That’s Sho business, baby!

With apologies to Ben Wagner, Tyler Heineman, non-roster invitees, and all the other news items I wasn't able to get to in this one. It's Shohei time. (Plus a dash of Juan Soto for good measure).

Image via the Los Angeles Angels/@Angels

What kind of fans would we be if we couldn’t let our minds run at least a little bit wild at the possibility that the Blue Jays could actually land the biggest fish ever to swim in MLB’s free agent pond? Why even be a fan if an idea like that fills you with nothing but doubt and dread? Go learn to knit or something if that’s the case. You’ll be happier. And, for that matter, so will the rest of us.

Now, like anyone else, I’m not sure exactly how much of a chance the Blue Jays really have to convince Shohei Ohtani to take their money in the coming days. Even with chatter growing louder and louder as Monday’s opening of the league’s annual Winter Meetings in Nashville draws nearer, the possibility feels at the very best like a remote one. But there have been enough signs that the interest and the dollars are there that we’d be crazy not to take this somewhat seriously. Just maybe not so seriously as to get all red and mad if it doesn’t actually happen.

Though… man alive, they’re certainly making it difficult to remain calm, aren’t they?

Earlier here on Friday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the Dodgers, Cubs, Blue Jays, and Angels are “among those confirmed by sources to be still in the bidding” for Ohtani. The Giants, he says, are a maybe. The Rangers, Red Sox, and Mets “have turned their attention to other players, sources said.”

Later in the day, Passan’s L.A.-based colleague, Alden Gonzalez, laid this on us:

Ohtani signing during the winter meetings would definitely be MLB's preference, and at this point, that would be my guess too. Many have long speculated that Ohtani's free agency would play out relatively quickly, and I don't expect him to wait until Yoshinobu Yamamoto comes off the board to pick his new team. By next week, he might have a pretty good grasp of what he wants, as (at times) the winter meetings have a tendency of spurring action. At this point, I'd pick the Toronto Blue Jays to sign him, but it's tough to rule out the Dodgers or the Los Angeles Angels.

Oh, and the Jays are, according to the Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, pushing hard for Juan Soto, presumably in case the Ohtani thing doesn’t happen.

So… yeah. That’s pretty much where we’re at. No biggie. We’re just normal men.

It’s not every day that you get to talk about your team having a real shot at signing the greatest player in the history of the sport—and/or trading for maybe the best hitter of his generation—so I suppose we shouldn’t waste the opportunity.

The buzz, I’m afraid, is simply too real at this point to do otherwise…

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In addition to Passan’s reporting, Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith tells us that sources from outside the Blue Jays are also telling him that “they’re in a small group of clubs still pushing to land the two-time MVP.”

“Industry sources with knowledge of the process say the negotiations are entering their final stretch with a small group of teams expected to meet with the 29-year-old and his CAA Sports representatives in Los Angeles this weekend,” Ben tells us. And while neither he nor Passan are saying it in these terms, but it seems fair to surmise that a Jays contingent is probably already on its way to L.A., if it isn’t already there.

I know, I know, we’ve all encountered plenty of eyebrow-raising, clout-chasing whispers about this stuff already this week, but this is not that. Passan is as solid as it gets. So is Ben—and so, I should add, are his Sportsnet colleagues, despite what your uncle who hates Rogers and has a child’s conception of how the media works might try to tell you.

How seriously the Jays will be taken when they make their pitch is another question, as is how far they’ll be able to stretch to compete with the Dodgers’ offer and still take back a business case that makes sense to Edward Rogers and company, but it certainly seems like they’re going to take a real crack.

That Gonzalez considers them some kind of a favourite is definitely interesting, but it also very much seems like just a guess— which, I suppose, is all anyone can do at that point.

I hate to say it but, personally, my guess would still be that the Toronto Blue Jays are not likely about to sign the greatest baseball player in the universe for the next decade or so. But I think it would be a mistake to believe, as many Jays fans seem to, that they might only be received as a courtesy, and to drive Ohtani’s price up for the “real” suitors.

This front office has put together some genuine wins in terms of recruitment over the years. They pushed beyond where the (pre-Steve Cohen) Mets were willing to go and managed to sign George Springer, despite much of that winter’s chatter being about his preference to play near his Connecticut home. They reportedly got Kevin Gausman to sign with them for less money than the Mets were offering (though that may have been a “leak” strategically designed to give that club a P.R. win after falling short). They were very quickly able to get José Berríos convinced to take a long-term extension after acquiring him in trade. Landing in-demand executives like James Click and Ben Cherington, and coaches like Don Mattingly and DeMarlo Hale also speaks well to the Jays’ ability on this front. Even going as far back as when Bo Bichette was drafted in 2016, they’ve been able to convince players that this is an organization that understands them, wants to win, and can help them thrive.

