Blue Jays Steal MLB Winter Meetings Spotlight

Blue Jays Steal MLB Winter Meetings Spotlight

You’re watching Toronto Sports Rush on the Bet Rivers Network. It’s Wednesdays with Keeges, our Jays insider who’s at the baseball winner meetings. There was um a lot of talk from the Blue Jays because uh they finally introduced uh one of their new players yesterday. Kee Dylan CE right up in front of everybody too. It’s kind of I Dan I almost said it’s cool how it works here. I would have had to tell us to start this over again, so I can’t use the word cool. But it was interesting how it worked here. Now, the media workroom, which is where I spend most of my time. It’s it’s the same at every winter meetings because all of these convention center hotels are kind of the same. And it’s a massive room, probably you could fit a few basketball courts, football field or two in there. It’s huge. And rows and rows and rows of desks. So everything happens in that big room. And up at the very front is a podium. Now, typically that’s just used for announcements. They do some PR stuff, some auctions up there, but the Blue Jays trotted out Dylan CE and Scott Boris, of course, right there in front of everybody. So, on camera, this might have just looked like a small room. It’s massive. So, every single reporter, doesn’t matter if you’re from Pittsburgh or New York or Cincinnati or LA, every reporter uh had to listen to it and had to see it. and every other executive had to see it walking by that room. So, it was intentional. You know, this was not by accident. And it was the ultimate, like you said last week, a kind of a showand tell. You know, here is our shiny new toy. Here’s Dylan Cease. And to have Dylan CE, the top pitcher on the market, and Scott Boris, the super agent who has sometimes crapped on the Blue Jays in the past. To have them both up there praising this organization is a pretty good look. Man, it it was the Blue Jays moment of the the meetings so far. Definitely. And it kind of continues this momentum that they have. You know, everybody is talking about the Blue Jays. You know, we just had a breakfast here with John Schneider and he was saying the same like he he can’t walk anywhere. Like everyone wants to talk to him now. Whereas in past years it was ah you know they’re Toronto. They’re the other team. Now everybody wants to talk to John Schneider and everyone wants to talk about the Blue Jays and they’re they’re probably annoying him because they all want to talk about game seven. But it’s uh it’s a good thing, man. If you’re the Blue Jays, they’re the center of the baseball world right now. Uh let’s hear what C had to say as we have clips. They’ve built a really impressive culture. you know, I mean, uh, you know, as they were explaining sort of what they do to get the best out of players or what how they prepare and and you know, even the little things like travel and whatnot, you can just tell that it’s it’s a buttoned up organization. Um, they want to win and and uh, you know, it was it was obvious. Over time, as we went through some down years and the time that Mark and I were there, uh, we poured into the resources that help players improve. And as that started to bubble up into wins, uh we then poured m more money into resources around uh free agency and investing in players more long-term in a significant way. Um and that uh as it turns into more wins and um you know, we we do everything in our power to make sure we’re helping players feel comfortable and transition smoothly beyond just them as performers, but as people. um has turned into what we feel is an attractive destination. Ross, it was right there. If you build it, they will come. It was right there. That’s essentially what he said. Little Ross swagger, but it’s right here, man. The the what CE talked about yesterday, two big things that stuck out to me, Dan. Um number one was that the Blue Jays really presented an impressive pitching case. Like, yeah, it’s the money. What people don’t say at these press conferences is, “Hello, this team gave me the most money because that would be a very short press conference, so we need to fill it with other stuff.” The Blue Jays really impressed CE because he went into this really conscious and I I was impressed by this, really conscious of the fact that he’s talented, but inconsistent. He has as much talent as just about any starting pitcher in Major League Baseball, but he has not been consistent enough, and he realizes that. So what he heard from Pete Walker in the Blue Jays pitching people was a plan that really excited him. Little bit different fast ball, maybe more of a change up and some ways to keep him at his very best. That’s all he cared about. Which team can help me reach my potential fully and completely every year. The other thing you hear about, and we keep hearing about this, Dan, is what the Blue Jays offer in terms of resources. They’re complex in Dun Eden, Florida, and that matters. The the gap, Dan, between the Blue Jays complex and an average training complex is huge. Like I I spend all spring driving around Florida to these different stadiums and complexes. Some of them suck. Some of them you walk into and you’re thinking, “Oh my god, like this is this is a major league team, whereas the Blue Jays is top of the line. Is it the best? I don’t know. Haven’t been to all of them, but it’s got to be top five, top three. It’s really impressive. And how the Blue Jays treat families, wives, girlfriends, people who matter to the players is really second to none. Man, I I I made the mistake of kind of thinking that was overplayed earlier on in this regime. And you know, I I was the bitter one saying, “Okay, give them