Willing to pay is the AL way

The Toronto Blue Jays may have dodged a bullet, but the battle they're in certainly didn't get any easier on Tuesday.

As for when they're going to be ready - or willing -- to truly engage the big guns of the American League? Well, the answers to that didn't get any clearer.

Prince Fielder's mammoth and unexpected, nine-year, $214-million contract with the Detroit Tigers brings into focus each of those dueling realities for the Blue Jays and their fans.

On one hand there's a collective sigh of relief knowing that the $24-million or so million Fielder will be earning in 2020 will be someone else's problem. Even the sizable segment of the Jays fan base dreaming of Fielder launching bombs behind Jose Bautista, instantly giving Toronto the most potent 1-2 punch in all of baseball, would acknowledge that much.

Any way you cut it, a contract like that is a risk.

But octogenarian pizza billionaire Mike Ilitch of the Tigers -- with an eye toward seeing his team win another World Series in his lifetime - took that risk.

The Rogers Communications Inc.-owned Blue Jays, presumably with a longer horizon, didn't even think about it.

Which shines a light on the down side of not signing the 27-year-old Fielder, or even contemplating it:

The roughly 300 home runs and 1000 or so RBIs Fielder could easily produce over the life of the deal are simply another obstacle between the Blue Jays and a spot in the postseason.

Sure it's a wild contract, but the American League is a wild league. The price of a wild card playoff spot keeps rising.

The well-worn Blue Jays' lament about competing with the deep pockets of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox needs to be reworked.

In an off-season where the traditional spenders have been relatively muted, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Texas Rangers and now Detroit Tigers have been the free agent aggressors, committing $654-million to sign the likes of Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson, Yu Darvish and now Fielder.

So it is with some irony we note that in the Blue Jays parallel universe, Tuesday January 24th started off quite nicely.

There was Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos smiling beside newly-signed starter Brandon Morrow announcing another in a long string of eminently defensible contracts the club has agreed to with its core of near-stars.

We know the script: pay the player a small premium in dollars and term to get him to sign over his remaining arbitration eligibility and the early stages of free agency and then count the savings after the shopping is done. In Morrow's case its three years and $20-million with a club option for a fourth season at $10-million.

Smiles all around.

There is something appealing about the approach. It jibes with common sense mostly - it's hard to argue with successful value investing.

But the reality Anthopoulos and his bosses at Rogers (owners of Sportsnet and the Blue Jays) as well as Blue Jays fans will have to face is that baseball is an irrationally exuberant business.

It is a stock market that never seems to retreat.

It absolutely makes sense when Anthopoulos makes the point that investing heavily in one player comes with little guarantee of team success.

It is his 'A-Rod-in-Texas-theory' where he quite rightly points out that Alex Rodriguez was putting up absurd numbers even as the Rangers never finished better than third in the four-team AL West while paying Rodriguez $25-million a year during his four seasons.

The Toronto corollary is the Roy Halladay years or even the Roger Clemens years - when the Blue Jays had elite players at their peak and won nada.

Anthopoulos argues that spending heavily on a player like Fielder or Yu Darvish or anyone else is a doomed strategy if it leaves you too tapped to fill out the rest of the roster.

But missing from the economics lesson is that to win in the American League you simply need lots of good players, and chances are some of them are going to cost bags and bags of money.

Signing Brandon Morrow is not going to get it done. Locking up Ricky Romero at a fraction of what he would command were he a free agent is not going to get it done. Playing with house money in getting Jose Bautista at perhaps half his market value is not going to get it done.

Doing all those things and then signing Prince Fielder and or Yu Darvish?

That just might get you in the game.

Surely there's not an owner in baseball who wouldn't like to do what the Tampa Bay Rays have done - namely win on a budget thanks to deep roster of affordable players; pitchers in particular.

But it's interesting that when faced with the choice, a good number of them - the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Rangers and now the Tigers -- spend what they think it's going to take to get the talent they need when they need it.

Swinging for the financial fences is the American League way.

Like it or not, that's who the Blue Jays are a fighting with. Perhaps they should arm themselves accordingly.

Michael Grange will provide insight and analysis on all the top stories in sports.