ORLANDO, Fla. – Near the end of the Toronto Blue Jays’ news conference on Tuesday, someone asked their new ace, Dylan Cease, about the deferred money in his contract. The seven-year, $210 million agreement, reached just before Thanksgiving, will pay Cease through 2046, when he will be 50. Inflation will lower its present-day value.
“I’m really not worried about it,” Cease said. “If I can’t make that last, we’ve got problems.”
So it is for the franchise. If the Blue Jays can’t make October last, they have problems.
Their magic month finished with Halloween heartbreak: a game-ending double play with the championship-winning run at the plate. That was in Game 6, on a soft liner to left field, and the same thing happened the next night, on a broken-bat grounder to shortstop. The Los Angeles Dodgers, not the Blue Jays, got to celebrate at Rogers Centre, slipping through a million sliding doors to keep their crown.
“Every time I kind of go down a rabbit hole,” Toronto manager John Schneider said on Tuesday, “I find myself in a new rabbit hole.”
Postseason rabbit holes never reach daylight. For the 2025 Blue Jays, the path will always dead end with Alejandro Kirk’s splintered barrel at the feet of the joyous Dodgers. The endless what-ifs belong to history.
The future belongs to players such as Cease, who has alternated between top-5 Cy Young finishes and 4.50+ ERAs in each of the last four seasons. But he led the majors in strikeout rate last season and never misses a turn, making him the kind of durable righty the Blue Jays cultivate.
“It speaks to athleticism, and our view is they’re doing things in a way that is efficient and that makes sense for their body to be able to repeat,” Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins said. “Then the second factor is that it speaks to the potential to get better. This has always been attractive to us. It’s exceptionally attractive about Dylan.”
Toronto tends to invest wisely in the majors’ most fragile commodity. Imported veterans Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt and José Berríos have all made at least 30 starts in each of the last three seasons. Good luck, to be sure, but also good design.
Cease’s agent, Scott Boras, negotiated with Blue Jays ownership during Juan Soto’s free agency last winter. The high bidder almost always wins in free agency, but Toronto’s years-long investment in everything else has gained traction.
“We got to spend a significant amount of time with Edward Rogers,” Boras said. “Listening was a very important part to the ascension of his franchise, because they listened to what players wanted in amenities, what players wanted in technology to help them improve, what players needed and wanted in the routines medically. And the staffing for that was provided. The facilities are certainly, in the player community, held as best in class. They’ve set an example in the game about both minor-league and major-league facilities and care for players.”
Mark Shapiro, the Blue Jays’ president since 2015, emphasized that point in an interview before Game 6 of the World Series. He spent almost 25 years helping make Cleveland a model franchise, leaving no detail unexamined. It’s taken a while, but a similar approach in a much bigger market has paid off.
“We are working to have best in class, best in MLB, so when our players walk in, they know we care, and that we are relentless and tireless in giving them every opportunity to be the best they can possibly be, and that their families are looked after,” Shapiro said.
“So all those little things that seemingly could be not thought about and not invested in, we both have paid attention to and our ownership has supported. Despite the narrative, we were in the final two for (Shohei) Ohtani and (Roki) Sasaki and Soto. And 10 years ago, no one was talking about those players even considering Toronto. So I don’t view that (as a) negative, like some people on the outside do. I view that like, ‘Hey, we’re going to keep going after the top guys, and there’ll be one that chooses to come here.’”
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. chose to stay in Toronto last April – $500 million can be very persuasive – and now Cease is on board. The winter’s top free-agent hitter, outfielder Kyle Tucker, toured the Blue Jays’ complex in Dunedin, Fla., this month, and pitcher Cody Ponce left the KBO for a three-year, $30 million deal with the Jays.
Some of this momentum will stall if the Blue Jays lose their longtime shortstop, Bo Bichette, in free agency. Bichette’s three-run homer nearly made him the hero of Game 7, and he and Guerrero have been the team’s homegrown pillars since 2019.
The core group had been swept from the playoffs in 2020, 2022 and 2023, then finished last in the American League East in 2024. Yet instead of retreating, the Blue Jays reinvested and won their first pennant in decades.
“The hardest thing to do in sports is to not react with emotion or momentum when a fan base and people around you are not happy,” Shapiro said. “But I think if you have the strength and the backing from ownership to stay consistent, you’re often rewarded, because you can make adjustments but not have to start over again.”
The Blue Jays have paid premium prices, in prospects and money, for elite, up-the-middle defenders in center fielder Daulton Varsho and infielder Andrés Giménez. They have added to their rotation and the bullpen. They have created an offensive identity as contact hitters with thump.
In a division without any pushovers, everyone chases the Blue Jays. So does the rest of the league. Only one team can reign, and this is the Dodgers’ decade until proven otherwise. But Toronto likes the view from its wide-open window.
“When you feel like you have one,” Atkins said, “you want to lean into it.”