money. Nobody else cares.” But players over and over bring this up to me. And it’s a real factor. You know, if any of us are going to change cities for a job, you want your wife, girlfriend, husband, family to be happy because if they’re miserable, you’ll be miserable, too, right? And the Jays, I got to give them credit. They do an incredible job of taking care of their people’s people and you hear it over and over again to the point where I can’t ignore it. And Dylan CE, you know, he’s close with his family. He brought that up and he’s an interesting guy. You know, we just had breakfast with John Schneider. I learned that uh Dylan CE is a beekeeper, makes his own honey. He’s a man of the arts. So, I uh I I told Schneides I would make sure he I introduce him to, you know, Queen West and I’ll I’ll get him into the hipster community of Toronto. But, uh he’s an artsy guy. He’s an interesting cat and I’m I’m looking forward to meeting him more. He made a point of mentioning how the Jays travel and that stood out. What do the Jays do different than other major league teams in regards to travel? Yeah, part of that is just kind of demystifying the fact it’s in another country. You know, it it’s when you get TSA PreCheck, it doesn’t matter, man. Honestly, it’s a lot of players need to recognize that or be told that, frankly. And I I get it because like Dan, I travel to the United States constantly for work, but when I talk to my American colleagues, Canada is that trip they make once every 2 or 3 years. So, it’s still very mysterious, you know, whereas to me, the US, like I I’m just as home here as I am in Canada. It’s all the same to me. But you need to demystify that a little bit. And hey, like we are not flying to Russia or Australia for games, okay? It’s quick, it’s easy. TSA pre-check is a beautiful thing. So demystifying that’s the start of it. But the Blue Jays, I think, also do a good job with their travel, with their flights, with the hotels, with how they take care of guys on the road. And that’s another thing, Dan, where there’s just there’s a gap. You know, there are teams in baseball who do a worse job with that. And there are teams who spend a little bit more, think a little bit more, care a little bit more. And that’s a big part of this. You know, the the tra the travel manager for any team is to me like the most interesting job in baseball. The George Castanza job. The Castanza. And the Blue Jays have Rodney Heamstra who does just an incredible job. Like the He must have 10 cell phones on the go at all times. I am in awe of everything that he has to manage and balance because you’re not just managing players, which is a ton. You know, every city, blocks of hotel rooms, flights, all of this, but you’re managing, hey, my wife and kids are flying in now. Can you help me with this? My mom is in in town. Where should she stay? There’s so much that needs to be managed there. Some teams do it really well, which the Blue Jays do. Some teams do it really poorly. Like one one Dan that stood out to me last night. I was watching MLB Network and Devin Williams who just signed with the Mets. He was talking about playing in New York last year with the Yankees and he said it’s it’s not really about the game itself. It’s about life around the game. And one thing he said was like after game one, after opening day last year in New York, I didn’t even really know how I was getting home. Like where do you get an Uber? How do you get out of here? That sounds like a small comment, but that stuff kind of wears on guys. you know, the Blue Jays take great care of that and I really think it matters. So, you said you had breakfast with John Schneider. Uh, what was revealed there? Uh, one of the things I know was revealed that Cody Pon will be a starting pitcher because people didn’t know if he’d be in the pen or if he’d be a starter. Yeah. The the it’s always the last day of the winter meetings, which thank God only three days now instead of four. at 8 am on the last day of the winter meetings. It’s called the manager’s breakfast and it’s in a massive ballroom full of big tables and the writers and media from each city sit down with the manager. Um, does everyone want to be there? I don’t know. But it’s a thing that we always do. Uh, it’s it’s tradition. You know, it’s kind of like if you could tear down the winter meetings and start from scratch, you’d build them a little differently. But we’ve always done this, so we do it. And today is a little more casual just to kind of catch up. What are you doing in this off season? What do you think about what’s going on in baseball right now? We got more of our information yesterday when Schneider talked at his podium, the manager session, and a lot of excitement around Cody Pon as well. Like, I’m fascinated by him coming back from Japan and then Korea. How do you translate that? You know, he was incredible over there. He added some velocity, a pitch, his numbers were great. Well, how do you translate it? And that’s still a pretty imperfect science at this point, but the the Blue Jays have to feel great about this rotation. And from from speaking to Schneider and Atkins, it’s really clear that coming into this off season, they said, “We’ve got to improve starting pitching and this rotation, period.” Now, position players, yeah, you’d love to add Bo or Tucker or whatever else, but if one thing had to happen, it’s the rotation. And they’ve nailed that so far. not just this year but beyond. And we’ll see what happens with Jose Berios. I don’t know at this point. They’re not going to trade the guy tomorrow because nobody’s taking the contract. It’s not a video game. But I think that’s something that carries out