What happens long-term if the Jays continue to disappoint?

The Jays are a luxury tax team for the first time in 2023, and without some more player development wins they'll have to stay one if they want to keep this thing going. (Plus a note on Anthony Bass).

By picking up a series win in Minneapolis over the weekend — their first in two weeks and only their third in the month of May — and starting off this week’s series against the Brewers with a victory on Tuesday, the Blue Jays have taken a step toward salvaging the vibes around the club, at least for a moment. Those may soon go careening the other way, depending on how the next few days and series unfold, but for the time being — despite all the concerns about the lineup, and Alek Manoah, depth, Yimi Garcia, the bad reliever who is loud online about his awful politics¹, and, you know, everything else — things seem not so bad.

Or, perhaps, it's just that anything would feel better than watching them head into three big series against their AL East rivals while confidently assert that they're “not some clumsy, Clouseau-esque waiter,” only to proceed to trip over a chair and out an open sixth-floor window. The bar, for most of the month of May, has been set awfully low.

Whatever it is, even if things continue to go well with the Brewers in town this week, I think there's still time to lean a little bit into some of that old fashioned existential dread. We are, after all, at the one-third mark of the season, and the team currently finds itself barely out of last place in the AL East and 3.5 games back in the wild card race.

To do this, I'd like to revisit a question that came up in my most recent mail bag, which I answered as though it were more of a rhetorical one, but that can also be answered in a practical way: What happens if they're bad?

By that I don't mean flaming wreckage falling from the sky, villagers storming the gates of SkyDome, pitchforks in hand. I don't necessarily mean the kind of failure that results in sweeping changes across the front office and coaching staff, and a bunch of harebrained trade scenarios. I just mean plain old ordinary failure to quite rise to even the most modest of expectations. Realistically, where would they go from there? What would need to be done to fix this and put a better team on the field in 2024? What resources will they have with which to accomplish that?

Let's examine...

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The money

The natural place to start a conversation like this is by taking stock of the club's finances. That's always somewhat difficult when it comes to the Jays, and has only become more murky very recently. They certainly surprised us this winter with just how much they were able to convince ownership to spend, and good on them for it.

For the first time in their history, the Jays will be a luxury tax paying team in 2023. According to RosterResource, their estimated luxury tax payroll for this year stands at $251.6 million, which puts them nearly $20 million over the threshold ($233 million), and just below the point ($253 million) at which the penalties begin to escalate further by way of various surcharges. (Keep those two terms in mind here, threshold and surcharge, because the distinction is important.)

The tax rate for crossing the threshold is 20% on overages — i.e. 20% on every dollar spent above $233 million. If a team goes over the threshold by more than $20 million, they’ll also have to pay a 12% surcharge (i.e. 32% in total) on every dollar above that.

So, if after taking on some salary at the trade deadline they end up at $255 million, their tax bill would be 20% of the first $20 million ($4 million) plus 32% of the additional two million ($640K), or $4.64 million.

Still with me?

Rogers, obviously, can handle that and plenty more, but things get trickier the longer a team stays above the threshold. If the Jays were to be above it again next year (when it increases to $237 million) the 12% surcharge would remain the same, but their base rate will jump to 30% — so, 30% on the first $20 million over the threshold, then 42% on every dollar above that (until they reach another point at which the surcharge escalates, but I won’t complicate things by going into all that; MLB.com has a good explainer on all of this for those interested). Stay above the threshold for a third straight time in 2025 and the base rate goes to 50%.

These penalties are reset when a club dips below the threshold for a year, but the taxes can escalate quite quickly if they don't — according to Forbes, for example, the Dodgers' tax bill for 2022 was $32.4 million — and once a team starts committing more and more dollars to their roster it gets difficult to pull back.

In other words, not only did the Jays pretty sharply increase payroll this winter, they’ve also put themselves in a position where they’re potentially going to have to keep facing penalties.

Going back to RosterResource, we see that the club already has $110 million in what we’ll call committed payroll for 2024 (though actually this number is, technically, the average annual value of any guaranteed contracts on the books, which is what MLB uses when calculating teams’ luxury tax bills to prevent manipulation of long-term deals to circumvent the system).