Obviously that doesn’t mean they get the player they want every time. Their track record isn’t perfect, and Ross Atkins said exactly as much earlier this week when meeting with members of the local BBWAA chapter. Shi Davidi helpfully quoted tons of what Ross said that day in an excellent piece on the event, and it turns out the GM was actually saying more than only that...

“We've missed out on players. We've come in second, we've come in fifth, we've come in between. And sometimes we haven't been heavily in or heavily considered. I don't think that has been for reasons that we can control. I think it is in large part over the last several years been for very personal reasons if we've missed out, but because of the support we have from ownership, this absolutely incredible city and market and fan-base, a winning environment, a winning team, the best resources in baseball in Dunedin, about to be the best resources in baseball in Toronto for a player to improve and grow, this is an attractive destination that we are trying to celebrate, as opposed to overcome.”

If this isn’t a direct sales pitch to Ohtani, Atkins is at least speaking with deep awareness that his camp will be listening in. Ohtani has had his choice of where to play once before, and by all accounts wasn’t especially interested in the Jays or their particular geography. Atkins is making clear here that he completely understands and respects that decision. He’s also reminding him that this is a club that has some of the newest, most state-of-the-art facilities in baseball at their player development complex in Dunedin, and are about to have much the same in Toronto.

That last bit is key.

“With these renovations we tend to focus a lot on the seating and the outfield districts, and all that great stuff for fans,” explained Arden Zwelling on this week’s episode of Sportsnet’s At the Letters podcast. “All that stuff is super and wonderful. But there's a lot of work being done behind the scenes as well, to improve facilities and training resources for players. They're redoing the entire clubhouse, the batting cages a couple years ago were completely redone, the weight room's been redone. The Blue Jays' goal is to build out a lot of what they have—a lot of the facilities that they have in Dunedin—in Toronto. At Rogers Centre. So the players can utilize that stuff in-season. And that's a lot of what's going on with this renovation right now. It's really kind of underneath the hood. Stuff that fans might not ever see.”

This, Arden suggests, could be extremely important to someone like Ohtani, who he paints—based on some time getting to know him in Japan for a Sportsnet Magazine story several years ago, before he’d made the jump to MLB—as someone intensely involved in every aspect of his training, his preparation, his diet.

“I'll never forget talking to one of his strength people there in Japan,” Arden said. “They were like, ‘Man, it's remarkable, this guy just—he works out all day, and then he goes back to the dorms, and he reads about how to work out better tomorrow.’”

Now, we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that the Blue Jays are the only team out there with great facilities, an army of nutritionists, High Performance staff, or whatever else. The Dodgers wouldn’t be the Dodgers without huge investments behind the scenes. But the Jays have been very clear that their goal is to make their facilities a differentiator, and a significant part of that has to do with recruitment.

“There’s going to be a lot of things that we can’t control that happen within the sphere of our existence,” Mark Shapiro told reporters back in May, including Kaitlyn McGrath of the Athletic, while giving a tour of the club’s new weight room, bullpens, barber shop, and family lounge. “The nature of our competitors, the CBA, exchange rate. But if you commit the resources, which ownership has done, you put the time and thought into really being thoughtful rather than just checking boxes and building spaces, it can be a competitive advantage for you both in recruiting players and helping our players stay on the field.”

When phase two of the renovations is completed this spring, the Jays will have added the biggest clubhouse in baseball to their list of new player-friendly toys. Another selling point.

As Shapiro says, the team can only control what it can control, but there’s little reason to believe these Jays aren’t doing an incredibly good job with this stuff. Look at the quotes from players in any reporting on the club’s facilities and the excitement is plain to see.

And while all of this effort has obviously not simply been about recruiting one generational talent, it’s kind of interesting how the timing of some of factors has worked out, isn’t it?

Like the way that Yusei Kikuchi’s then-surprising three-year deal has ended up with him as a member of the Blue Jays, and a key potential recruiter, in this very moment. Or how Bo and Vlad have not yet locked up a ton of long-term dollars. Or that for the first time ever the club has shown a willingness to take payroll beyond CBT threshold. Or how the Jays continue to make concerted efforts—including, as Shi reports, Atkins travelling to Japan to see current free agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto “multiple times”—to take players from Asian markets far more seriously than the club did a decade ago, and to really get to know those players. Or even the way that drafting Arjun Nimmala this summer has given them the look right now—more than maybe it ever will—of an organization genuinely poised to become global brand.

There’s definitely a pitch to be made here. A very serious one, I think.

Maybe even a compelling one, if the money is equal, if geography truly doesn’t matter, if Ohtani feels the spotlight of being on L.A.’s more glamourous club might burn a bit too brightly, and if he’s more convinced than a lot of Jays fans are that the commitment to winning that Rogers has shown recently is for real. And considering the payroll, the renos, the quality of the team the last few years, and the fact that they’re willing to be in on these Ohtani sweepstakes in the first place, I don’t think that last bit is out of the question.

So… we’ll see.

