LAS VEGAS – The making of strange bedfellows is an innate part of the experience in Las Vegas, where this week baseball professionals in team-logoed quarter-zip tops and rodeo fans rocking Stetsons are intermingled with the city’s usual array of dedicated gamblers and party people.
Between the winter meetings and National Finals Rodeo, the Mandalay Bay Casino and Resort is a trip.
Fitting then that in Sin City the Toronto Blue Jays and long-time frenemy Scott Boras, whom you might remember from insults such as “Blue Flu” as recent as last month, met this week, and will get together again later this month in Los Angeles, when free agent Yusei Kikuchi begins meeting with interested clubs.
To suggest a deal is likely would be foolish given their icy history, but the Japanese lefty fits what the Blue Jays are looking for as a 27-year-old with mid-90s velocity, a good slider plus a change and a curve, whose peak years could very well time with their emerging core.
Past shoulder issues have led to some concerns over his durability, but the Blue Jays scouted Kikuchi extensively under the direction of the recently fired Dan Evans this past season, with multiple execs getting looks. Last month they hired Hideaki Sato, who among his former duties used to translate for Yu Darvish, to head up their work in Japan.
So, this is no whim; they’ve done their homework, which is all well and good until you remember that Kikuchi is represented by Boras, who hasn’t been shy about generously offering his advice to the Blue Jays, the gist of which is usually “spend a lot more money.”
That was the message at the General Managers Meetings a month ago, when he said the club had contracted a “Blue Flu,” attributing a 27 per cent drop in attendance at Rogers Centre this year from 2017 to not bringing in players “that their fans find interesting to their market.”
On Wednesday, in an interview with Sportsnet colleague Hazel Mae, Boras shifted his mark, complimenting the front office – “I have great respect for the baseball aspect of the Blue Jays,” and instead poking team owner Rogers Communications Inc., whom he accused of short-changing the club on TV rights fees by not opening the bidding up to the market, a complaint he’s also levied in the past. As a result, “I think we have a national treasure that’s not being given the due course and respect. The baseball people need revenue, they need dollars to get the best players in the world to play in Canada.”
“The Canadian fans understand, they want a respectful team and they want talent and I don’t blame them,” he added during the interview. “My point was in what business do you lose 30 per cent of your fans and not look at it and say are we treating this business and the investment in this business correctly, knowing that the capacity is to draw three and a half million fans and get high ratings and really optimize a truly fantastic franchise.”
Oh, and by the way, Kikuchi sure might help fix all that.
“Kikuchi is very global. I think certainly all cities are open to his purview,” Boras replied when asked about Toronto as a possibility during one of his Boraspalooza availabilities – this one a next-level experience in which he used a TV-equipment storage bin as a makeshift podium set up by a giant Christmas tree as dozens of media surrounded him.
Full credit, the dude sure plays the game.
Perhaps that’s why he seemed intent on turning down the rhetoric around Aaron Sanchez, another of his clients, who along with Marcus Stroman has been inquired about by virtually every team seeking starting pitching.
Asked about the Blue Jays’ openness to listening on Sanchez, Boras delivered one of his trademark analogies, saying: “If I’ve got jewels, when I open the jewelry store I’m not going to show them zirconium, I’m going to show them my diamonds, I guess.”
“I don’t know,” he continued. “Usually when clubs say that it’s what other teams are asking them about. Certainly with Aaron’s skill and talent, I would imagine a lot of teams would love to have Aaron Sanchez.”
Given that the Blue Jays focused the majority of their energy at the winter meetings at adding starting pitching to a rotation that’s perilously thin even with Stroman and Sanchez, an obvious question is why not consider extending the two, rather than trading them.
But Boras was more than reasonable in telling Mae that, “performance-wise, where Aaron’s been because he’s been injured, it’s a little bit harder for them and for us to put a specific number on what would be fair for both sides. And so I think a lot of that is getting him back on track and back to where he has a full season in the big leagues under his belt, then those kinds of discussions are a little bit easier to define.”
Not even a hint of sabre-rattling there.
Boras also represents lefty Dallas Keuchel, who can be found in a far more upscale mall than the one the Blue Jays are shopping in. Tanner Roark (traded by Washington to Cincinnati), Charlie Morton ($30 million, two years from Tampa Bay) and Lance Lynn ($30 million, three years from Texas) all came off the board Wednesday and GM Ross Atkins said, “those are interesting names that will impact the market we’re in.”
The Blue Jays may also make a pick in Thursday morning’s Rule 5 draft, so yeah, go ahead everyone, get crunked.
Las Vegas is certainly the place for that, as things can rather quickly get crazier than anyone ever expected, maybe, just maybe, even crazy enough for the Blue Jays to actually splurge on a free-agent Boras client.
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