The Jays will also have three additional payments that are standard for all teams — estimated salaries for 40-man roster players in the minor leagues ($2.5 million); estimated player benefits, like health insurance, workman's comp, transportation, meal money, etc. ($17 million); and the amount each team pays into the league's new $50 million bonus pool for pre-arbitration players ($1.67 million).

That all takes them to a projected 2024 luxury tax number, so far, of $131 million. In other words, if they wanted to stay under the $237 million threshold and reset their penalties, they’d have $106 million to spend on salaries for their arbitration-eligible players, buyouts, and whoever else they might bring in. If, as they were allowed to in 2023, they can go right up to surcharge level, it’s $126 million.

That may seem like a lot to work with, but it's about to disappear pretty quickly.

The buyouts…

• Whit Merrfield has an $18 million mutual option with a buyout for 2024. Maybe they consider bringing him back on a new deal, but they're obviously not going to continue with the current one. ($500,000)

• Yimi Garcia has a $5 million club option that could also either vest or, if it doesn't, be bought out for $1 million. For it to vest he'd have to reach either 110 appearances or 110 innings in total across 2022 and 2023, and I think that's the most likely outcome (though it's going to be close, and any IL stint would put it in jeopardy). Garcia got into 61 games last year and this year is already at 26, meaning he would need to make just 24 more appearances over the season's final four months for the option to vest. I suppose they could do him dirty like J.P. Ricciardi did Frank Thomas, but despite a somewhat wobbly performance so far, I think his underlying numbers are good, as is next year’s price, so I'll say he's back. ($5 million)

• Chad Green's got that weird contract with multiple options for both club and player. When the season ends, the Jays could choose to pick up three years at $9 million each. If they decline that, then Green could elect a $6.25 million option (with another million in escalators based on games played) for one year. If that's declined, the Jays then have the option of taking a two-year deal for $21 million, also with escalators. And then, only if they decline that, does he become a free agent. We'll have to see him pitch to know what makes the most sense here, but I'm just going to essentially split the difference and put him down for $9 million with an asterisk. We're working with ballpark figures anyway so a couple mil here or there won't matter a ton. ($9 million)

The arb-eligible...

• Danny Jansen (Arb3) makes $3.5 million this year after making $1.95 million last season. I'm not sure I'd take the over on him surpassing $5 million next year, but that looks and feels close enough to right, and there's really no need to get too fancy with these guesses. ($5 million)

• Adam Cimber (Arb3) might be a non-tender candidate if he keeps pitching the way he has so far in 2023, but he's normally a pretty durable, useful, and successful reliever who costs less than a free agent equivalent would ($3.15 million this year), so I'll say he's in. ($4 million)

• Call this recency bias if you must — because it probably is! — but Trevor Richards (Arb3) has done a nice enough job for the Jays this year and only makes $1.5 million. He might actually stay. ($2.25 million)

• Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Arb2) obviously isn't going anywhere (sorry weirdos!), and if he doesn't get extended we're looking at him moving from this year's $14.5 million salary to something like 20. ($20 million)

• Jordan Romano (Arb2) makes $4.5 million in 2023, which should get him up near the six range after another fine season. ($6 million)

• Tim Mayza (Arb2) has managed to get his season on track despite some rather vocal lack of support from clowns like yours truly and, like Cimber, he is going to be much cheaper than getting an alternative on the open market. ($3 million)

• Erik Swanson (Arb2) only makes $1.25 million this year! ($2 million)

• Daulton Varsho (Arb2 of four) will get a bump from the $3.05 million he makes this year, because that's just how arbitration works, but at this point it feels like it will be a smaller one than anybody would like — Ross Atkins in particular. ($4 million)

• Santiago Espinal (Arb2 of four) has left the door wide open for someone like Otto Lopez to come and take his job, but Lopez has done absolutely nothing of the sort given his 43 wRC+ in Buffalo this year. ($3 million)

• I originally had Cavan Biggio (Arb2) down for a non-tender, and even though he’s played better lately, it wouldn’t shock me if he didn’t even last on the roster that long. But with the guys they have set to depart as free agents, and the way their cheaper options are currently playing in the minors, they’re going to need some corner IF/OF and 2B insurance. ($3.5 million)

• Trent Thornton will, however, get an imaginary non-tender from me. It's time. Quibble if you must.