through spring training and we’ll see how it goes. But it’s it’s a crowded room, Dan. Good problem to have, but it’s a little awkward right now to be honest. Uh two big names are taken off the board. Um, we’ve got Kyle Schwarber remaining in Philly and Edwin Diaz leaves the Mets and goes to the Dodgers. So, there’s one of the closers the Jays were reportedly interested in gone. Yeah, it’s it’s been a kind of quiet winter meetings. I like Schwarber in Philly because he fits Philly. Oh, yeah. He’s a Philly guy. I want guys to fit the teams they’re with and that’s pretty cool. I dig that. Now, Diaz signing, I thought he would sign for more years and maybe less annual value, but 23 million a year for reliever, I mean, holy, that’s a lot of money. But I’d also make the argument, Dan, that Edwin Diaz at some point late next October will probably pitch the most important inning or moment of the Dodger season. And if he gets that out, he’s worth 200 million, let alone 23 million a year. So, I don’t have a problem with that at all. Uh that Diaz deal was beyond where the Blue Jays were going to go and I don’t think it was very close. Frankly, I don’t think they were going to go 23 million a year on a reliever, but that leaves them with a market that’s kind of starting to shrink because they need something in their bullpen. And it doesn’t they don’t need an average guy. I think that’s a benefit now, Dan, of how the Blue Jays are developing some people like Braden Fiser or Mason Flu Hardy. The beauty of those pitchers is that you no longer have to go out and give five million bucks to a 36-y old reliever who might have one year left. You can kind of condense that money and give it to a good reliever. That could be Suarez. That could be Pete Fairbanks who they have liked through the offseason and they have interest in. But they’ve got to land someone. They need to upgrade this bullpen. And that’s what great team teams get to do, Dan. Like the Dodgers are a great team. So, when you’re already good, the bullpen is the luxury item that you keep upgrading and that’s what’s going to win for you in October, which the Jays understand now. But they’ve got to get in on this soon, though. There’s not much of a trademark for relievers right now. So, it’s got to be one of these top guys. Uh I don’t know if I uh No, I mentioned this the other day if if the Blue Jays know what they’re sitting on with the buzz that still exists. And it further hit home the other night uh when I went to the Leafs game uh wandering around. Tough to find a coffee, but I found a Tim Hortons and uh one of the the people that worked there pulls me aside and he’s like uh we were shooting the and then the Jays came up and and we talked about game seven for 10 minutes and he goes, “I got to be honest, I just can’t get into the Leafs. Like I just I just can’t find the spark.” And my analogy is right now the Toronto Blue Jays are Christmas morning with a a kid that is uh 1 to like five where the excitement is there while the Toronto beliefs aren’t a Christmas morning where the kid’s like 18 and you’re pretending to be excited when it’s not really there. That is what’s going on right now in real time in Toronto. Absolutely. And the Leafs have had that same core. Like we’ve been talking about Matthews and Tavvaris and others for years now. Willie Knander, Morgan Riley. Like it’s the same, you know, it’s stale, frankly, at this point. And it’s the same conversation over and over. Will they? Will they? Will they? It’s dusty. It’s old. It’s boring at this point. The Blue Jays are new and exciting. You know, it’s similar to the Raptors in 2019 when they come off that run. Everyone’s a Raptors fan and you can hold on to that for a while. Now, when they lost Kawhi Leonard, that took some juice out of it. And you you try to get back, but it’s tough. The Blue Jays have the ability right now, Dan, to be the team in Canada. They are right now. Yeah. And they can hold that. Like, if you hold on to that for a few years, that changes everything. Like 2015 and 2016, you had it. You almost had it, but then it went off a cliff. Like the 2017 Blue Jays, just that was the first year I covered the team full-time. There was just no life to it, you know? it just it didn’t have any juice. But now the Blue Jays have momentum like fresh off that season. Let’s compare it to that Raptors run. I know they ended differently with a championship and not the Raptors run was all about how can we hold on to this? Will Kawawaii stay? No. Even the Blue Jays runs in 15 and 16. How can we hold on to this? Everyone was old, expiring contracts. It wasn’t built to last. The Blue Jays just went out and signed the best pitcher on the market. Boom. They have pretty much everyone coming back. I know that guys like Sherzer and Bassid are not, but you you replace those very quickly with a damn good pitcher in Dylan CE and Cody Pon who has upside. This team is at worst the same, but they could be getting better. And the expectations and the momentum are there. Like this is all about momentum. It’s it’s giving people a reason to give a damn and they do. Like I I think Dan, this is going to carry right into spring training into opening day and like I I experience it in a in a kind of unique way because I I judge the Blue Jays relevance based on how many media requests I get and when the Blue Jays suck, I will go a week at a time in the offseason where I’ll get one or two radio requests. Hey, do you want to come on TV to talk about them? Now it’s every single day, multiple 5, 10 a day. During the Blue Jays World Series run, Dan, I was getting 40 to 50 requests every day to come on every show in every small town in the country. And that’s