AWKWARD OFF-SEASON
Jays face tough decisions
In the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse Wednesday night, as players exchanged hugs and packed up lockers, GM Ross Atkins walked in. He stood near Marcus Stroman, who was busy putting things in a bag.
Moments ticked by. Then Stroman realized someone was standing there, and looked up. Atkins reached out a fist. Stroman bumped it. The whole scene was laboured and awkward, which makes it a fine metaphor for the Jays’ upcoming off-season.
There is a lot to sort out, and it won’t be easy.
WILL JOSE BAUTISTA BE BACK?
Easily the most awkward of questions. When Bautista arrived at spring training and declared he had given the Jays a contract number and there was nothing to negotiate, you had to concede he was in a position of strength.
He was coming off two seasons of good health and excellent production, and had authored the greatest moment in the franchise’s last 21 seasons. He had outperformed his US$78-million contract by a hilarious margin. Why not ask for the moon? If the Jays didn’t bite, he had the open market after the season. Eight months later, Bautista’s bet on himself has busted. He battled injuries, missed time, and posted his worst numbers since 2009, before his mid-career breakout.
Where once the question was whether Toronto would be willing to hand Bautista a giant contract and overpay for the later years, as teams often do with aging sluggers, now the question is whether they could get away with a one-year qualifying offer and hope Bautista is willing to bet on himself again. It would have been laughable in March. Now? Less so.
HOW ABOUT EDWIN ENCARNACION?
Before the season began, there was an argument to be made that Bautista was the more likely of the two longtime Toronto bats to produce into his late 30s. Encarnacion often had nagging injuries, while Bautista was a noted health and fitness nut.
But then Encarnacion played in 160 games, a career high, while tying a career best in home runs (42) and leading the league in RBIs.
At 33, he will definitely have big-dollar suitors, with Boston and Houston both expected to be in the bidding, so the question for the Jays will be a simple one: do they pay to keep a star, even though the later years of the contract will almost certainly not be worth the declining production? Or does Encarnacion become the latest in a long line of Jays all-stars to finish his career elsewhere?
INTERESTING THAT YOU HAVE AVOIDED MAKING ANY PREDICTIONS THERE. REAL SMOOTH.
True. The thing is, there are a lot of moving parts. Rogers Communications has to give Atkins and president Mark Shapiro a budget number, from which all other decisions will flow. And because both Encarnacion and Bautista hit free agency at the same time, management could adjust their strategy on one depending on how things unfold with the other.
If Bautista accepts a short-term offer, say, they would feel much better about not paying Encarnacion US$20-million until he is 38. That’s a lot of parrot feed.
Shapiro has said he doesn’t see the Blue Jays being a top-five payroll, but probably in the next five, which sounds exciting until you realize that’s about where they already are: 11th in MLB, at about US$160-million.
Given the massive increase in Blue Jays-related revenue — tens of millions of dollars in just one fiscal quarter, according to Rogers — now that the team is good again, the spend-money-tomake-money axiom seems well and truly proven.
But Rogers spent billions on the NHL, then the guy that made that deal left, then they brought in a new CEO, and just this week they punted that guy.
It’s fair to say the thinking on the Blue Jays could be unsettled at the moment.
NONE OF THIS SOUNDS PROMISING. GIVE ME SOMETHING TO CLING TO.
Here’s your nugget of optimism: they are bringing back John Gibbons as manager.
There’s a debate to be had about the merits of his managerial skills, but in sticking with him, management appears to be signalling that 2016 will not be an off-season of massive disruption.
That is to say, if both Bautista and Encarnacion walked and were not replaced with players of similar ability, the Jays could find themselves with one superstar in Josh Donaldson, a very good starting rotation, and two players in Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki who are paid like superstars but have produced average offensive numbers in Toronto.
(Both have great value to the team in other ways.)
From there, it’s a short walk to turning over the roster and conceding the AL East to someone else for a couple of years. But bringing back Gibbons — and announcing it so soon — would be an odd move if the Jays didn’t expect to be a veteran team that competes into September in 2017.
A good number of the Blue Jays likely won’t be back — R.A. Dickey, Michael Saunders, Brett Cecil — but the manager won’t be among them, and that’s something.