The total…

Add up the numbers I’ve got in brackets and, based on my very quick and very dirty math, the Jays will have to add another $67.25 million to next year’s number. That takes them to a luxury tax payroll of about $198.25 million, which leaves them only $38.75 million shy of the threshold.

That’s not a lot of money (relative to an MLB payroll) to work with if they want to avoid another tax bill, or don’t want to clear some money off the books by trade or non-tender. I don’t think you could get a single, solitary Shohei Ohtani for that much!

Can they get better by only spending to the threshold? Would doing so threaten to destroy consumer confidence here at the worst possible time? If they go over again, what sort of implications does that have for future payrolls?

Before we can even attempt answer those questions we’ll need to first take a look at how the roster is currently constructed, and at what kind of work will likely need to be done in the coming winter.

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The rotation

It's not easy to find a pitcher as good as Kevin Gausman, and the Blue Jays have at least done that. Unfortunately, they otherwise remain somewhat locked into an expensive rotation that continually feels like a work in progress, and is relying a little too much on the promise of one very good prospect to eventually come in and save it.

Chris Bassitt is coming off of a couple of rough starts after a nice little run. José Berríos has looked pretty good over his last five starts, for whatever that's worth. But Yusei Kikuchi's results have started to go sideways after he began the year mostly not looking like a disaster, and Alek Manoah is an ongoing mess.

People have already started dreaming on a return from Hyun Jin Ryu, for whom the wheels began to fall off around this time two years ago, and looking at guys like Bowden Francis in the minor leagues — past would-be depth pieces like Mitch White, Zach Thompson, and Drew Hutchison for very good reason. The lowest ERA among the five Buffalo Bisons with the most innings pitched so far is 5.47. Yosver Zulueta has promise but right now he ain't it. Ricky Tiedemann hasn't pitched in a game since the start of this month — and the longer he remains out the harder it gets to see him as a viable rotation option starting in April of next year, simply because he’ll not be able to handle the jump in innings that would require. Sem Robberse has promise, also a 4.95 ERA in Double-A.

The current five can still be very good, but Manoah needs to figure it out and they all have to stay healthy. It’s dicey.

As for next season — which is what we're thinking about here, isn't it? — the Jays won’t have a lot to do, nor will they have a lot of room to manoeuvre. That’s good in the sense that it won’t require spending bad money after good to fix things, but bad if you actually, you know, think this group isn’t good enough.

Even if Manoah keeps on being awful you can't trade him now. Gausman you can't give up. Berríos is unmovable without eating a ton of money in the process — if that. Bassitt could have some trade value if you’re really into making lateral moves for the sake of it.

Otherwise?

Kikuchi is maybe an interesting trade candidate because of the way his contract is structured. His deal is for three years and $36 million ($12 million AAV), but he made $16 million last year and will take home just $10 million this year and next. If the Jays dealt him and, for example, ate half of that $10 million, overall they'd be getting $7 million off of their luxury tax bill. But, of course, someone would have to want him at $5 million. And, besides, those aren’t really big enough sums to matter a whole lot beyond the margins.

Adding to the potential difficulty here is the fact that these guys all being locked in makes the Jays a pretty unappealing destination for even the mid-tier types of free agents they might want to bring in — unless, I suppose, Kikuchi “establishes” himself as a reliever at some point this summer (which I think it s genuine possibility).

Where’s another Matz trade when you need one? Or perhaps it’s time to start stretching out Big Nate again. Otherwise it’s hard to see much changing over the next year.

Pending free agents: Hyun Jin Ryu

The bullpen

Hoo boy, it sure would be nice if Chad Green shows up looking like the guy he’s been for his entire career, wouldn’t it? And if some of the internal options the Jays have in the minors actually start to bloom, too? Tale as old as time.

A lot of movement could obviously take place within any bullpen over the course of a year, but I’d have said exactly the same thing last summer when looking at the Jays’ relievers, and right now the group looks pretty similar to how it did then. Jordan Romano, Tim Mayza, Adam Cimber, Trevor Richards, and Yimi Garcia are all still here, and are all fairly likely — though to varying degrees, of course — to be here again next year. The big turnover isn’t set to come until after 2024, when Garcia, Cimber, Richards, and possibly Chad Green are due to be off the books.

