ORLANDO, Fla. – Two common questions at the Winter Meetings about the Toronto Blue Jays after they cannonballed into the off-season by signing Dylan Cease and agreeing on terms with Cody Ponce – “Are they done” and “What’s next?”
The answer to No. 1 is a clear and definitive no, but some nuance in assessing their order of operations and preferences is required around No. 2.
“They’re everywhere,” one agent said Tuesday, a view echoed by others engaged with the World Series finalists, although bolstering the bullpen with another leverage arm appears to be among their primary remaining goals.
Three agents described the Blue Jays as being determined at the top of a market now down to closer Robert Suarez after Edwin Diaz reached agreement on a $69-million, three-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, while also examining leverage relievers such as Luke Weaver, Pete Fairbanks and Brad Keller, too.
They were said to have been in the mix for Diaz, whose final price was likely beyond their comfort zone, along with two other closers that also landed elsewhere – Ryan Helsley, who joined the Baltimore Orioles, and Emilio Pagan, who re-signed with the Cincinnati Reds.
During an interview with Hazel Mae and me Monday general manager Ross Atkins praised his incumbent closer – “It’s hard to do better than Jeff Hoffman,” he said – but also didn’t dispel the notion that he was hunting for more relief help.
“We don’t feel like we need to acquire pitching in terms of just adding depth or adding numbers,” he said, “but if there’s a way that we can add some level of impact to our ‘pen, we’d be open to it.”
He then dropped this intriguing caveat: “Doing that and the potential of adding another position player will be very difficult to do.”
Maybe, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to do both as Scott Boras, the super-agent who represents Cease along with several free-agent position players of note including Cody Bellinger and Alex Bregman, said “Toronto is certainly motivated for a number of reasons.”
“In our discussions during the Cease negotiations, they were very clear about their intentions to get better, to be better,” he continued. “They were so close to their goal and they feel that they have the core to do that and they’ve given us notice they’re going to continue to add both pitching and position players to really reach their championship goals.”
Given what Atkins said, how they accomplish that will be interesting to watch as they could go out and force the issue, the way they did with Cease, or be patient on the position-player side, waiting for the market to somewhat come to them.
Either way, they remain engaged on that front, having ongoing discussions with Bo Bichette and last week hosting Kyle Tucker for a visit to their Player Development Complex in Dunedin, Fla. Perhaps that market starts moving after Kyle Schwarber reached agreement on a $150-million, five-year deal to remain with the Philadelphia Phillies.
Bichette’s market is described as strong, with teams viewing him as a shortstop, a potential indicator of how he’s being valued. A read into how much the position matters to Bichette may potentially be found in the World Series, when he returned from a knee injury to play second base for the first time since he was in triple-A back in 2019, saying “I just want to be ready to help the team in any way that is afforded to me.”
The Blue Jays have the flexibility to play him at either spot if he returns, although it’s impossible to unsee how the defence looked for nearly two months with Andres Gimenez at shortstop. For the time being he’s preparing to play both positions, “which means, from a mindset standpoint, he’s thinking more about shortstop at this point,” said Atkins, although once they have some certainty, the Blue Jays will lock him into one side of the diamond.
Bichette’s process may be further along that of Tucker, who is slated to meet with additional clubs next week. Little should be read into him having already visited the Blue Jays as there’s a big gap between interest and offer, and worth noting is that the trip to Dunedin is essentially a drive to the suburbs for the Tampa resident.
In contrast to Tucker, Cease’s free-agency resolved quickly with a $210-million, seven-year deal after “Dylan interviewed everyone,” Boras said, “and really made a decision to go to Toronto and see if we could work on a deal and we were able to get that done.”
Pivotal for the Blue Jays was their pitch, as Cease said, “it seemed from the get-go that it was going to be pretty inevitable.”
“I really wanted to know how would you help me maximize my potential and my ability,” he added later. “That was very important to me. They knocked it out of the park.”
Manager John Schneider, who described Cease as “a really, really inquisitive mind,” said the Blue Jays “tried to kind of poke him with questions, simple things like how has your fastball grip evolved? It hasn’t really, we learned, in quite a few years. OK, have you tried this? He got intrigued with some of the things we were talking about. I think there’s some delivery stuff that has been a little bit inconsistent, like every pitcher, over the last couple of years.
“Hearing how aware of all those things he was and the openness to even start saying, ‘hey, let’s start thinking more about a change-up that I’ve thrown a little bit and how can you help me develop it,’ I think that kind of caught his attention, as well.”
The end result produced the foundational signing of the Blue Jays’ off-season, although work still remains, even as who and how much works plays itself out within the larger market.
Seen and heard in the lobbies and hallways at baseball’s Winter Meetings:
• Scott Boras shared some interesting insights into how negotiations play out during a conversation with colleague Hazel Mae: “Teams are very thorough, very deliberate, some have very specific needs, pursuits and they’re active,” he said. “Usually in a free-agent market, when one team is active, the remainder of the teams have to become active, otherwise they know they’re not in the marketplace for the player. So, it usually takes a leader, a team to come forth and be the aggressor. Then we notify the other teams, this is moving and then the market-flow of that starts to operate.”
• Dylan Cease on his background work to learn more about the Blue Jays before signing: “I had Kevin Gausman’s phone number from previous encounters and I had asked him about it. Honestly, as I asked around, no one had any negatives to say about it. The consensus has been you’re going to love the city, you’re going to love the organization. It’s as simple as that. There wasn’t a negative. It was pretty simple, pretty easy, pretty straightforward.”
• John Schneider, under contract through 2026 after his club option was exercised, said he’s “very” optimistic about soon signing an extension. “We’ve talked about it briefly, preliminarily, if you want to say that,” he said. “Right now I want to focus on how we’re making our team better. I expect and hope that there’s going to be a time when we kind of sit down and talk more about it. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. I’ve been here for a long time, and I want to continue to be here for a long time, and Mark (Shapiro) and Ross (Atkins), they both know that.”
• The $30-million, three-year agreement with Cody Ponce isn’t yet finalized as the Blue Jays work through some administrative issues around the contract.
• With Don Mattingly on the verge of joining the Philadelphia Phillies as bench coach, the Blue Jays have backfilled for his departure, set to add Drew Butera as a major-league coach and promote Eric Duncan to major-league field co-ordinator. DeMarlo Hale, the club’s associate manager, along with Duncan, who had been the club’s director of position player development, and Butera, a catching coach with the White Sox the past two seasons whom the Blue Jays have pursued in the past, will be splitting his duties.
• Outfielder Yohendrick Pinango, who reached triple-A last season after being acquired from the Chicago Cubs in July 2024 as part of the Nate Pearson deal, is one player the Blue Jays worry might be selected during Wednesday’s Rule 5 draft. They hold the 27th-overall pick and don’t expect any players they’re interested in to be selected.
• Not every negotiation between agents and teams has to be confrontational. One agent discussing a deal for his client with an Asian club came away from the talks with both an offer and a parting gift – a 12-piece box of pineapple pastries.