Major trade for Toronto Blue Jays inevitable after slow offseason
Describing the Toronto Blue Jays’ offseason to a non-baseball fan might be most relatable to the unenviable task of navigating the job market as a young employee.
Like a person searching for employment, the Jays have been contacting seemingly endless amounts of agents and players, hoping to lure some new talent to Canada’s only MLB team.
To show for it, Toronto doesn’t have a whole lot of, well, anything substantial.
Since their season ended in early October, they’ve got five minor league deals signed with roster invites to spring training, and two new expected major leaguers — infielder Andres Gimenez and reliever Nick Sandlin — acquired from the Cleveland Guardians in December.
Otherwise, it’s pretty similar to the group that ended last season. The Jays landed seven one-year contracts yesterday to avoid arbitration with key players, including Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Daulton Varsho.
But if you watched the 2024 Blue Jays, you’d likely realize that running it back isn’t a likely recipe for success, after the team went just 74-88, some 20 games back of the division lead.
And based on the way things stand now, it’s hard to imagine this Jays group making any sort of serious playoff run if there aren’t major additions to the roster.
One useful way to tell how a team is viewed across the MLB is to see how league-wide media talks about them.
And in the first edition of MLB.com’s power rankings compiled by 14 members of its editorial staff, the Blue Jays ranked much closer to the bottom of the league than the top, coming in at 23rd. That’s last place in the American League East, ranking below the Tampa Bay Rays (20th), Boston Red Sox (15th), Baltimore Orioles (seventh) and New York Yankees (third).
If the Blue Jays want to get better, they must shake up the roster somehow. And if free agency hasn’t been a successful team-building avenue, the team’s front office will be all but forced to make another blockbuster trade or two.
The trade that brought in Gimenez and Sandlin came relatively out of nowhere, as the deal became official within a few hours of the first reports being announced. Any sort of major roster shakeup might come as a relative surprise for any individual transaction, but shouldn’t come as a shock on the whole.
While the Jays’ owners have indicated a willingness to spend big money on the team, MLB is typically full of other boards of directors across the league looking to cut costs and occasionally shed well-paid talents off for less than market value if it means getting out of a big contract or two, in exchange for prospects or younger, cheaper players. If the Jays hope to be competitive in 2025, a big trade is all but inevitable.
On the flip side, if the Jays notice some pessimism around their front office, a trade or two sending the team closer to a rebuild might be more what they have in mind.
It might not be in the next few weeks, or even before Opening Day in late March. But unless they bank on career years from just about everybody in their lineup, the current roster construction simply doesn’t seem good enough to contend in a competitive American League East.