TORONTO – The Boston Red Sox didn’t look like a team that won the off-season in the winter of 2012-13. Coming off a miserable, often dysfunctional 69-93 campaign, they replaced manager Bobby Valentine with John Farrell, lured messily from the Toronto Blue Jays, and then made a series of mid-to-lower-tier market additions, highlighted by outfielder Shane Victorino’s $39-million, three-year deal. In a city where big and bold is always the expectation, it wasn’t exactly seize-the-marquee type of stuff.
Yet along with the signings of Canadian Ryan Dempster ($26.5 million, two years), Jonny Gomes ($10 million, two years), Stephen Drew ($9.5 million, one year), David Ross ($6.2 million, two years), Mike Napoli ($5 million, one year) and Koji Uehara ($4.25 million, one year), the Red Sox cleverly plugged roster holes, leveraging a strong pitching staff already in place. They took off, comfortably claimed the American League East at 97-65 and won the World Series.
Only in hindsight did the effectiveness of their winter become evident, in stark contrast to the Blue Jays’ high-octane but flawed adds of Jose Reyes, R.A. Dickey, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson and Melky Cabrera, among others, that resulted in a last-place finish.
A decade onwards, with baseball trudging through what’s largely been a slow-play off-season, what the Red Sox did back then seems like something of a model the Blue Jays could follow.
The contours of what a winter such as that one would look like for the Blue Jays – let’s say something like Joc Pederson, Justin Turner, Kevin Kiermaier and Amed Rosario, for example – should start coming into shape soon and won’t be nearly as exciting as the ill-fated pursuit of Shohei Ohtani.
Still, such a shorter-term, spread-the-wealth approach would bolster the roster in multiple spots, help leverage an already talented and successful group already in-house and create lineup-optimization opportunities for manager John Schneider.
It’s also probably the smartest path forward for the Blue Jays, especially now that 25-year-old righty Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s agreement on a $325-million, 12-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers removes the last youthful long-term option from the free-agent market.
While 28-year-old outfielder Cody Bellinger remains a free agent, his volatility in performance gives him a risk profile that doesn’t seem to line up with the way this Blue Jays front office operates, particularly over an extended term. Matt Chapman’s market is likely to carry him beyond the club’s comfort zone, too, and if it does, and nothing unexpectedly develops on the trade market, GM Ross Atkins would be left piecing together a handful of two-win-value players to bolster his club.
Done right, and combined with returns to form by Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Alejandro Kirk and Alek Manoah – arguably the three most impactful developments that can happen for the Blue Jays this off-season – they could equal the sum of their parts in a way they didn’t throughout 2023.
Remember, difficult as it is to fathom given how last season played out and the awful wild-card-series ending, they’re bringing back the guts of a team that went 89-73 in an uber-competitive AL East. Throw, say, players worth eight wins into the pre-exisiting mix, with a pitching staff that had the second lowest ERA in the AL returning intact, and the Blue Jays should be a dangerous playoff team once again.
Now, the main issue with this approach is going short-term doesn’t resolve the threat to the current competitive window looming after the 2025 season. The free agencies of Guerrero and Bo Bichette, among others, two falls from now, in concert with no obvious future franchise cornerstones in the minor-leagues at the moment, is a problem without an easy resolution.
While Bellinger and Chapman could potentially help mitigate that, the possibility that they’re in a decline phase by 2026 makes a case for the Blue Jays to maintain financial flexibility in pursuit of re-signing Guerrero and/or Bichette or other opportunities.
Next off-season, Juan Soto, Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso, Paul Goldschmidt, Jose Altuve and Willy Adames are among the potential free agents while after 2025, Kyle Tucker, J.T. Realmuto and Will Smith join Guerrero and Bichette as players eligible for the open market.
So, there will be other spending opportunities for the Blue Jays in the years ahead, boosted by the club’s new premium Rogers Centre club offerings currently under construction. All such seating made available by the team is said to have sold out during the summer well before the Ohtani pursuit, with a waiting list for any other spots that become available, assuring a stronger financial future for the team.
Where Ohtani and the unique business-and-baseball opportunity he presents would have made a real difference is in season-ticket membership sales, an area the Blue Jays can still impact with the moves they make next.
An entire slate of options that fit the shorter-term, spread-the-wealth approach remain up for grabs in a market that thus far has largely been dominated by the free agencies of Ohtani and Yamamoto.
Now that they’re taken, agent Scott Boras seizes control of the bus, with potential Blue Jays fits like Rhys Hoskins and J.D. Martinez among his available clients. Before they sign, he’ll likely want to keep as many teams in need of offence in play as possible, meaning he could try to keep the Blue Jays around until fellow Boras clients Bellinger and Chapman get their deals.
In turn, that could slow up the process for other players like Turner and Pederson, while infielders like Rosario or Isiah Kiner-Falefa may want to know where Chapman lands before settling on their next club.
For the time being, teams seem intent on waiting out free agents in the hopes of tamping down salary demands, while agents attempt to deflect that pressure by being remaining patient as clubs sacrifice marketing time that could aid advanced ticket sales.
Eventually, everyone will find a chair, and the Blue Jays will play the market and execute a slate of moves. Perhaps they will still add a high-profile player that dominates the marquee, although it’s very possible they won’t. Either way, what the Red Sox did between the 2012 and 2013 seasons is a reminder that sometimes the best winters aren’t necessarily the flashiest ones.
