Bargain-hunting Blue Jays taking patient approach at Winter Meetings

Scott Mitchell

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LAS VEGAS — Patience is the key word when it comes to the Toronto Blue Jays.

The front office is asking the fan base to have some as they attempt to right the ship by their target date of 2021, while the blueprint to get back to contention also seems to be heavily favouring the waiting game.

Consider the Jays’ off-season one year ago.

Curtis Granderson, Jaime Garcia, John Axford, Tyler Clippard, Seunghwan Oh ... not one of those signings happened before the final week of January.

Quiet would be the best way to describe GM Ross Atkins’ off-season so far, and that may not change anytime soon.

As the first day of the 2018 MLB Winter Meetings was winding down Monday at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Atkins was preaching that patience.

“I know that can be somewhat frustrating for a fan and it’s not us being anything other than diligent and making sure that we consider all of our opportunities and maximize them,” Atkins said. “I could not be more excited about building depth around our farm system, the team that is in place. Moving towards becoming one of the younger teams in baseball is an exciting thing to think about.”

If 2018 was about giving it one last kick at the can with an aging core, 2019 is about improvement from within and a year of trying to fit the internal pieces into place.
Does Vladimir Guerrero Jr. show up as an immediate MVP candidate, as some projection models have surmised?

Where is Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s long-term home defensively?

Are Teoscar Hernandez, Randal Grichuk, Devon Travis and Brandon Drury pieces to the future puzzle or simply here-and-now placeholders?

And then there’s the pitching side of things.

Atkins once again pointed out his desire to improve the rotation.

That will happen at some point. 

It has to, if only to protect the young arms in the system who would be better served by forcing their way into the rotation rather than being handed Opening Day roster spots.

Rotation first, bullpen second.

“We would rather have more flexibility, or complete flexibility, to know what our opportunities would be on the starting pitching front before we are aggressive with relievers,” Atkins said.

“I’ve said over and over again how exciting it feels, and I know it can feel not quite as exciting in an offseason for a fan that we’re not acquiring free agents as frequently as we have the last few years. We’re not as aggressive on the trade front, potentially, as some fans would like us to be, but we are also in a unique opportunity to make sure that we create the best possible environment and opportunity for our young players that will be transitioning.”

Where some believe Atkins & Co. could or would be aggressive on the trade front is the two names that currently sit atop the under-construction rotation: Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez.

After saying last week that he expects to receive interesting offers for the pair of right-handers, Atkins doubled down, saying there’s “significant interest” in the starters who are both coming off injury-induced down years.

“A lot of teams, for a long time, have talked about those individuals,” Atkins said. “There is by no means a motivation on our part for them to be anything but Toronto Blue Jays. That's what we think about when we write out our rotation — it has them in it. 

“But we know who's interested and now it's determining how interested, in terms of what it would take. There’s an objective equation to that and how it lines up with your needs. The short answer is, it would need to be a fair deal. It would mean we're getting talent in return that we feel is fair for the talent that is leaving but that would be the case with any player.”

Despite that interest, Atkins cautioned that it wouldn’t be smart to lay a big Sin City bet on a Stroman or Sanchez trade coming to fruition.

“If something were to make sense in terms of a value exchange, and hopefully it’d be a value add, it’s just hard to do,” Atkins said. “It’s hard to do better than Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez so that’s what makes it so unlikely.”

Patience.

That’s the name of the game for everyone at this point.