BALTIMORE – There is a pendulum in running a baseball team between managing toward a goal and managing against circumstances. Heading into the season, the Toronto Blue Jays were firmly pushed toward the former, believing they had a team capable of competing for a post-season berth. As 2024 rolled off the cliff and crashed into the abyss, they quickly shifted toward the latter, seeking to return what they could for their expiring contracts, making eight trades in five days that returned 14 new assets for a barren system.
It’s easily the busiest stretch of deals in franchise history, surpassing the five subtraction trades in four days ahead of the 2019 deadline and the spectacular five addition moves in four days before the 2015 cutoff. This front-office very clearly understood the assignment.
Now, though, with the circumstances for the remainder of 2024 fairly clear – integrate the new players, give key additions Jake Bloss, Joey Loperfido, Jonatan Clase and Will Wagner and others already on the roster opportunity and runway – it’s time for the pendulum to swing back toward a strategic goal.
In the aftermath of the deepest deadline roster gutting the Blue Jays have ever been through, embattled GM Ross Atkins set that as a return to “competing and contending” in 2025, 2026 and “hopefully beyond that.”
With a lineup that now has more potential options and upside but can still make Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and, once he’s back from injury, Bo Bichette feel like roses in the desert, a rotation with two spots uncertain and a bullpen that requires rebuilding, that’s feels like a path to have next season turn out like this one.
One sell-off alone isn’t enough to suddenly catapult this roster back to contention, which is why Atkins called the past five days, “the first step towards that,” he said.
“There are several ways to make acquisitions, which we will continue to have to do,” Atkins said before the Blue Jays fell 6-2 to the Baltimore Orioles. “We’re going to have to add in free agency and via trade and we’ve just increased the likelihood of doing that by creating more depth and increased flexibility. The versatility, the dynamic athleticism that we’ve acquired to complement the pieces that are here was a big part of our goal and we feel that we’ve accomplished that.”