It probably won’t work out. It may indeed end up that the are simply being used to drive up the price, which Passan’s piece already suggests may go beyond $550 million USD. They may have to pivot from their “unicorn budget” and follow an offseason path that will look far, far less spectacular than seems possible right now. The rest of our winter may be dominated by the insufferable squawking of cranky pissbabies. But who the hell cares? Like, so then what? So they shouldn’t try?

I completely understand the fear of having our hopes dashed, but unlike about 25 other fan bases, we don’t have to think about that yet. That alone says a lot about how far this franchise has come in the Shapiro/Atkins era, whether this thing happens or not. Clearly it’s a long shot. But it’s not bullshit.

Meanwhile…

Returning to Shi’s piece on the BBWAA event earlier in the week, maybe the most substantive tidbit came from the author himself:

“Factor in that the Blue Jays are currently seeking five-year commitments from buyers of their new premium seating – at tens of thousands of dollars per seat, with a two-per-cent bump annually – and there’s a lot riding on who they add in the coming weeks,” he wrote.

For reasons like this it just doesn’t seem plausible to me that the Jays could justify coming through this winter without drastically shifting the excitement level that fans, rightly or wrongly, have for the current roster. Atkins spoke of the “window that we want to lean into” and “the urgency of that roster construction, to complement it the best way.”

An offseason headlined by Rhys Hoskins and Jeimer Candelario is not going to cut it, I don’t think.

Enter, for the moment, Juan Soto.

The 25-year-old Padres star is, like Ohtani, a player I don’t even feel the need to build the case for. He is among the biggest talents in the sport, full stop. He’s not Ohtani, and he would only be a one-year rental, but he would obviously be a fantastic addition to the Jays’ lineup.

At the moment, a lot of chatter has linked the Yankees to Soto, but Rosenthal notes that the two sides were “far apart on a a deal” as of Friday afternoon. “The Padres are seeking a big, multi-player return for Soto, including major-league-ready or near major-league-ready pitching, according to an official with one of the clubs interested.”

He brings up Clarke Schmidt and Michael King as potential candidates from New York, while suggesting that Alek Manoah, Ricky Tiedemann, and Bowden Francis could be names that would intrigue San Diego from the Jays' roster.

I'd bet they would! Though for me only Francis feels like fair value for the privilege of having to pay Soto $30 million before watching him head into full free agency in a year. Rosenthal notes this as well, but counters it by pointing out that the Jays are “under pressure to win.”

And that’s just the thing. At some point—maybe inevitably—that’s going to mean getting out of their comfort zone. That’s why we’re seeing the willingness to play in Ohtani’s ballpark, the rumblings about Yamamoto even though their rotation looks set, the Bellinger talk, the Soto talk, and maybe even to an extent the Bo Bichette talk.

Giving up Manoah for Soto would certainly not be a comfortable move for the Blue Jays, especially because as a Scott Boras client he seems highly unlikely to sign a contract extension. But if the Jays do miss on Ohtani—an incredible sentence to seriously write, I’ve gotta tell you—adding Soto would at least ensure that the Yankees don’t get him, and that the Jays can be at the front of the line when the bidding war starts next winter. And if they really do have some kind of new financial reality, and what we’re hearing this week isn’t just an Ohtani-sized exception, why shouldn’t they believe they can go out and win it?

It would be tough to swallow, but maybe not as much as it seems on first blush. And, more importantly, so will whatever they end up having to do. And though it’s not an easy place to be in, we can at least take a little bit of comfort in knowing that we’ve seen them thread these sorts of needles before.

When they needed to start looking serious, they landed Ryu. When the 2020 team arrived a little sooner than expected and they need to build on it, here comes George Springer. When they needed another top starter down the stretch in ‘21, they went out and got Berríos. When Robbie Ray and Marcus Semien needed to be replaced, they landed Gausman and Matt Chapman. When Berríos and Kikuchi faltered in ‘22 they sacked up and paid for Chris Bassitt.

This is why I really do think it’s likely they’re throwing everything they’ve got at Ohtani—who is such an unbelievably perfect fit for this roster and situation.

Of course, as plans A, B, C, and D fall by the wayside, the degree of difficulty will get higher. The steps beyond their comfort zone a little longer. Ross may have to get especially creative.

And though we obviously don’t want it to get to that—PLAN A, PLEASE—maybe that brings Bo into the picture. His two cost-controlled years remaining certainly look incredibly valuable in a league where a bunch of teams have major financial questions due to the collapsing RSN market.

Two years of Bo for one of Soto doesn’t work for us, but what if we took one of those Bogaerts or Machado deals off your hands, EH PADRES? JUST HOW DESPERATE FOR CASH ARE YOU??

OK, OK, those two deals have full no-trade clauses in them, and like all mega-contracts don’t look as good now as they did the day they were signed, so let’s just move on and forget I said anything. But let’s absolutely not forget that things could still get very weird here. And, if all else fails, maybe even should.

Or even if it doesn’t! I mean, nothing says weird quite like Shohei potentially in a Blue Jays uniform, amiright???

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