Erik Swanson, despite having a rough go at the worst time possible against the Yankees and Orioles a couple weeks ago, has been a really nice addition to the group. Green may well be a second of those. The ingredients are there for Zach Pop to be a weapon once he gets healthy. And Pearson is obviously blasting his way up the pecking order.

Get Green back, add one more good arm at the trade deadline — bring me Andrew Chafin once the Diamondbacks fall back to earth (throw in Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and I’ll even let you have Varsho back!) — and with a little bit of health I think this could be a pretty decent crew that shouldn’t need a ton of tinkering over the winter. They might even have some guys to move out if some of the younger arms start looking more like realistic options over the next few months.

Regardless, this isn’t an area where we’ve seen the Jays spend a ton before, and I wouldn’t expect to see it next winter unless things get exceptionally bad.

Pending free agents: Anthony Bass

The outfield

So here’s where things get interesting. Kevin Kiermaier will be a free agent after this season, and while I think everyone’s expectation all along has been that Daulton Varsho would take over as the Jays’ everyday centre fielder after that, for the moment that would mean taking a real step back. Varsho has to be a better hitter than this (doesn’t he?), and Kiermaier did not simply become an elite offensive player at 33 years old coming off of hip surgery, so I fully expect that their seasons will go in different directions from here. But will that happen to enough of a degree to keep us from being incredibly uneasy about the prospect of Kiermaier’s departure? I’m not so sure.

Varsho has only had 43 plate appearances against left-handed pitching so far this year, so it's too soon to call him a platoon guy — especially considering how volatile these splits can be and the fact that he did quite well against LHP in 2021 — but he's done nothing to disabuse anyone of that notion, and a team with championship aspirations in an absolutely brutal division really shouldn’t be giving guys miles of runway to figure things like this out like they're the goddamn Pirates.

If you let Kiermaier walk, you either have to be confident that Varsho can handle LHP, or you have to be bringing in someone who can play centre field and cover that part of the platoon. Harrison Bader’s name leaps off the list of pending right-handed-hitting, CF-playing free agents — and not just because it’s first alphabetically — but if you thought Kiermaier was too much of an injury risk you’re probably not going to be very enthused by Bader. You probably won’t like the price, either, considering you’ll also have to find one more outfielder and everyday replacements at two or three positions we haven’t even discussed yet.

George Springer has, at least, finally started adding some red to his Baseball Savant page, so one spot here is basically settled. And it’s not like Varsho isn’t going to play a ton regardless. But unless you’ve loved what you’ve seen from the outfield this year so much that you’re ready to simply run it back, he’s not making your life simple right now if you’re Ross Atkins, is he?

Pending free agents: Kevin Kiermaier

The infield

Here the Jays obviously have three positions very much set, and three that are in flux. They decided last winter that they were going to go with Danny Jansen and Alejandro Kirk as their catching tandem for the next couple of years, and, of course, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are locked in at first base and shortstop.

Vlad had a 151 wRC+ on May 16th when he tweaked his knee catching a popped-up bunt in a game against the Yankees and scuffed for a couple weeks afterwards, but nobody serious actually thinks he's a problem or going anywhere. Bo's strikeout rate is just 14.8% this year and, other than an 0-for-5 on Tuesday, he continues to hit absolutely everything thrown at him. This is good.

Unfortunately, unsurprisingly, Jansen is currently on the shelf, and Kirk, as FanGraphs’ Dan Szymborski pointed out last week, isn’t producing anywhere near the same exit velocities as we’re used to seeing and “is simply topping hard pitches down in the zone, whereas last year he was getting just enough loft to squeeze a bunch of hits out of them” — an issue exacerbated by the dip in EV, but which he suggests is correctable. (He also notes that these problems are taken into consideration by ZiPS, which sees him as being fine, long-term, though it’s “pushing his projections down from the 3.5–4.0 WAR range they were in before the season” to the 3.0 range.)