kind of my barometer for like, do people care about this outside of Toronto? God, yes, they do. Okay, they still want to talk about the Blue Jays. Baseball normally goes away in the winter here in Canada in this market because you care about the Leafs, the Habs, the Flames, the Oilers, the Canucks, whoever else. But it’s sticking now, man. I haven’t seen it stick like this in my career. like people want to talk about it and you you mentioned how there was question marks what if the Raptors would keep Kawawaii there was question marks about the the Jays if they they’d keep the core there but their big piece Vlatty he’s locked up for an eternity so those big question marks aren’t there so it’s almost like a safety blanket where people like okay this team’s going to kind of look the same our key parts are there and it might actually even be better. So there’s there’s reason for hope and optimism because of those question marks that have been pushed to the side. Yeah, Vlatty changed everything. Like once you sign Vlatty, you’re committing to being competitive for good. Now being competitive might not always work. There will be years like 2022 and 23 where you you make a postseason run and you just screw it up. It’s going to happen, okay? They’re not going to make the World Series every year. In Vlatt’s contract, they’re going to miss the playoffs a bunch of times. It’s going to happen. But when you sign Vlatty to that number and when you spend like Rogers ownership has the past couple of years, you’re signaling that you’re going to do that for good. Like you don’t sign Vlatty and just stop that. You know, people would riot at this point. And we know, everyone listening to this knows that Rogers has money. Okay, this is this is not some mysterious organization or some secretive billionaire. you you can’t we can look up that Rogers is doing pretty well. You can look at your phone bill and see that they’re bringing in some cash. They’re doing well and they are spending and I think they deserve a lot of credit for that because there have been times in this city, my god, especially back through the late 90s, early 2000s, where the Blue Jays just weren’t spending. They were choosing not to spend. Right now, they’re going for it. And of course, that investment is paying off. You know, like the they are spending, but they are making money. And it’s a beautiful synergy right now at this point because as a fan you’re buying in at something that can still get better. You know, you’re not trying to cling to something saying, “Oh, I hope this lasts one more year.” Like, you’re looking at a team that’s going to be built around Vlatty, maybe around Bose still long term. And that’s exciting, man. That lets you really set some roots down and it that’s what turns bandwagon fans into full-time fans. And it’s an important thing. And also, um, I should point out the in-game production. Um, I went to several Jays games last year where my kids were like, “Yeah, I’d go back.” But if I had taken them to that Leaf game on Monday and they sat through that, they’d say, “I don’t need to go to that again.” The entertainment valley, the Leafs have not figured out. This is an entertainment business. They don’t seem to really want to entertain people once they enter the building. the Toronto Maple Leafs, you know, they’re very it’s a very serious product. But the the my my ar my my my armrest fell off my chair. The place has fallen apart. But man, like even what the Jays have done with the stadium, that’s honestly, Dan, that’s another thing I was wrong about. Like when they did those Renos, I thought, cool, what a great place to go and not watch baseball, you know? But people like it. Younger people like it. And honestly, the big picture thing I keep coming back to, Dan, is that I think baseball’s hot right now. Mhm. You know, I don’t just say that because it’s work for me. I honestly think that baseball is hot right now, not just in Toronto, but you see the TV numbers across the league. It’s, you know, everyone dreams of kind of, no one’s going to be the NFL ever, but it’s becoming cool in the way that maybe the NBA has some of that cool factor where it’s more of a social destination where personalities are driving the game a little bit more. I know that baseball always comes back to that idea of like if Mike Trout walked down the street, blah blah blah. Well, there’s a new era of players now. You know, Mike Trout’s era is towards its end, unfortunately. But there’s a new era of young players who are cool and who are attracting younger fans who, you know, they’re not 70 years old wanting to keep score in the stands. Now, if you want to do that, cool and I love you. But there’s room for more now. I think the Jays have captured that well. I think Toronto’s kind of a good example of where baseball wants to go right now and it’s it’s just got a lot of momentum, man. Like I think baseball’s as hot as it’s been since I’ve been covering it. And baseball just means summer and warm weather, which is a great thing that we can look forward to as it continues to snow all day here. Keeges, do not rush back. Hey, no problem. Thanks, man. Thanks for watching Toronto Sports Rush on the Bet Rivers Network. [Music]

Dan O’Toole and Keegan Matheson break down the MLB winter meetings, where the Blue Jays showcased new pitcher Dylan Cease. A team that’s often been an afterthought now finds itself at the center of the baseball world.

00:00 Dylan Cease introduced by Blue Jays
04:30 Jays’ free agency advantages
06:20 How Toronto handles travel
10:25 A new-look rotation
12:10 Remaining bullpen options
13:20 Jays have captured the world’s attention

#bluejays #bluejaysnews #betriversnetwork