote back in August 2023, during the Alek Manoah not-reporting-to-Buffalo saga…

Remember COVID? Medical disclosure became a big issue back in 2020 and 2021 because of it, and because of the language about it in the league’s collective bargaining agreement with the players’ association. Here’s Article XIII(G)(4) of the Basic Agreement:

4) For public relations purposes, a Club may disclose the following general information about employment-related injuries: (a) the nature of a Player’s injury, (b) the prognosis and the anticipated length of recovery from the injury, and (c) the treatment and surgical procedures undertaken or anticipated in regard to the injury. For any other medical condition that prevents a Player from rendering services to his Club, a Club may disclose only the fact that a medical condition is preventing the Player from rendering services to the Club and the anticipated length of the Player’s absence from the Club.

Like… that’s it. That’s really all they can say.

Bits and Bobs…

• Asked if signing a top-tier starting pitcher was a contingency or a priority, Atkins basically went with neither. “It's more a great outcome,” he said while noting there are other ways to make the club better.

• He declined to say anything of note about Roki Sasaki and whether his eventual arrival would deter the club from signing a player who rejected a qualifying offer (which would reduce their amount of available international bonus pool money).

• “I think we could do something tomorrow, or it could also take more days. It could could take weeks before a move actually happens.”

• Asked about timing and if Soto is holding up things up for them he said...

Actually that felt like most answers, honestly. OK, moving on!

Soto Album

Juan Soto is going to be making a decision on his next team very soon, and that’s really the extent of what anybody knows—likely including Soto himself.

Anything that’s out there about this is therefore garbage. But, as long as the Jays are in it, it’s beautiful, beautiful garbage—not unlike the gorgeous December snowfall right now being experienced in parts of southern Ontario, which, of course, will soon turn to slush, and ice, and brown, and February, and an early provincial election that pleases no one but the dumbest people in the world, and all manner of cruelty and wretchedness.

Enjoy the your last taste of relevance for a while, Jays fans! Here’s what’s out there regarding Soto as of Wednesday evening…

• ESPN’s Jeff Passan went on the TV on Wednesday and said that the teams we think are in—the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, and Dodgers—are in.

“The expectation is that there will be meetings over the weekend, and it's that point Juan Soto will decide where he's going to go. And we will know, at latest, by the time the Winter Meetings in Dallas start.”

The Winter Meetings officially begin this coming Monday, December 9th, and run until Thursday the 12th. Really, though, everybody will start arriving Sunday and most teams will have their bags packed by the time the Rule 5 Draft is set to go on Wednesday at noon central.

• SNY's Andy Martino, who was one of the main characters in my Soto-flavoured post earlier in the week, was slightly ahead of Passan in suggesting that a deal isn’t quite as imminent as others had been saying on Tuesday. He added: “The basic dynamic remains similar to what we reported on Monday: Toronto is widely believed to be the most aggressive financially, but a less likely landing spot. The Mets, Yankees and Red Sox are all in hot pursuit of Soto.”

• An executive told the New York Post’s Joel Sherman that the Blue Jays are “on tilt”—something he reported both in print and on video. From the video with Dan O'Dowd:

SHERMAN: “You mention Toronto. An executive I was talking to is kind of monitoring this situation, yesterday said, ‘Toronto's on tilt.’ That's how they’re going, and it should be remembered, they offered the same $700 million to Ohtani last year that the Dodgers did. Without the deferrals. So there is a willingness to go to a place.

“The question that I’ll always have here is: I believe a player has a right to prioritize whatever he wants in free agency. He's earned free agency by playing six major league seasons. And if the last dollar is your goal, that is fine to me. Whatever. But I talked to Soto enough during the season, Dan, where I thought, you know, this guy has a sense of history and where his place might be as an historic hitter. And I hate to be provincial—and I won't, because I'll add Boston to it, I'll add the Cubs to it, I'll add the Dodgers, I'll add the Phillies. There are places you can be historic. I'm not sure Toronto is one of those places if you're trying to be, like, thought of as Ted Williams of your generation. And I wonder if that works against Toronto in some way. I wonder if it worked against Toronto with Ohtani.”

First of all, that's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. Second of all, fuck you. Third, curious that you’re not mentioning the Mets here, Joel.

Fortunately, Sherman’s cohost brought some sense back to the program… eventually. And actually said something pretty interesting toward the end, re: the highest bidder.

O’DOWD: I think you're 100% correct, Joel. First of all, I think it’s a beautiful city, it’s a gigantic baseball market, but from a historic perspective, it’s just not the same lure as the Yankees, for example.

I just, like, with Juan’s comments immediately after the World Series, ‘Hey, I’m open for business and I'll go anywhere.’ I realize that was Scott (Boras), probably—a lot of that was making sure he said the right things to present as many different options as he possibly can. I just, I’ve been around players in my career I knew from day one were going to chase the last dollar—and I didn't care about that, I just knew that that was important to them. That, in some way, equalled a sense of self-worth and, what you said, a recognition, historically in the game.

I always felt that he fell into that category.

I guess time will tell whether that's true or not. But I do believe Toronto will make an offer that's right there, where the Mets are. I think they're going to be the two highest bidders in this process.