Matt Chapman obviously cooled off a ton in May, posting a 55 wRC+ for the month after having a ridiculous 218 mark in April. He’s the free-agent-to-be the Jays need to be most worried about losing, especially since we’re long past the heady days of thinking that guys like Jordan Groshans or Orelvis Martinez were the future at third base. Groshans is now in the Marlins' organization, and still not hitting for power. Martinez is hitting for power, but not anything else, in New Hampshire — though the walk and strikeout rates are better at least! Addison Barger, who emerged last year as a possible breakout candidate that could solve this problem as well, has a 72 wRC+ for Buffalo despite his .354 BABIP.

Those guys might have been in the mix for some kind of role next season — and maybe in four months we’ll feel again that they should be — though straight-up replacing Chapman was always far fetched.

There is, of course, also a spot due to open up at second base, and there should be plenty more DH at-bats available. These would not be the worst problems in the world if there was literally anyone banging on the door in the minors, but alas. There’s work to be done here.

Pending free agents: Matt Chapman, Whit Merrifield, Brandon Belt

In conclusion…

OK, so we’ve gone a long way here to say that they’re going to have to replace a bunch of at-bats, but won’t have a ton of internal options or big league trade pieces with which to do it. Now here’s where things get interesting — or frightening, depending on your view — and where all the financial stuff comes back into it.

Earlier we figured that they will have about $40 million to work with if they want to stay under the luxury tax threshold, but that it’s conceivable that they’ll go over and the number is more like $60 million — or maybe, hopefully, even more. With that they’ll need to find solutions at third base, left field, DH, second base, a fourth outfielder, and maybe a reliever (in that order or thereabouts). And starting pitching is always on the agenda.

That’s kind of a lot to accomplish, and I can’t help but start wondering here, what would an ideal Blue Jays offseason look like next winter? Do they have a realistic path to get there? Just how much better a team will it make them than the one that for the two years before this one — maybe soon to be a third — has just not quite been good enough?

It absolutely may be due to a lack of imagination on my part, or simply frustration with how the last month has gone, but I don’t have a real snappy answer to those questions.

The reality is that replacing Chapman will be hard, especially given the lack of options due to hit the free agent market this winter. Here's who MLB.com lists as the most notable free agents at 2B/SS/3B next winter. Not exactly a legendary class.

Second base: Jon Berti (club option), Adam Frazier, Jorge Polanco (club option), Whit Merrifield (mutual option), Jonathan Schoop, Kolten Wong

Third base: Brian Anderson, Matt Chapman, Josh Donaldson (mutual option), Eduardo Escobar (club option), Evan Longoria, Justin Turner (opt-out), Gio Urshela, Joey Wendle

Shortstop: Tim Anderson (club option), Elvis Andrus, Javier Báez (opt-out), Brandon Crawford, Paul DeJong (club option), Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Adalberto Mondesi, Amed Rosario

Take out the guys with club options that are likely to get picked up and then take the best two names available other than Chapman. Are you better?

How about those open outfield and DH spots? Can you make up for what you're losing that way? Save for one particular, wholly unrealistic name, I think it's going to be very tough.

Outfield: Harrison Bader, Cody Bellinger, Charlie Blackmon, Michael Brantley, Mark Canha (club option), Michael Conforto (opt-out), Adam Duvall, Joey Gallo, Randal Grichuk, Robbie Grossman, Teoscar Hernández, Max Kepler (club option), Kevin Kiermaier, Andrew McCutchen, Wil Myers, Joc Pederson, David Peralta, Tommy Pham, AJ Pollock, Jurickson Profar, Hunter Renfroe, Victor Robles (club option), Eddie Rosario (club option), Jorge Soler (opt-out), Michael A. Taylor, Jesse Winker

Designated hitter: Jesús Aguilar, Matt Carpenter, Nelson Cruz, Trey Mancini (opt-out), J.D. Martinez, Shohei Ohtani

Do you believe in Bellinger? Do you give Chapman and Conforto the Springer contract, or almost certainly more, for their age-31 to 36 seasons just to keep this thing going? While you’re also still paying Springer for the first three, paying Gausman $22 million per, paying Bassitt almost that much, and almost $19 million per year to Berrois through 2028?

Is that team good enough to justify that spend — and the escalating luxury tax implications that go with it? Is that team good enough to justify extending Bo and Vlad and adding to all of it? And how do you get better if you don’t?

