Toronto Blue Jays star Bo Bichette celebrates his three-run home run during Game 7 of the World Series.Brynn Anderson/The Associated Press
Were I Edward Rogers, I could not imagine a more satisfying end to the baseball season.
Let’s imagine Jeff Hoffman strikes out Miguel Rojas, and Shohei Ohtani, too. A nation celebrates. Maybe that celebration tips into Sunday. On Tuesday, they do the parade and we are newly reminded why victory parades are a bad idea.
Management comes out on Wednesday or Thursday, basks for a bit, and then spends 20 minutes reminding everyone how hard it is to win twice in Major League Baseball.
By Saturday, everyone’s wandered back off to their hometown hockey team, most of whom are thinking about collapsing. It’s not as much fun as baseball, but what is? Guess it’s time to start doing heavy drugs.
Unless you can do it over and over again, winning in sports is the highest entertainment high, followed by a crushing cultural hangover. Everything else becomes bland.
Losing is the buzz you can maintain. Handled right, losing is a gold mine.
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So because Hoffman did them a solid, the Jays are rewarded with the most intensely observed off-season in their history. As best I can tell, more Torontonians are interested in the non-playing baseball club than they are in the surging Raptors or the sinking Leafs.
It’s early in the off-season, and, per the usual, the Jays are in on everyone. Firstly, they’re in on the their own free-agent star, Bo Bichette.
Nothing would say more about the transformative effect of the Jays’ October run than Bichette choosing to return to Toronto. At this time a year ago, no one doubted he would leave. Bichette was broadcasting those vibes like the bat signal. Management talked about it like it was already done. Everyone in baseball knew it was time for these two to start seeing other people.
You could argue that those same circumstances held until Game 1 of the World Series. Had Bichette not returned from injury, or returned and been terrible, or had the Jays been blown out, or the team won without him, hard feelings would have remained. Instead, a Goldilocks scenario unfolded – Bichette came back, was a difference maker, and Toronto almost did it.
Los Angeles Dodgers batter Miguel Rojas and Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Jeff Hoffman, left, watch Rojas’s home run during the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series earlier this month.Ashley Landis/The Associated Press
If Bichette re-signs, regardless of the money he’s paid or the position he agrees to play, that is the clearest sign to the rest of baseball that Toronto is no longer baseball’s luxury prison camp up north. One of its longest serving inmates just said so.
From an ownership perspective, Bichette should be the primary objective. Whether or not it makes baseball sense, it makes script sense.
If you want the sequel to sing like the original, you need your main characters to return. No one should feel more thwarted than Bichette. Had Hoffman not blown it, his homer in Game 7 had him set up to become Gen Z’s Joe Carter. No one is more due a hero’s arc in 2026.
Next guy on the list – Kyle Tucker.
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Tucker is the prototype baseball star – hits like a horizontal jackhammer, dull as dishwater. I’ve just stared at his picture for a solid minute and if he walked through my kitchen later tonight, I wouldn’t recognize him. Every team needs his bat, but what the Blue Jays really need is his lack of presence.
This Jays team has enough chemistry to start a pharmaceutical company. People get that they like each other, and they like them back, which causes the team to like the fans, creating a highly profitable virtuous circle.
It’s not a function of the best players having the biggest presence, a la the Yankees. Ernie Clement might be the most loved Jay, and he’s their seventh or eighth best player.
That Clement is allowed to talk so much says something about the secure egos in that room. Elsewhere, especially in baseball’s hive culture, that would be a problem.
Chicago Cubs right fielder Kyle Tucker will be a free agent in demand this off-season.Matt Marton/Reuters
This balance is delicate. You don’t want to introduce too many strong, new personalities into the mix. That makes Tucker perfect. He has the blank stare and unwavering monotone of a man who wears his batting gloves in the shower. All he does is hit. That’s what the Jays need.
Tucker can name his price wherever he goes, but Toronto is his perfect hiding place. He gets to join a winner, and then disappear. Clement can be funny, Alejandro Kirk can be broody, Kevin Gausman can be philosophical and Tucker can be repeatedly mistaken for the travelling secretary.
Failing Tucker, Cody Bellinger can play the same role. He is suspiciously interesting. Might have even read the back cover of a book. But he has the blasé approach of a veteran who’s won before and doesn’t require the approval of others.
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Outfielder Cody Bellinger could also fit the bill for the Toronto Blue Jays as they look to fill out their roster this off-season.Brad Penner/Reuters
Elsewhere, the Jays are in on relievers. All of them. If you know what the eighth inning is and own a baseball glove, they’ve scoured your socials. These widgets are interchangeable. Obviously, for his own sake, Hoffman can’t be the closer any more. But this is just a matter of spending money, and, by baseball standards, not much of it. If you don’t like what you buy, you can swap it out for something else at the trade deadline.
Ditto starters. There are a few of them available. They’re all basically the same. A new one would be nice, but the Jays’ rotation is adequate as currently constituted.
If you had to boil it down, that’s the off-season wish list – Bichette, one more brand-name bat, a few bits and bobs. Tucker would be great, but he’s not going to light a city that’s already burning on fire twice.
The trick will be to string these flirtations out, while not letting the media get too hot or heavy on your behalf. For the first time in forever, the Jays and their fans are in the position of being wooed, rather than wooing. Like the moment that’s just passed, it’s a feeling that should be savoured.