Blue Jays head to winter meetings with the newfound swagger of MLB big boys

Finding a new home for Berrios should be a priority

The Ryu factor lingers

Recall when the Blue Jays shocked the baseball world way back in the off-season of 2019-20, reaching out to sign Dodgers’ lefthander Hyun Jin Ryu to a club record contract for any club free-agent — four years, $80-million. The Ryu signing didn’t pay off in any deep October runs over his four seasons, but the stout southpaw, who finished third in AL Cy Young voting in 2020, is continuing to pay dividends to the Jays in subtle, but important ways.

Exhibit A: On Tuesday, it was revealed that the Jays had signed free agent righthander Cody Ponce to a three-year, $30M deal, after he was named the KBO MVP, playing for the Hanwha Eagles, going 17-1, 1.89 ERA, and setting a Korean League single-season strikeout record with 252. His Eagles teammate in 2025? Hyun Jin Ryu.

Consider the front-office types who were instrumental in the Jays scouting effort with Ponce? Start with Jays’ manager, pro scouting, that includes Japan, Korea and Taiwan, Bryan Lee. This guy just happened to be, in an earlier stage of his career, Ryu’s team-supplied translator. He has remained with the organization in a growing scouting role.

Lee works under Jays’ VP International Scouting Andrew Tinnish who learned the ups-and-downs of Pacific Rim scouting through various sorties meeting degrees of success and failure over the past six seasons -- Yusei Kikuchi, Shohei Ohtani, Yosh Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Eric Lauer, etc. Also in the mix for Asian scouting are Hideaki Sato and Gosuke Katoh, former Jays infielder for a brief stint of eight games, but now front office.

Recall Ryu was his teammate when Ponce was handed the ball to start the Korean League’s all-star game in July, out of respect and in tribute, he warmed up on the field prior to the first pitch, in Ryu’s Blue Jays uniform No. 99 then had it autographed by the big lefty.

Exhibit B: Recall Ryu’s representative back in ’20 was Boras Corp. led by the smooth-talking, but bombastic Scott Boras. Boras had been feuding with Paul Beeston and dismissing the Jays, ever since his client, James Paxton, had his eligibility revoked at University of Kentucky back in 2009, because the Jays president broke the unwritten and quite archaic amateur-status rule by slipping up, stating the obvious, calling Boras an agent for the still-college eligible Canadian righthander, instead of a “wink-wink” adviser.

But then, with a new Jays president and GM, in December 2019, along came Ryu and the Jays’ now-forward-looking 2020 vision. That one Jays’ free-agent signing led in the ensuing five seasons to free-agent George Springer, more recently the mega-deal with Vlad, and other decidedly big-market behaviours. That may have led to another Boras client, righthander Dylan Cease, that has now kicked off defence of the Jays AL championship.

What about Jose Berrios

It says here that the next big off-season move the Blue Jays make will be to find a new home for current sixth starter, Jose Berrios. La Makina has not been handled with the grace and respect he deserves. But they did what they felt they had to do in order to reach Game 7 of the World Series and that, in this case, did not include being patient and understanding of a loyal soldier, who, admittedly did not have a good season. But one stat to consider is that the Jays won 94 regular-season games and Berrios was the starter in 20 of those.

The obvious change in player-team relationship began in Game 2 of the 2023 wildcard series. Berrios drew the start with the season on the line. He was given an outline of the strategy that included bringing in lefty starter Yusei Kikuchi to piggyback when the time was right. Berrios was clearly not expecting the right time to be after 13 hitters, with no runs. The game was important to him. He likely felt he had earned the chance to at least finish twice through the order in a win-or-go-home game. Jose was returning in a big moment to face the team that traded him away. It was a big moment.

Berrios is a classy man, a hard-working athlete who would never voice his true disappointment publicly, but rebounding from ’23 with a 16-11 record in a season in which the Jays won just 74 games, it September of ’25 it seemed the front office, media and the fanbase were judging the 31-year-old on the basis of his most recent 16 starts, in which he posted a 4.76 ERA, averaging just five innings per outing. The fly in that tarnish is that the Jays were also 12-4 in those same 16 starts and isn’t that the bottom line.

The perceived disrespect continued for the confident Puerto Rican. Berrios is always proud of his ability to take the ball every time it is handed to him, never on the IL and an incredible streak of seven straight (full) seasons with exactly 32 starts. By mid-September, he was exactly on pace for another 32-starts, but the Jays lifted him from the rotation, even preferred a bullpen day instead of handing him the ball, then placed him on the IL for the first time in his career with a little-explained elbow problem.

Berrios was then left off the ALDS roster and pretty much left the public eye for the final two rounds, not even introduced on the foul line at the start of a new series, even though guys like Bowden Francis and Yimi Garcia were. The Jays did not offer explanation.

It had been huge news and a big-boy move by the Jays back when they traded for Jose in 2021 and then promptly inked him to a seven-year, $131-million deal in the off-season. His consistency was the chance to win whenever he took the ball. Team wins are how you get deep into October and in his five seasons with the Jays, the team was never below .500 in his starts. In Jose’s 138 starts, the Jays are 87-51 (.630), including a 20-10 mark in his much-disrespected ’25 campaign plus a 21-11 team record in what was easily his most disappointing regular-season campaign, back in ’23.

The logic for Berrios not to come back with Jays

The Jays owe Berrios $66 million guaranteed for the final three seasons of his contract – ’26 at $18M; ’27 and ’28 at $24M. He has an opt out following the ’26 season. He is disgruntled and has likely already decided to exercise it.

The Jays owe righthanded starter Cody Ponce $30 million for the next three seasons on a pending free agent deal. They only need one of those two pitchers. There’s cost certainty for teams, but this is as much about player-certainty.

With the spiralling relationship between Berrios and the Jays, of which the club is very aware, the best idea for both would be to cut their losses and at least get something back for that asset. If Berrios was to opt out post-’26, the Jays rotation in that one off-season would stand to lose Kevin Gausman, Shane Bieber and Eric Lauer, after losing Chris Bassitt, Max Scherzer and Alek Manoah this winter.

Of course, the Jays could roll the dice and trust that Berrios would be there for the next three seasons at $66M. Or, they can replace him with Ponce over the same timeline, at a total of $30M. They may feel he has a higher ceiling, anyway. But that does not mean they would expect to be saving the $36M difference.

The reality is that, to move the Berrios contract, the Jays would need to eat existing salary and, at the same time, the new team needs to deal with Jose to make sure he does not opt out. The math is simple and involves the Jays sending a certain amount of money in any deal. The difference between three years of Berrios and three years of Ponce means the Jays realistically would have up to $36M to work with in equalizing payment to Berrios’s new team, without it costing them already-budgeted money.

Ponce and Berrios are exactly the same age, at 31-years-old, but if the Jays feel at this stage they see more upside in Ponce at the back end of the rotation instead of a disgruntled Berrios, then trading Jose and eating salary is the thing that makes the most sense.