2025 Blue Jays

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Tim Budong

The Jays got a good foundation, with Red opening the books for the team and giving infrastructural upgrades throughout the organisation.
Gotta open that check book now and really spend some on the roster.

I think the Jays have a great team, have the right pieces in place, have the right staffing for scouting and have deep pockets.

Now that there is a foundation in place, its time to dig deep into those pockets and start paying.

Rogers has definitely spent the money - 5th highest payroll in the league and over $400m spent on renovations for the ballpark (they could have easily asked the govt for money) plus great minor league facilities (the best?).

They've definitely done their part to make the Jays a winning team but there are some tough choices to make for next year - excluding their free agents they're already on the books for $193m so if they keep the budget about the same there's only about $50m left to spread around make sure they have 5 starters, re-sign Bichette and deal with all the arbitration deals. I don't think the numbers add up too well to keeping all of them - I get a feeling Bichette is the one that goes if the budget is the same as last year. Right now the rotation is just Gausman, Yesavage, Berrios and maybe Lauer (as a 5th or long bullpen guy). Maybe Beiber liked it enough to do a 2 year $50m year as he recovers from TJ surgery but you probably still need another arm. Bassitt is 36 but will probably still want $20-25m/yr.

2026 payroll: https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/toronto-...ll/_/year/2026


2025 Payroll list:

New York Mets, $323,099,999
Los Angeles Dodgers, $321,287,291
New York Yankees, $293,488,972
Philadelphia Phillies, $284,210,820
Toronto Blue Jays, $239,642,532
Texas Rangers, $220,541,332
Houston Astros, $220,217,813
Atlanta Braves, $214,836,398
San Diego Padres, 208,909,333
Chicago Cubs, $196,288,250

[MarkyMark]

The Dodgers actual payroll is probably in the neighborhood of $380 million per year, but the deferrals have lowered the actual amount with the dollar being worth less 10 years from now when they actually have to start paying the bulk of the contracts.

[unit]

bluejays bandwagoner here... big ouch the way that game ended.
jays played really well all series, didn't make that many errors, lots of great fielding, and managed to always keep it close with the most stacked team in the game.
really entertaining to watch, even my wife was jumping up and down watching game 7 and she's never watched baseball until i had it on almost every day these past few weeks.
anyway as disappointing as it was, have to be proud of the way they played.
the teams were playing as equals and it literally could have gone either way so easily

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by MarkyMark

The Dodgers actual payroll is probably in the neighborhood of $380 million per year, but the deferrals have lowered the actual amount with the dollar being worth less 10 years from now when they actually have to start paying the bulk of the contracts.

Yeah, it's big buck for sure and after taxes it's even higher - I've read they are on the hook for a tax bill of around $150-160m for 2025 which would put them past $500m in spending. I think only the top 5-6 teams will pay this year (the Jays pay a small amount).

They, of course, can afford it as they brought in about $1b in revenue last year. They are definitely a team that can afford to overpay their players based on on field performance as they make it back in so many other ways like how Ohtani pays for himself even outside of his on field stuff (crazy).

[Tapioca]

I don't follow the Jays, but I jumped on the bandwagon. As I've gotten older, I understand how rare these opportunities are to watch a David-v-Goliath sports story.

Sure, it's great to be proud of the Jays' effort, but as we've seen with Canadian-based teams in other leagues over the years, there's very little chance that we see the team get another shot for a championship in the same window.

The Jays had the title slip through their fingers. It wasn't just the 9th inning - they had multiple innings in Game 7 with multiple runners on base where they couldn't get another run or two. That's probably what hurts more for die-hard fans. It wasn't like the Canucks or Oilers who completely were outclassed in their Game 7s.

They should've won the series, but they didn't. Now Jays fans will have to live with that, likely for a generation until the next lightning-in-a-bottle opportunity comes.

[whitev70r]

^ too early, too soon for reason and logic.

[bcrdukes]

Originally Posted by whitev70r

^ too early, too soon for reason and logic.

[Gerbs]

You guys think there's a chance next year with current roster?

[MarkyMark]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

I don't follow the Jays, but I jumped on the bandwagon. As I've gotten older, I understand how rare these opportunities are to watch a David-v-Goliath sports story.

Sure, it's great to be proud of the Jays' effort, but as we've seen with Canadian-based teams in other leagues over the years, there's very little chance that we see the team get another shot for a championship in the same window.

The Jays had the title slip through their fingers. It wasn't just the 9th inning - they had multiple innings in Game 7 with multiple runners on base where they couldn't get another run or two. That's probably what hurts more for die-hard fans. It wasn't like the Canucks or Oilers who completely were outclassed in their Game 7s.