A month ago I’d have said the team is fine as constituted and that running it back would have made a ton of sense, so I want to be careful not to go completely off the deep end here. But you quickly run into big questions when you start pulling on this thread, and central among them might just be how deeply into the luxury tax they’re willing to go — particularly when you start to think about how little homegrown talent appears to be on its way to fill some of their gaps, and how little they’re getting at the moment from the current crop of “controllable” guys like Varsho, Manoah, and Kirk.

We all see the end of 2025 and the free agency of Vlad and Bo looming. I don’t think it’s outlandish to wonder if that becomes a natural reset point rather than a part of the journey toward “sustainable contention,” given the state of the finances and what it’s going to take to keep this thing going without the emergence of some more younger, cheaper talent. And I wonder if it may become clearer over the course of this season that the way to stay on that path is to take a little step back, and maybe even ultimately trade one of the superstars for a collection of that talent.

Don’t get me wrong, I also think that would be ridiculous. I would hope that what the Jays did this winter was a harbinger or more spending, not less. If the San Diego Padres can pay guys, so can you! The hardest of passes on whatever half-pregnant garbage the Red Sox are continually doing.

But, for Rogers, where does it end?

I’d like to think that it’s somewhere very far down the line, but we’ve all seen this ownership operate in the past, not to mention as part of this country’s absurd telecom duopoly, and we can probably all agree that just about any level of suspicion is justified.

This isn’t to be all doom and gloom about it, because a whole lot more talent exists in this organization than manifested itself this month, and it’s not going to take a whole lot for people to start thinking about a potential juggernaut here again, I don’t think. But you can’t help but see the cracks when things aren’t going so well, and this whole house of cards feels just a little bit precarious at the moment. At least without a couple more player development wins to prevent them from having keep pushing payroll to heights that might start to make ol’ Uncle Eddie a bit queasy.

Player development and keeping ownership happy. That’s sort of the whole job, isn’t it? And while they’ve certainly accomplished one of those things, might that good work be undone by their struggles with the other? And could it happen sooner than we think?

Please just win some damn games so we don’t have to find out!

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1. I had Twitter closed as I was busy working on this piece all day Tuesday, so I fortunately missed all of the commotion over Anthony Bass and his “I’m going to make this quick” bare-minimum apology to the “Pride community,” whatever that is, for using his Instagram account over the weekend to promote the latest iteration of the kind of hate-filled garbage being pushed by cynically opportunistic bigots very quickly trying to turn “trans panic” and drag show protests into a full-on assault on all LGBTQ+ people, their rights, and their allies — and who have very quickly and conveniently forgotten that it was only, like, six months ago that they were pretending that the worst thing in the world was “cancel culture” (but only when that meant that they had face consequences for their own terrible views, and not, say, when a pro-Palestine professor wanted to speak on a university campus).

You can probably guess which orb in the sky I think the Blue Jays should fire Bass into, and what I think of every one of these culture war bullies out here demonizing harmless and already marginalized groups for sadistic fun and profit, so I won’t belabour it. The Blue Jays’ crisis PR is more my beat and yet I don’t have a lot to say there either, except that it was not very good. It never is! They’re a big company that’s part of an even bigger company. The extent to which all such entities are your friend, or part of your community, or essentially moral, is basically always a matter of marketing and what they think they can get away with. This is why plenty of people have reservations about corporate Pride campaigns, and also why a team like the Dodgers could think it was a good idea to cave to pressure from people acting in obvious bad faith by initially pulling the invitation to their Pride night from a decades-old charitable group of performance artists called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They’re just trying to guess which way the wind blows.

It’s important to make sure plenty of wind is blowing back in the faces of these jerks who who think its a game to terrorize people who are just trying to live their lives, but unfortunately I don’t think I have anything more constructive to offer on this than that — especially when it comes to an organization that already went through these same sorts of motions with Kevin Pillar six years ago, and Yunel Escobar five years before that.

(But, also: If I have to quietly know about the continuing existence of Kid Rock, I think you can handle looking the other way when you see a display you don’t like at Target instead of clutching your pearls and crying about it online, you absolute goober. Baseball is for everyone.)