Last week the Bluejays said goodbye to a chunk of their future, in exchange for blistering speed at the top of their lineup, two solid starting pitchers, and two very useful players in the acquisition of Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, John Buck and Emilio Bonifacio.
On Friday afternoon, Bluejays GM Alex Anthopoulos made his second splash in a week by signing free agent left fielder Melky Cabrera to a 2-year 16-million dollar contract.
Cabrera was leading the National League in batting average at .346 with the San Francisco Giants until he was suspended for testing positive for heightened levels of testosterone.
And so, in one week the Bluejays who were at a franchise low with the debacle surrounding the loss of John Farrell to the rival Red Sox have now been elevated to a franchise high since the team last won the World Series with Joe Carter's Championship winning home run in 1993.
There were blips of positivity in between. The signing of Roger Clemens brought some excitement for a couple of seasons, but the roster around Clemens never matched his performance levels and he was soon dealt to the hated Yankees.
In late 2005, starting pitcher AJ Burnett and BJ Ryan were signed to large contracts which brought some excitement and hope to Toronto fans, but this was short-lived as both were disappointing in their performances, never justifying the size of their compensation.
After the debacle of these two signings, the Bluejays proceeded with the shedding of expensive contracts. Vernon Wells and Alex Rios were traded and released. Cy Young winning pitcher, Roy Halladay was traded to Philadelphia because he told management that he would not re-sign with the club.
Toronto has been in rebuilding mode ever since, restocking the farm system and signing one-year contracts with free agents so the team to reap compensatory draft selections.
But now, things are different. The philosophy of Alex Anthopoulos for having a conveyor belt of players coming through the system shall remain. What has changed is the decision on behalf of the Rogers Communications ownership team to now throw their financial might behind Anthopoulous. Rogers is technically the richest owner of any team in the Majors with a Market Cap of approximately $20 billion and they have now proven their belief in the overall project by increasing payroll to the region of $125 million with the recent trade and signing.
It's doubtful that Anthopoulos is finished with his off-season moves at this point. In acquiring John Buck from the Marlins, the Bluejays now have Buck and JP Arencibia with triple-A Catcher Travis D'Arnaud pushing for playing time and drawing comparisons to Giants' MVP catcher Buster Posey. Given some of the redundancies on the roster, more moves appear likely.
The Red Sox were mired in last place in the AL East with a recently gutted roster. The Yankees are all one year older with fixtures and future Hall of Famers Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera coming off long term injuries. Tampa can't afford to invest and Baltimore will have to prove 2012 was no anomaly. It all adds up to the fact that the Bluejays are poised to be figured as favourites come April 2013. In fact, several bookmakers have already severely lowered their odds of winning the World Series from 40 to 1 longshots down to under 10 to 1. In fact the only teams with lower odds at the time of writing were the Cincinnati Reds and Washington Nationals.
One thing is clear: the Toronto Bluejays are relevant again.