They should've won the series, but they didn't. Now Jays fans will have to live with that, likely for a generation until the next lightning-in-a-bottle opportunity comes.

This is the cold hard reality of it all. Baseball might be the biggest fluke in sports as far as winning a championship. Yeah if you're the Dodgers and can spend to the moon as well as nabbing every new all-star that comes out of Japan now that they have Ohtani, but beyond that even the fucking Yankees can't get it done anymore.

Everything has to align perfectly, like Springer turning back the clock and winning us a game with a homerun at the last minute, all the way to a guy like Yesavage being an unknown rookie to confuse the fuck out of hitters this postseason. Neither of those things happen next year most likely. You gotta win when you get your chance or it's back to square one, there's no element of surprise next year.

I think the one that hurts the most was if IKF had a bigger lead with the bases loaded, he could have just ran home easily it wouldn't have been close. Sucks lol

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by MarkyMark

This is the cold hard reality of it all. Baseball might be the biggest fluke in sports as far as winning a championship. Yeah if you're the Dodgers and can spend to the moon as well as nabbing every new all-star that comes out of Japan now that they have Ohtani, but beyond that even the fucking Yankees can't get it done anymore.

Everything has to align perfectly, like Springer turning back the clock and winning us a game with a homerun at the last minute, all the way to a guy like Yesavage being an unknown rookie to confuse the fuck out of hitters this postseason. Neither of those things happen next year most likely. You gotta win when you get your chance or it's back to square one, there's no element of surprise next year.

I think the one that hurts the most was if IKF had a bigger lead with the bases loaded, he could have just ran home easily it wouldn't have been close. Sucks lol

Yeah, the stars aligned, so you gotta take your chances and execute. The Jays had the game and they lost it, despite some clutch at-bats by the Dodgers in Game 7.

Story of sports at the end of the day, despite all of the metrics, strategies, and analysis. You don't execute, you don't win.

[bcrdukes]

"The game is rigged!"

[MarkyMark]

Definitely not rigged, but it sure seemed like the baseball Gods weren't favoring the Jays with everything that went wrong towards the end lol

One change I'll be happy about next year is challenging balls and strikes. The strike zone was absolutely horrid for both teams on many occasions. Will love to see it come up on the big screen showing how awful of a call it was.

[SkinnyPupp]

Originally Posted by MarkyMark

The Dodgers actual payroll is probably in the neighborhood of $380 million per year, but the deferrals have lowered the actual amount with the dollar being worth less 10 years from now when they actually have to start paying the bulk of the contracts.

This. You can't use the already cooked books to compare spending.

While ROGERS is certainly spending money, they don't come close to the Dodgers. Jays are the #5 biggest spenders in the league this year, at around $277M. Dodgers are at around $550M, almost double.

Jays revenue will be around $387M, so even if they spent literally every penny they made, they'd still be several HUNDRED MILLION behind what the Dodgers spend. And the Dodgers still made around $200M on top of that, because Ohtani is so insanely lucrative!

Again you can't go after the players or fans for this, but these championships should have an asterisk beside them. It's broken

If I was a hardcore Jays fan (or any team other than the Dodgers or Yankees really) I would be furious and would question my fandom of the sport. The advantage really kicked in during game 7, where both teams could go back to their starting pitchers and the Dodgers had about $1 billion worth of starters to use rather than having to rely on their weak bullpen. Good for Yamamoto though!

[mikemhg]

^Think that's one of the primary reasons baseball has been in decline in terms of viewership over the years.

Too few haves, and too many have-nots makes for lack of parity, and a boring sport. Ohtani might bring some views in the short-term, and MLB has done some things to speed up the sport to make it more viewable, but they have much more work to do.

Getting a proper hard salary cap would be a great start.

[Badhobz]

its also quite boring of a game. too many uncontrollable variables and wayyy too long. come on 9 innings !? sheeesh... cut it in half and im good with that.

[CivicBlues]

They should just make every pitch hittable and move the game out into the field more. Too much riding on whoever's pitching.

Also make every random ball or so explode in a cloud of dust. Then the batter has 2 mins to run the full circuit home while half-blinded while the opposing team tries to tackle him.

[Tim Budong]

i feel like even with a hard cap, some teams will still not spend the money simply because attendence is so poor in certain ballparks and teams

but the sport is growing, however, its just not growing too much inside North America.

[MG1]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/s/FFiJ8Rn3wi