About four weeks ago, shortly after the Red Sox were eliminated, I wrote that I was rooting for the Blue Jays to win the World Series in one our Over The Monster group posts . There are several reasons
for this, but one of which is I want another big spending team in the division not named the Yankees to have success while the Red Sox are on the sidelines. They haven’t won yet, but for those purposes, I think we can say mission accomplished.
This World Series has sent a very clear message: If you want to win, you’re going to have to get aggressive when building your team. And not only that, one of the aggressive teams that’s having success is right in John Henry’s neighborhood. Better yet, the Blue Jays are succeeding because they took chances on what the financial models probably say were bad investments. Just take a look at their four highest paid guys in 2025:
- They gave Vladimir Guerrero Jr. a half billion dollars, made him the face of the franchise, and now he’s in a great place and putting together a historical postseason run.
- They have George Springer, who is 36 and in year five of a six-year $150 million deal. Twelve months ago he was declining and had a contract nobody wanted to touch. Now, he has one of the biggest home runs in LCS history!
- Kevin Gausman is 34 and in year four of his five year $110 million deal. He’s been excellent this postseason and has a chance to clinch it for the Blue Jays with his start on Friday night.
- Chris Bassitt is 36 and in the final year of a three-year $63 million contract, and he got six huge outs for the Blue Jays in the final innings of Game 4 after their entire bullpen was torched in Game 3. It’s also worth noting that Toronto’s pitching largely shutting down the Dodgers in that game could end up being the turning point of the whole series. (And oh by the way, the guy who started that game was Shane Bieber, who the Blue Jays probably also “overpaid” for at the trading deadline.)
As recently as three months ago, people could have looked at all of these contracts as a waste and a good reason not to invest in the expensive assets. Now, that same group is a game away from achieving something priceless. Time for FSG to aggressively respond!
In the meantime, use this thread to talk about whatever you’d like, and as always, be good to one another.
