ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 An elite closer and a 56-home run slugger agreed to massive deals in a matter of minutes Tuesday, breathing life into the Winter Meetings at the exact moment Scott Boras held court for a crowd of reporters.<\/p>\n
Agency vs. agency subterfuge? Pure coincidence? Either way, Kyle Schwarber<\/a> has returned to the Phillies for $150 million and Edwin Diaz has left the Mets for a three-year deal with the Dodgers. And if Boras was upstaged for a moment, he was back in the spotlight before long, as it was soon time for Dylan Cease to officially join the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a>.<\/p>\n “The biggest part was being able to be a part of a championship team,” Cease said. “With the run last year, they’ve proven they have championship-calibre players and obviously a good process, so that was probably the No. 1 thing. And from there it was ‘how would they help me maximize and develop and basically reach my potential more often.’ It seemed from the get-go that it was going to be pretty inevitable.”\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Boras, Cease instructed him to try to reach a deal with the Blue Jays. Soon afterwards, the sides had agreed to a seven-year, $210 million deal \u2014 the largest ever signed by a Toronto pitcher.<\/p>\n \u201cThe initial Zoom call with him, you could tell he was pretty intrigued,\u201d recalled manager John Schneider. \u201cWe obviously value him pretty highly, and it just lined up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe deal was done in about a week \u2014 which is really, really rare at that point in the off-season.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, the Blue Jays have already agreed to a three-year, $30 million deal with Cody Ponce and outrighted Yariel Rodriguez. So, what\u2019s next? Here\u2019s how Schneider put it:<\/p>\n \u201cBullpen sticks out a little bit and probably a bat of some sort,\u201d he said. \u201cWe’re coming off of a really, really good offensive year\u2026 You feel good about your offence, but adding would be nice. I think that’s a priority. (And) adding another high-leverage bullpen arm is another one.\u201d<\/p>\n Schneider\u2019s assessment lines up with how agents and executives outside of Toronto describe the Blue Jays. That is to say, they\u2019re active in the relief market and involved on some of the best bats available, including Bo Bichette and Kyle Tucker.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under those circumstances, it\u2019s worth asking how much the Diaz and Schwarber deals impact GM Ross Atkins and the rest of the Toronto front office. The early read is this: while every major deal matters, neither Diaz nor Schwarber was a priority for the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n Diaz was the better fit of the two, and the Blue Jays were peripherally involved in his market, but as much as his three-year, $69 million deal makes sense for the Dodgers, the Blue Jays aren\u2019t in the Mets-Dodgers tier of throwing $70 million at a closer every winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Blue Jays are working to add relief help, with Robert Suarez, the highest upside reliever still available, one player who interests them to a degree. Suarez wouldn\u2019t cost a draft pick as he didn\u2019t get a qualifying offer, but he\u2019s still likely to command a three-year deal that could cost more than $50 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n Spending at that level on a reliever would likely mean spending less on position players so the Blue Jays are also checking on relievers who don\u2019t have the same cachet, including Luke Weaver and various others.<\/p>\n As for Schwarber, his deal alone isn\u2019t enough to impact the Blue Jays too much as they\u2019re not a great fit for traditional designated hitters given the presence of George Springer and Anthony Santander. And speaking of players who don’t have much bearing on the Blue Jays, their interest in Ketel Marte has been overstated, as Sportsnet reported Tuesday morning<\/a>.<\/p>\n What would impact the Blue Jays is a pair of rapid-fire deals that quickly deplete the market for impact position players \u2014 say, Bichette and Alex Bregman or Tucker and Cody Bellinger.<\/p>\n Even if the Blue Jays miss out on those players, they appear to believe their position player corps is strong enough to enter the season without a major addition. Ideally, yes, they would find a way to add someone like Tucker or Bichette, looping in ownership at Rogers Communications, Inc. along the way and outbidding or outlasting other interested teams.<\/p>\n But only a few teams per year see their ideal off-seasons unfold. If the Blue Jays were to miss out on Tucker and Bichette they still see pathways to a strong 2026 roster thanks to Cease, Ponce and the possibility of further additions to the bullpen and position player group.<\/p>\n Weeks might be required to see which way this goes. Behind the scenes, player agents will be working the phones to ensure their clients get the best deals possible. And the Blue Jays will be working step by step to try to make their way back to the World Series.<\/p>\n “That’s the thing,\u201d Atkins said earlier this week. \u201cLike, the level of responsibility, urgency, stress that I feel for this team to win, I can’t imagine taking it higher.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 An elite closer and a 56-home run slugger agreed to massive deals in a matter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-338608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}