TORONTO — This time it was Roki Sasaki’s turn to break the Blue Jays’ hearts.
The 23-year-old Japanese star is signing with the Dodgers, and just like Shohei Ohtani a year ago, Sasaki broke the news himself with an Instagram post. There’s that Dodger blue again. The parallels are all too cruel.
The Blue Jays, along with the Padres, had rounded out the final three in the race for Sasaki, which included a reported visit to Toronto last week, but the organization finds itself left standing on the doorstep once again. This comes just hours after the Blue Jays swung a deal with the Guardians to add $2 million in international bonus pool money, taking on the contract of Myles Straw in the process.
This just keeps happening. The Blue Jays were all in on Ohtani a year ago, pushing the Dodgers down to the wire in one of the most dramatic pursuits we’ve seen in years. This winter it was Juan Soto, once again taking the Blue Jays hundreds of millions of dollars beyond where they’d ever gone. They took a run at Corbin Burnes, too.
These outcomes are difficult to grapple with, particularly for a fan base that is starved for its first postseason win since 2016.
It’s encouraging that the Blue Jays are regularly in these conversations, willing to spend the money and appearing to be making attractive pitches to some of the biggest names in the game. It beats the alternative, at the very least, but there needs to be a payoff eventually. Fans care about results, not process. Fans cheer when the blooper falls into shallow center field, not when the line drive with a higher hit probability turns into a lineout.
Eventually, the Blue Jays will find someone to take their money, but Sasaki was a dream scenario. Since Sasaki is signing before he turns 25 and has fewer than six seasons played in a foreign professional league, he’s signed under international bonus pool restrictions, not a wide-open market like the one that landed Yoshinobu Yamamoto a 12-year, $325 million deal a year ago. Opportunities to acquire a player with Sasaki’s upside at this age and price aren’t just rare, they’re nearly nonexistent.
The Blue Jays have shown an eagerness to land another star from Japan or Korea, expanding their presence in the Asian market. Rogers ownership allowed the front office to pursue Ohtani so aggressively because of the business case, not just the player. The Blue Jays got a taste of that through Hyun Jin Ryu’s years in Toronto and the media attention that came along with him, but Ohtani — and potentially Sasaki — are on another level entirely.
