With Vladimir Guerrero Jr., right, locked up long-term, the Toronto Blue Jays have shown they are a team to be reckoned with this season.Scott Marshall/Getty Images
Rogers Inc. has accomplished two things with the Toronto Blue Jays this year.
It signed Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. to the richest contract in Canadian sports history. Then it jacked the price of Sportsnet’s premium streaming package by 30 per cent, to $325 a year. This cemented in people’s minds the idea that Rogers is a reverso Robin Hood, robbing the middle class to feed the rich.
Everything else about the Blue Jays is theoretical. It’s great that they’re in first place in the American League East coming out of the break, but they don’t give out a halfway trophy. First place matters in the last week of September. So now what?
The Jays are going to do whatever they’re going to do. Rogers principal and Jays owner Edward Rogers is the one with the choice.
People don’t like Rogers. That’s not a mean thing to say. Nobody likes any well-known rich guy over 40.
Rogers has never seemed to care about that much. He does no outreach. He doesn’t even cavort with the athletes, and they would have no choice but to cavort with him if he called.
That Rogers has no need to be liked has always been the most likeable thing about him. There is nothing more off-putting than a needy billionaire.
But if you already have a thriving business, one wholly owned major-league sports franchise, and a chunk of two others, you don’t borrow money to buy them all out unless you want to be a player. There must be some part of you that wants to be observed and discussed.
Right now, while everyone’s looking right at him, Rogers is in the rare position of deciding how that will go.
If he wants to become the northern Marge Schott, Rogers tells his vassals in charge of the Jays to do nothing at the trade deadline, which is two weeks away. Make no big deals. Sign no big-ticket players. Wait and see if George Springer has more than four months in him, and if Alejandro Kirk really is Johnny Bench.
If that doesn’t work and the Jays lie down and die in August, you send team GM Ross Atkins out to wax poetic for an hour about how much they learned. He’s amazing at that.
Toronto Blue Jays manager general manager Ross Atkins, right, has frequently been left to explain away playoff losses to the media in years past.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Were I advising Rogers (and expecting a large holiday bonus), this would be a tempting path. The Jays have stood and slugged with the best of the American League this year and, let’s face it, the American League doesn’t look like much. Maybe the trick isn’t high-priced free-agent talent (ahem, Anthony Santander). Maybe the way forward is doing your R&D in-house, a la Addison Barger.
‘We believe in our scouts, our player development and cultivating personnel we can evaluate up close, every day, who all play the Blue Jays’ way.’
Who knows if it works, but it sounds convincing. Maybe even slip in some shifty copy about ‘made in Canada’ (though it’s all made in the U.S.). That’s a story you can sell that people will buy. Especially fans of Toronto sports teams, who will buy anything.
Even if the Jays run out of gas before the end of the year, people can say they tried. The trick is articulating a vision, even if it’s a terrible vision. The Jays have never been good at that.
The other way to go is the Alex Anthopoulos route – push everything into the middle of the table now.
The Yankees are teetering. The Red Sox aren’t there yet. The Orioles are nearing maximum velocity. The Rays are unusually below average.
The playing field is never going to be more tilted in Toronto’s favour. It’s just the Jays, Detroit and Houston.
Ten years after the deadline trades that shocked the Jays back to life, there are no Troy Tulowtizkis or David Prices lying around. Those sorts of hall-of-fame adjacent names don’t move at midseason any more.
But what if the Jays could find one? Mostly, what it requires is the willingness to absorb financial punishment.
The Jays’ obvious problem is starting pitching. Statistics don’t lie – the Jays rotation is ranked 25th in baseball in earned-run average, and has a median age of 107. It might coast on fumes for the rest of the season, but it’s probably going to blow up in August.
Were the Jays to procure a major starter – Mitch Keller of the Pirates is everyone’s trade-deadline crush – that would give people the sense that Rogers & Co. are in it to win it.
Again, it doesn’t need to work out. All you’re hoping to do is change the channel. If Jays fans are talking about all the new arrivals, they are less likely to be talking about whether it’s possible to HELOC your car so that you can pay your cable bill.
The goal in sports business isn’t making people happy forever. It’s making them happy today, and pushing off their rage until some indeterminate future point. The same people who are ecstatic because you signed Guerrero will kill you later if he doesn’t win two MVPs. You need a lot of zen to deal with that.
With Rogers Inc. now owning a majority share in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Rogers executive chair Edward Rogers is one of the most influential people involved with Toronto’s professional sports teams.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Rogers has mastered the ability to roll with criticism, but does he want more than that? Does he want to be Toronto’s Andrew Carnegie – a civic booster type? Or is this just a business play?
The Jays executives have said over and over again that through Rogers, Toronto is in on all the top-end baseball talent. They just can’t get any of them to take their money.
That was back when the Jays were miserable and getting worse. Now they’re out in front of the pack, but lacking horses.
Layered on top of this is the recent removal of the two most recognizable adults in Toronto sports – Masai Ujiri and Brendan Shanahan. The field is clear for a new paternal figure, and so the bet-now scenario will never be more compelling.
It’s time to figure out exactly what sort of owner has just assumed full control of the biggest sports teams in Toronto.
Is he someone who wants to gamble/spend his way to becoming Toronto’s likeable Daddy Warbucks? Or is he someone who likes his money where it is: In his pocket, and not yours?