TORONTO — How to build on all this? How to build on the Canada-wide craze that reignited a too-long dormant summertime passion and build on the step forward that took the Toronto Blue Jays to within fortune’s whim of a World Series berth?
The suddenness of it all – the ending that came with a border-line call not going Ben Revere’s way, then a routine grounder by Josh Donaldson with the tying run on third base – should not detract from the magnificence of the 2015 Blue Jays, nor the fact that the resilience shown by the core of the team hints at the makings of something sustainable for the next season or two. The guts of this thing are good.
But tough decisions await, and the murkiness that continues to surround the relationship between general manager Alex Anthopoulos and incoming president Mark Shapiro only adds to the sense that this off-season could have as many twists and turns as a baseball post-season.
We await a much-rumoured wholesale house cleaning on Blue Jays Way, for example – and the return fire from Paul Beeston, once he has ceased his responsibilities as president and chief executive officer. That’s going to be uncomfortable, to be sure, because Beeston feels in no small way spurned by the perceived manner in which the search for his successor was carried out. The truth, as always, is some place in the mushy middle but it is easy to paint Beeston as a sympathetic figure if you are so inclined, and the usual sources await their marching orders.
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But that’s all suits and centre of the media universe twaddle. It is the team that caught the fancy of so many people, and the team that needs nurturing. Anthopoulos has already been beavering away on a de facto plan for the next three years – really, there’s not much for a GM to do during the playoffs but live and die with each pitch like the rest of us – and we should get a sense of that Monday morning, when Anthopoulos holds a post-mortem news conference on the 2015 season. Yes, he is still very much the …
- General manager, and this much we know: Shapiro, who has been hired as Beeston’s replacement effective Nov. 1, is only 48 years old – 10 years older than Anthopoulos – so it stands to reason he might want to have some degree of say in baseball operations, as opposed to being purely preoccupied with the Rogers Centre and team governance. We also know this: everybody has their ‘guys’ and most of Shapiro’s ‘guys’ would have connections to the Indians. The guess here is money and term is less of an issue in getting a deal done with Anthopoulos than is power-sharing and job security of other holdovers – including manager John Gibbons, perhaps. What we don’t know is the extent of philosophical differences, if any, between Shapiro and Anthopoulos and whether a contract has been extended but not signed or where no deal has not been offered. We also don’t know …
- Team payroll, but let’s just go out on a limb here and say it won’t increase, in part due to the Canadian dollar and also because Rogers Centre needs major retrofitting. The Blue Jays payroll in 2015 has been listed as $125,915,800 or closer to $140 million, depending on who’s doing the accounting — close to or in the top third of major-league payrolls and not far off 2014’s figure of $137,177,700. It’s tough to see the payroll decreasing, either, which is good because there will be plenty of wiggle room once …
- Decisions are made on free agents and options. Mark Buehrle’s departure is $19 million of found money, the final flickering embers of Ricky Romero’s contract have been snuffed out, and the Blue Jays can tack another $11 million on to that if they satisfy the fan base and buy out R.A. Dickey’s $12-million option for $1 million. David Price’s prorated salary ($7.12M) will be off the books in the likely event he doesn’t re-sign, while slightly less than $10 million will be saved if the likes of Dioner Navarro, Marco Estrada and Maicer Izturis don’t come back. So if you want to cut it down to the bone, you can shave off $40 million even with exercising the options for Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion. Points to remember: Russ Martin’s salary doubles in 2016 from $7 million to $15 million and Donaldson won’t be playing for $4.3 million next season. Seems relatively easy, except there’s more to a couple of those decisions than meets the eye, such as …
- The fact that despite his no-show in Game 4 of the ALCS, Dickey’s guaranteed 200 innings look pretty good in a rotation that looks to include Marcus Stroman, The Pitcher Formerly Known as Drew Hutchison, and one or two of Aaron Sanchez and Roberto Osuna. And at $12 million he’s a bargain. Of the 28 pitchers to record 200 innings this season, seven are scheduled to earn more than Dickey in 2016 and four more will exceed him when they sign free-agent contracts. The heart says ‘hell, no, let him go’ but the brain says it makes perfect economical sense to keep him. Estrada’s the opposite. Who hasn’t been blown away by what he’s done this year; but baseball’s vagaries hint that his increased workload might have a negative impact in 2016. It will take a $15.8-million qualifying offer to ensure the Blue Jays get a draft pick if he signs elsewhere, but Estrada might just take that, you know? Would you pay him $15.8 million, or try to work out a three-year, $40-million package for a guy who was a swingman less than 12 months ago and didn’t make your starting rotation out of spring training? Anthopoulos says that pitching will be an off-season focus, which is great but the logistics of that depend on whether …
- Sanchez and Osuna both move into the rotation. Anthopoulos said this weekend that the Blue Jays “have the flexibility to go both ways … we can pursue starters or we can pursue relievers and transition them to the rotation.” Barring the trade of a core player such as Bautista, Encarnacion or Troy Tulowitzki – highly unlikely in all three cases – there isn’t much Anthopoulos can trade to land a front-of-the-rotation starter, since his areas of depth (second base with Ryan Goins and Devon Travis and left field with Revere, Michael Saunders and Dalton Pompey) don’t contain enough to get a deal done. The free-agent market has Price, Jordan Zimmermann, Johnny Cueto and Zack Greinke – but Greinke had Toronto on a no-trade list when he was with the Milwaukee Brewers and Cueto … well, never mind. There will be bidding wars for both Zimmermann and Price, but Anthopoulos needs to get a quick read on Price — he can’t delay off-season moves and let opportunity pass him by if he believes there is a slim chance of getting a deal done with Price, who is represented by the same agent as Dickey, Bo McKinnis. So you can add that factor into the equation, too: would ditching Dickey damage a shot at getting a deal done with Price? No wonder Anthopoulos told Stephen Brunt and myself last week on The Jeff Blair Show that pitching will trump all, although part of me wonders …
- Whether or not this team can get by without a bona fide, middle-of-the-order left-handed bat. At season’s end, Gibbons’ only left-handed bats of consequence were Revere, Justin Smoak, Navarro and Goins and – yeah – a guy like free-agent thumper Chris Davis would look terrific in the middle of this lineup. If Travis wins back his second base job, it leaves Revere as the only everyday lefty hitter in the lineup — Saunders could also factor in here — and I’d bet that will change by spring training. Speaking of which …
- Anybody know what’s up with the Blue Jays’ plans to get a new spring training complex built in Dunedin? My understanding was that this was a legacy issue for Beeston, something he very much wanted to get finalized before turning over the mantle of president and CEO to Shapiro. At any rate, spring training is a little more than three months away and thanks to the 2015 Blue Jays, more people than ever can’t wait for pitchers and catchers to report. Best not screw this up, fellas.