With Ohtani out of the mix, Blue Jays unlikely to find another unicorn

TORONTO — They Sho-ed him the money. So, where does it go now? What will the Toronto Blue Jays do with whatever amount they’d laid aside for Shohei Ohtani?

There will be money to spend, I’m sure, because in recent years there always has been money available. But I seriously doubt it’s as easy as divvying up the Ohtani money to be spread among other players — which is where those looking for solace have landed — because the business case for, say, Cody Bellinger or Yoshinobu Yamamoto isn’t the same as the business case for Ohtani.

Sure, Bellinger’s addition would make the team better than it is because one-third of the daily lineup is a smoking crater. And if you’re a premium-seat customer on the fence or part of the just-do-something brigade, signing the second-best available free agent on the market isn’t the worst idea in the world, despite his polarizing status in the analytics community. But does Bellinger do what Ohtani would do to your business side? Of course not. That’s part of the reason he’s the highest-paid professional athlete on the continent.

Unicorns don’t come in multiples.

(In the past, Blue Jays executives approached each budgetary process with three options to present to ownership, which might loosely be categorized as maintaining payroll or increasing it slightly; start tearing it down; or shooting for the stars. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but it would certainly make sense.)

At any rate, I’m reminded of an earlier time in Blue Jays history when there was a great whack of money waiting to be spent. That was early in the new year of 2005, when Ted Rogers called up then-president and chief executive officer Paul Godfrey and said he was going to make a payroll commitment of $210 million over three years. General manager J.P. Ricciardi could split it up however he wanted.

The initial response was classic Ricciardi: “[Expletive], Paul, I can’t spend $70 million this season even if I tried.”

That was because the offer came well into the free-agent period, meaning the Blue Jays had already missed out even sniffing around the likes of Pedro Martinez, Adrian Beltre, Carlos Beltran or, a pitcher who did interest them, Matt Clement.

In addition, the Blue Jays had let Carlos Delgado walk away as a free agent without compensation. Delgado earned $19.7 million in 2004 — just under 40 per cent of the payroll for a team that went 67-94. Delgado would sign a four-year, $52-million contract with the Florida Marlins, hit .301 with 33 home runs, then be traded to the New York Mets. It’s doubtful the Blue Jays would have signed Delgado with that three-year commitment in hand, but who knows? At the very least, they would have likely offered arbitration without fear that Delgado’s acceptance would cripple their payroll.

As it was, the three-year, $17-million contract signed by Corey Koskie before Rogers’ commitment remained the biggest Blue Jays deal that winter. They ran out a $45.719-million payroll in 2005, then saw it jump to $72 million in 2006, $82 million in 2007 and $98 million in 2008. That last figure was the 10th-highest payroll in the majors that season. But it would take five more years — Alex Anthopoulos’ all-in winter of 2012-13 — for those levels to be reached again.

Ricciardi’s use of the three-year commitment was a double-edged sword. Hired at the height of the "Moneyball" craze, when folks were tickled by the efficiency of the Oakland Athletics and Billy Beane, Ricciardi had been pitched to Godfrey as “Billy’s baseball guy.”

As I detailed in my book Full Count, some of those around Ricciardi believe the money took him off course. The closest the club came to the post-season was 2006, when it finished 87-75 — still 10 games behind the New York Yankees in the American League East and eight games back of the Detroit Tigers in the wild card. Along the way, Ricciardi handed out the first five-year contract given to a starting pitcher in five years when he signed A.J. Burnett to a $55-million deal on the heels of a stunning five-year, $47-million deal to closer B.J. Ryan that was, at the time, the longest deal for a reliever in MLB history.

By the time Ricciardi was fired in 2009, he had signed Roy Halladay to a prudent three-year, $42-million extension, as well as giving out a pair of seven-year extensions: $126 million to Vernon Wells and $69.8 million to Alex Rios. Woof.

Ryan’s deal was eventually bought out for $20 million. Rios was waived and Wells’ deal was foisted on to the Los Angeles Angels by Ricciardi’s successor, Anthopoulos, proving in the process that there is no such thing as an untradable contract.

Since 2013, the use of long-term deals by Anthopoulos and the current management team of president and CEO Mark Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins — free agent and otherwise — has, I would argue, been largely successful. Keeping Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion. Adding Russell Martin. Signing Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt and extending Jose Berrios. George Springer’s deal won’t age well, but it’s not as if it will be viewed as a millstone around the organization’s neck in the manner of Wells’.

And to my way of thinking, this is the most significant aspect of the financial maturing (aggressiveness?) of the Blue Jays: the acceptance of risk and sunken costs and an ability to move on when something doesn’t work out. When is the last time you’ve heard the Blue Jays front office whine about the cost of player procurement? Or ask players to take a pay cut to allow the team to sign an Ervin Santana, as was the case in 2014? And unless I’ve missed it, the fact that the Blue Jays were a luxury-tax team in 2023 and finished with three less regular season wins and bupkis in the playoffs hasn’t been much of a talking point.

So, even if all that Ohtani money isn’t there to be spent in its entirely, history suggests there is still a readiness to not just spend money but use it as a makeweight. The ability of Atkins to trade this team back into contention with this minor league system? I need to be convinced about that. But money? My guess is they’d show it, if not Sho it.

Jeff Blair and Kevin Barker can be heard weekly during the off-season on the Blair & Barker podcast.