Winning has a price, and for the Toronto Blue Jays, it might be their franchise cornerstone. For years, Toronto wasn’t a destination for elite talent. They were ready to spend, but never had a big name to attach to a contract. Their grit in the 2025 postseason, however, changed that. Now, the Jays are expected to have a bigger pool of targets than ever. With that, Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi urged the team to let Bo Bichette walk for one reason.

“The trickiest piece of free agency for them is going to be the starting pitching market, right?,” Davidi said via the Sportsnet 590 The Fan show. “If you just look at the way the roster is constructed right now, where the depth is, you can definitely make the case that they are better positioned from a position player standpoint than a pitching standpoint, and particularly a rotation standpoint.

“The Bo situation is tricky, but because they have depth and versatility there, they can afford to play that out. Once that starting pitching is gone, it’s gone.”

The Bo Bichette saga has been a season-long story. While the Blue Jays extended an offer to him before the 2025 season, he only wanted to focus on the team. Through the postseason, where he missed both the ALDS and the ALCS, he only repeated that he wanted to stay in Toronto. At the same time, GM John Schneider and the team, too, reciprocated the same feelings.

When their World Series rivals, the LA Dodgers, became the top destination for the shortstop, the Blue Jays extended a qualifying offer to Bichette. Under MLB’s rules, teams can extend a one-year deal to a free agent at a fixed $22.025 million salary. If the player accepts, he stays for one more year; if he declines, he hits free agency. Consequently, his former team earns draft-pick compensation when he signs elsewhere.

Bichette missed most of the playoffs until the Fall Classic due to his knee injury. However, once he returned, he proved why the Blue Jays should keep him. He already had a breakout season after a subpar 2024.

In the injury-laden season, he hit .311/.357/.483 with 44 doubles, 18 home runs, and 94 RBIs. As a career .294 hitter, he has built a rep as one of the league’s best contact hitters, and the reason why any team, including the Blue Jays, would vie for their cornerstone.

But while both parties are agreeing to extend the stay, pitching just might be the team’s true make-or-break priority.

Toronto’s urgency to reinforce its rotation comes down to simple math: elite starting pitching is scarce, expensive, and disappears quickly once free agency opens.

Kevin Gausman and Shane Bieber are approaching free agency after 2026, and Jose Berrios is holding an opt-out next fall. The Jays can’t afford to rely on short-term patches. Their position-player core provides flexibility on offense, but the rotation lacks that same depth.

Adding a dependable top-end starter would not only replace the void left by Chris Bassitt and Max Scherzer but also stabilize the rotation for the next several years. Someone like Dylan Cease would immediately raise the staff’s ceiling, while a younger arm such as Tatsuya Imai offers long-term frontline potential.

The blueprint is simple: be aggressive this winter and secure a starter who can anchor the future.

Already, super agent Scott Boras spoke about the Blue Jays‘ emergence as a top-tier free agency destination. According to him, it is a model for other MLB teams. At the same time, in the player community, Toronto is a winning franchise.

“Toronto is one of the top four or five major markets in the major leagues,” Boras said about the shift in the Blue Jays franchise. “When you become a winning club, players take notice…I think everything about what they’ve done in the past couple years has proven to reward them with that placement in the player community to say ‘Toronto is a winning franchise and I would strongly consider being part of it.'”

In the GM meeting this week, Boras showed that those who make the calls in free agency have taken notice.

And that brings everything back to the present reality. With Bassitt and Scherzer gone, the Blue Jays face a significant gap in their rotation, and filling it has become their defining offseason mission.

Right now, the most realistic plan seems to be adding one more starter to slot in with that group. That, presumably, is Trey Yesavage.

On the other hand, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is still the centerpiece, and with big names like Kyle Tucker already linked to the Jays, Davidi believes the team could afford to move on from Bo Bichette if it came to that. But what they can’t afford is skimping on reliable starting pitching.

The Jays are already in the race for a few famed arms

The first big name on the Blue Jays’ radar is Dylan Cease. And guess what, he’s an ideal fit! Notably, this year, he wrapped up with an 8-12 record, a 4.55 ERA over 168 innings, 215 SOs, and a 1.33 WHIP across 32 starts.

You might argue that’s not elite. Still, ESPN projects him for a five-year, $145 million deal, averaging $29 million annually. And if he could slot in as Toronto’s No. 2 behind Kevin Gausman, Cease would push Shane Bieber to No. 3. Then, Trey Yesavage and Berrios or Francis will follow accordingly. Thus, giving the Jays one of the deepest rotations in the league, not just the AL.

The next intriguing possibility is Japanese right-hander Tatsuya Imai. For reference, Zachary D. Rymer of Bleacher Report listed the Blue Jays as a potential destination, and it’s easy to see why. He posted a 1.92 ERA with 178 SOs over 163 innings in 2025.

Now it’s just a matter of whether Toronto can strike the right balance — fortifying the rotation while still keeping their offense strong.