Blue Jays remain in Juan Soto hunt as winter meetings near

TORONTO — Throughout Juan Soto’s free agency, the murky line between legit contender and useful stalking horse has provided ample reason for skepticism about the Toronto Blue Jays' chances of landing the marquee superstar.

Yet with the end game nigh as next week’s winter meetings loom, they remain on the shortlist of teams vying for the franchise-altering slugger’s services, according to an industry source.

What precisely that means after three rounds of goal-post moving offers, and how the next steps play out, is unclear, the source added. But earlier this week Scott Boras, Soto’s agent, told reporters during Blake Snell’s signing that the outfielder had started culling the list while offering no specifics.

So, to a degree only Soto truly knows, the Blue Jays are still in the mix, their stance is described as aggressive and the angst, if not the expectations, the Blue Jays experienced a year ago, when they also threw their best pitch and then awaited Shohei Ohtani’s call, is back.

This time they’re obviously hoping for a different outcome in a competition that’s been reported to include the incumbent New York Yankees, the motivated and deep-pocketed cross-town Mets, the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox.

There are surely more twists and turns to come, and intriguingly, Alex Speier of The Boston Globe reported Thursday that the Red Sox are seeking another meeting with Soto and Boras to get a price that closes a deal, although he added it’s not known if such a gathering had been granted.

No matter how things play out, the Blue Jays are, for a second straight off-season, trying to flex their financial might in the open market, and once again attempting to leverage salary deferrals in their pursuit of a top talent.

While the $680-million deferral in Ohtani’s $700-million, 10-year Dodgers deal is on the extreme end of the scale, the wider concept makes sense for many reasons, even for a publicly owned company like Rogers Communications Inc., which owns the Blue Jays as well as this website.

Much was made of the Competitive Balance Tax benefits Ohtani’s contract provided for the Dodgers. While they’re paying him only $2 million a season for 10 years before the deferrals hit, the contract’s average annual salary is what counts against the CBT threshold, and the gulf between present and future values cut that number from $70 million to $46 million.

But that gap also creates a wider set of potential business benefits, too.

Under Article XVI of the collective bargaining agreement, the yearly present value of the contract “must be fully funded by the club … on or before the second July 1” of the season in which its earned.

As a result, though the money is only paid out down the line, it’s accounted for in what’s essentially real-time, so it’s not like the money has to be found years later because it’s already there.

Along the way, as the present value earns its way to its future value in various approved securities, the club can potentially make money if the funding investment grows larger than the deferral commitment.

In that way, the deferral structure can help pay for itself.

Now, there are rules in the CBA around how that money can be invested. But clever money managers should be able to generate a surplus, adding to the ways a club can leverage a superstar’s contract, beyond increased sponsorship and marketing partnerships. (Among the reasons why a Soto deal won’t necessarily preclude an extension for Vladimir Guerrero Jr.)

No team is capitalizing on the approach more than the Dodgers, who now have more than a billion dollars in deferrals payable to seven players from 2028-2046, as calculated by The Associated Press.

And given that the Blue Jays made the same offer to Ohtani as the Dodgers last year and are again trying to leverage deferrals with Soto, the concept now appears to be part of their financial toolkit, at least in the right circumstances.

Speaking in general terms earlier this week, Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins described deferrals as a byproduct of “more teams, agents and players being open to different solutions.”

Then, when asked if deferred contracts made sense for the club’s parent company, Atkins said "I can tell you this, the Blue Jays and the Rogers corporation are open to solutions and open to thinking about things creatively."

Creatively enough to land Soto?

We’ll see about that, but as speculation floats around about where his contract will land, the key number won’t necessarily be the total value, but the present value. In that way, deferrals can be an optics tool, as well, something that always matters when Boras is involved.

Hence, the possibility that the Blue Jays are still nothing more than a stalking horse can’t be discounted, either. Although, as mentioned here last month, there may be some benefit to that, like in 2019, when they pursued Gerrit Cole before landing a different Boras client in Hyun Jin Ryu.

As MLB Network’s Jon Morosi first mentioned, the Blue Jays met with another Boras client, ace Corbin Burnes, two weeks ago, perhaps helping position them to be redirected to one of his other free agents.

In the meantime, the Blue Jays sit in the murk, taking a big swing, waiting to see if they connect.