• Ken Rosenthal, Evan Drellich, and Brendan Kuty of the Athletic gave us more of the same kind of speculation we've been hearing for weeks on Wednesday morning:

The Mets are widely regarded as the favorite for Soto, with many in the industry believing the team’s owner, Steve Cohen, will top any rival bid. But the Yankees desperately want to keep Soto as a complement to Judge, and the Red Sox have emerged as a surprising force in the negotiations. The Blue Jays and Dodgers are considered longer shots, though the Jays were willing to match the Dodgers’ bid for Ohtani last offseason, and seem to be just as intently focused on Soto.

• TSN’s Scott Mitchell refuses to throw cold water entirely on the idea, as he puts Soto atop his list of the Jays’ top free agent hitting targets and tells us this:

The interest is real, as is the ability to meet his financial demands.

Will Soto choose the city of Toronto and the Jays? That seems to be the only question.

It would be a shocking decision for those south of the border and it might rattle the baseball world for a while, but it’s on the bingo card at least.

• David Vassegh, an L.A. based reporter who hosts “Dodger Talk” for the Dodgers’ official radio partner, AM 570 LA Sports, in addition to doing work for SportsNet LA (the Dodgers’ local TV network) and MLB Network, had this to say in a radio hit late on Wednesday:

“Andrew Friedman and Brandon Gomes did do their due diligence and met with Scott Boras and Juan Soto. My understanding is this is nearing a close, and the Toronto Blue Jays have made a serious offer, the New York Mets have made a serious offer, and the Yankees may be on the outside looking in here. I know a lot of people thought Big Papi with his Santa Claus type of laugh was going to lure Juan Soto to Boston. I don't know the exact numbers, but my understanding is it's coming down to the wire and it wouldn't surprise me if Juan Soto signed before the Winter Meetings started on Sunday.”

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think that a lot of what we’re hearing seems suspiciously geared toward getting the Yankees to up their bid so that Soto can stay in a place where he’s already very comfortable, but… well… on the off chance that’s not what this is, it sounds pretty good to me!

Quickly…

• The Jays made it official on Tuesday evening that they’ve signed light-hitting infielder Michael Stefanic to a minor league contract with an invite to big league Spring Training. They also noted that they've done the same with RHP Kevin Gowdy.

Nick and I discussed Stefanic briefly on last week’s Blue Jays Happy Hour, coming down on him as a very Jays-y guy—good bat-to-ball skills, hard to strike out, good on-base, no power, but offers the kind of defensive versatility they so love, and provides depth in case they end up moving some of their other bat-first, non-premium-position IF/OF types for, say, bullpen help over the course of the winter.

Gowdy, meanwhile, is joining his fourth organization since being drafted by the Phillies in the second round way back in 2016. He's yet to pitch in the big leagues, spending last year as a Triple-A reliever for the Dodgers while putting up some fairly pedestrian numbers. Presumably the Jays see something they like there, but there certainly isn’t a whole lot to be found in his traditional stats to get excited about.

• Also made official, in this case by way of Atkins’ confirmation, was the appointment of a pair of coaches. Graham Johnson moves from Yankees organization, where he'd been the pitching coach at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for the last three years, into the Jays’ bullpen coach role, and Lou Ionnatti comes over from the Dodgers organization to be a second assistant coach, along with Hunter Mense, under new lead hitting coach David S. Popkins. TSN’s Scott Mitchell first reported the latter move earlier in the week.

• I noted this in a post last month, but given that we’ve got another Dodgers hire, I think it’s worth repeating some of what Kevin Kiermaier told the Star’s Mike Wilner about his experience in L.A. after the season:

“The Dodgers are on a different level. Like the advanced scouting reports from a position player standpoint, I was blown away in our first meeting (after reporting to the team) in Oakland.

“It was just so on point and just everything we needed. The way the coaches went about it and blew through it and just gave us all the information we needed, it was like poetry to me, in a way. I (had) never been a part of a meeting like that.”

• Atkins also gave reporters some updates on injured Jays big leaguers who are working their way back to health:

• Baseball America released their annual list of the top 10 Blue Jays prospects this week. It's not a list with a ton of surprises, but what is surprising is the way that one of their writers—Geoff Pontes, who hosted a chat about the list not long after it dropped on Tuesday—views the system as it's currently constituted.

YOWZA!

• This “golden at-bat” rule that’s being floated lately by Rob Manfred is too dumb to even bother having a take on, but it’s extremely funny to me that anybody thinks it would be saved for ninth inning drama and not, like, constantly, maddeningly used in the sixth inning against an opponents’ worst leverage reliever with a runner on first and no outs or something. Thumbs down.

• Francys Romero tweets that “several industry sources believe the San Diego Padres are in a strong position to land Japanese ace Roki Sasaki.” I don’t think that even rises to the level of a rumour, to be honest. Though maybe that’s just because I prefer this a whole lot better:

• Some of the more dubious “insiders” out there seem to be thinking that the Dodgers’ reunion with Teoscar Hernández is soon to become official. As someone who’d very much prefer it if Teo waits until the Jays miss out on Soto before signing somewhere, I’m going to choose not to believe this just yet. (Though I understand why the Dodgers would want to get a Teo deal done before a team like the Jays might pivot toward him—though my sense has always been that Jays fans want to see him back quite a bit more than the team itself does.)

• Gonna have to go ahead and agree with myself on this one. (Also, get on BlueSky, for real. So many fewer morons, so many better ways to keep from seeing morons, and to keep morons from interacting with you. Plus, people actually see it when you post links. There’s still much more Blue Jays news on Twitter at the moment, but it doesn’t feel far from a tipping point. You can, and should, follow me over there.)

• Lastly, yes. A billion-million times yes.

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