TORONTO – From the opening of free agency onwards, Anthony Santander recalls he kept hearing about the Toronto Blue Jays. Victor Martinez, a fellow Venezuelan and longtime friend who’s a special assistant to baseball operations with the club, offered up lots of info. There were conversations with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Alek Manoah, who works out at the same facility as the slugging outfielder, playfully lobbied him to head north.
Yet even as conversations between the sides began in November and GM Ross Atkins said the Blue Jays had a jersey with his name on it “floating around the office all off-season,” it took them until Monday to finalize a $92.5-million, five-year deal. The complicated contract includes an opt-out after the third year the Blue Jays can negate with an option for a sixth year that pushes the total up to $110-million. There are significant deferrals that drop the deal’s annual-average value for Competitive Balance Tax purposes to roughly $14 million.
It all underlines how even when the fit is clear and logical both ways, nothing comes easy for the Blue Jays this winter.
“Like any negotiation, there’s always back and forth and also a lot of respect for what that process means for someone who is a free agent and wanting them to have a full understanding of the market and respecting that every step of the way,” Atkins said of why the signing had to marinate for 2½ months. “Danny (Horwits, one of Santander’s representatives) and I have been having a good time talking about how much time we spent together. I’ve known Danny for 25 years and I feel like we know each other a lot better now after this negotiation. It was a very, very thorough process with a lot of man-hours and an incredible commitment from Anthony to the process.”
Said Santander: “I know it took a little bit longer, but we get what we want and we’re here. … This is a business. A lot of talking. It’s a long process. But we get together and (made) a deal.”
Atkins, in his first public comments since Dec. 10 at the winter meetings, offered up the usual boilerplate about the Blue Jays continuing to seek improvements, but also dropped a notable caveat that might suggest Santander is the last major move of the winter.
“We feel like we’ve got a lot of work done this off-season with the additions” of Santander, Andres Gimenez, Jeff Hoffman and Nick Sandlin, said Atkins. “Of course, we’ll continue to try to add to this team if there’s a way to do it and we’ll present those opportunities to Edward (Rogers, the club chairman) and Tony (Staffieri, the CEO of Rogers Communications Inc., which owns the Blue Jays and this website). We have a pretty good understanding of what is there, what is available to us. As they become more real, we’ll present those and hopefully have avenues to improve our team.”
Translated from Executive to English, anything else the Blue Jays want to do requires ownership approval, an indication they’ve hit their budgetary cap.
That doesn’t mean they can’t extend beyond that, which is why they continue to monitor markets on multiple fronts, from Pete Alonso and Jurickson Profar on the position-player side to starters Nick Pivetta, Max Scherzer and Jack Flaherty on the mound.
But in stating publicly that further adds must be escalated up to the ownership level, Atkins is telling everyone that the Blue Jays need a strong business case to get more financial rope.
Through that lens, the long process with Santander makes a lot more sense.
Finishing beneath the CBT threshold last season allowed the Blue Jays to reset their penalties, so they’ll pay a 20 per cent tax on all overages above $241 million this year. But there’s an additional 12 per cent surcharge for every dollar above $261 million, and another 42.5 per cent million surcharge on anything beyond $281 million — uncharted territory for the club.
Taking on Myles Straw and $11 million of the money he’s owed through 2026 in a gambit for extra international bonus pool room doesn’t count against the CBT, which is why Atkins said there’s “zero impact” from the trade on the club’s pursuits.
But given the numbers, the deferral relief Santander gave them was clearly important, even if Atkins said “it’s just another tool to help have some agility as you get higher and higher in payroll … to ensure that we have some flexibility moving forward.”
“Every situation is different,” Atkins said when asked if the Blue Jays planned to use deferrals more often. With Santander, “we had really good communication, a lot of open-mindedness, both ways. … There was a lot of time spent on making sure we got it right for Anthony and that it made sense for both of us.”
Santander said he appreciated that the deferrals “give (the front office) an opportunity to build a good team,” but then added, “at the end of the day, it’s a contract, right?”
In an off-season marked by some notable misses, that’s what’s most important for the Blue Jays, especially if they can’t punch through the second CBT threshold.
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