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TORONTO — The lockout is over, and baseball is back with a few tweaks.

In the end, it was a 99-day pause on the business, but the MLBPA and owners eventually found a way to salvage the full 162-game slate, and a condensed spring training gets going almost immediately in Dunedin with many Toronto Blue Jays veterans already trickling in on Friday.

For the Jays, there’s one number that matters the most in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement: 12.

The long-expected expanded postseason is now reality and a club with legitimate World Series aspirations just got some help when it comes to qualifying for the dance, which is the necessary first step that eluded the Jays by a game last fall.

What an extra playoff team in each league will do for the sanctity of the 162-game schedule in the long run remains to be seen — 40 per cent of MLB teams will now qualify in a league that’s been traditionally top heavy in recent years — but there’s no doubt it’ll add to the September excitement down the stretch.

We may even get middling .500 teams in the mix, making it obvious that the new format is going to come with debate.

But for a team going toe-to-toe with financial powerhouses in New York and Boston, as well one of the best drafting and developing franchises residing in Tampa, the Jays now have a bit more margin for error.

Here are a few more Jays-related takeaways from the new CBA.

 

More balanced schedule in 2023 will help

Lost in the details of the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT) going up, minimum salaries increasing, and the hot topic of the international draft was the fact the league will be moving to a more balanced schedule next season.

After years of AL East teams beating up on each other as the weaker Central and West looked on, that meat grinder will finally ease in 2023.

“I think the balanced schedule will be a real improvement for our fans,” commissioner Rob Manfred said at his press conference announcing the deal “It will give our fans a greater opportunity to see all of the great players in the game on a more regular basis.”

Less Tuesday night barnburners against the Orioles can only be a good thing.

 

Does pushing CBT higher help or hurt Jays?

This is an interesting one because there’s a couple of ways to look at it.

At first glance, giving the deep pocketed Red Sox and Yankees the ability to spend more without being taxed doesn’t seem good, as the CBT will jump to $230 million in 2022, peaking at $244 million in the final year of the agreement in 2026.

But then you sit back and think about the kind of money the Jays have doled out over the past three winters for Hyun Jin Ryu, George Springer and Kevin Gausman, and you have to think there’s a couple more levels of spending to come.

With a World Series the only goal at this point, it wouldn’t be shocking to see the Jays get into the $200 million range once Bichette and Guerrero Jr. start making real money.

The Jays may never be a luxury tax team, but they can certainly approach it and spend with the top five or six franchises in baseball.

How their payroll takes shape once lucrative extensions are handed out to the aforementioned stars and how much room is ultimately left in the coming years is one of the more fascinating storylines to watch develop.

 

Young stars finally get an opening day at home

This doesn’t have anything to do with the CBA, but the circumstances surrounding the timing of things have left the Jays with a home game on opening day April 8, rather than the trip to Baltimore that was originally scheduled.

It’s pretty amazing to think that the Vladdy, Bo, Biggio group has yet to enjoy a true opening day.

In 2019, they weren’t up yet.

In 2020, it was on the road in D.C. in an empty stadium.

Last year, it was in the Bronx in front of a smaller, pandemic-restricted Yankee Stadium crowd.

Their fourth big-league seasons will finally give them what should be a true opening day in front of the first full Rogers Centre crowd since 2019.