So now what? 48-56 on July 27 was not the way 2024 was supposed to go. Yes, the offseason was a letdown but surely the team was going to be competitive? But reality is, they’re not. The Toronto Blue Jays are just flat out bad. They just never looked like a contender at any point this season and are faced with a disheartening teardown without a single playoff win to show for the whole Vlad-Bo era.
It’s not just the record either. They’re 27th in MLB in homers, 25th in RBI, 20th in OPS, tied for 26th in SB and so on. The offense has simply been ineffectual and inconsistent the entire year. On the pitching side, starting pitching has been generally good but the bullpen has been extraordinarily poor after being absolutely ravaged by injuries. (4.87 ERA, 1.33 WHIP) Only the Rockies bullpen has put up a worse ERA. The drop off from 2023 has been staggering to say the least.
To make matters worse, the farm system is nowhere near as deep as that of teams like the division rival Orioles. It needs restocking with top of the line prospect capital. This combined with the poor record means the Jays are for sure going to be sellers at the deadline. The question now is, what kind of sellers? What I mean by this is, do they trade off only expiring contracts and hope for a resurgence in 2025, or is this a wholesale teardown aimed at building a completely new core with a view of contending later into the 2020’s.
I would honestly advocate the latter approach but there are quite a few challenges. The easy part is dealing away the expiring contracts, though I suspect they will not get all that much in terms of prospect capital. Still, a bit of deft scouting and player development and they can still score big. As the Royals one year after trading off Aroldis Chapman for Cole Ragans. So far, they’ve added seven fairly solid prospects to the system. The harder part will be the critical decisions around players they still control in 2025 and in some cases beyond. What they do with veterans Chris Bassit, Kevin Gausman and Jose Berrios is a tough enough decision, but the most critical pair of decisions rest with the team’s core stars. Both Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are nearing free agency and the lingering question is extend, or trade?
These two players are expected to fetch the best return packages but to deal them would be an admission by this front office that they had failed in their mandate to deliver a contender to Toronto after the rebuild of 2018-2021. Moreover, Bo Bichette has been mired in an injury riddled and offensively sparse season so his value is at its lowest. Vlad however is having another strong campaign, although not quite up to his incredible 2021 campaign. Still, he has value and will fetch a nice return. And yet, scuttlebutt has it that Vlad would be rather open to the idea of an extension, even now. He’s still in his mid-20’s also. He would still be more or less in his prime by the time the team is ready to win again if all goes well.
So what’s needed to make project 2030 or thereabouts work out? First thing’s first, I stress again, we need to restock on farm depth. Now we do have some good prospects, but our farm depth has also taken a beating from injuries and the Orelvis Martinez suspension. There are interesting pieces like Arjun Nimmala and Manuel Beltre but those players are a good three four years away and any prospects that far off are always a wild card, even when hyped. Even if they do make it, and I trust they will, they need time to adapt to the bigs. So we need some marquee guys that are already closer to the big leagues. We also need to get younger, and we’ll need to restock (our pitching staff especially) with young, controllable major league talent to give a base for the future.
The coming couple of years will be tough ones for Jays fans, with the stinging disappointment of a great core that wasn’t quite able to reach the heights of 1992-93 or even 2015-16. But we must accept it, this core failed, this front office failed, this coaching staff failed. It’s time to tear it down to the studs and start again. The sooner we do it, the faster we’ll finally get back into contention so it’s time to end the half-measures and move on with taking the bitter medicine.
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