Blue Jays have no choice but to increase team payroll if they plan on going after Juan Soto and other stars
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The Toronto Blue Jays plan on making some massive moves this winter but with their current payroll they do not have enough money to go after Juan Soto if they do not plan on increasing their payroll.
During the end of the year press conference, general manager Ross Atkins mentioned that he does not plan on exceeding the team's payroll from 2024 which sat at $225.3 millions on opening day.
The Toronto Blue Jays will need to increase their payroll by quite a bit if they plan on going after Juan Soto
The Blue already have around $190 million in use heading into the 2025 season which leaves around $35 million to work with this winter which simply is not enough if they want to sig Soto who will likely be asking around $50 million per year.
The Jays have approximately $186-190MM on the books already for 2025, as per the slightly differing projections from Cot's and RosterResource. Our calculations (between the guaranteed contracts and Matt Swartz's arbitration projections) put that number a bit lower at $179.57MM, and of course a bit of the arbitration costings could be trimmed by non-tenders. If the Blue Jays do have a somewhat similar payroll in mind, that leaves a decent but not outsized chunk of spending space to match the approximate $225.3MM figure of their payroll from Opening Day 2024. -Polishuk
Even if the Blue Jays do not end up going after Soto and look at a player like Teoscar Hernandez instead to help with their lack of offense, Hernadez is set to sign for around $27 million per year which means the Blue Jays would be left with just 8 million to fill all their other holes.
Clearly if Atkins truly plans on putting together a solid roster for the 2025 season, he has no choice but to increase the team's payroll.
Previously on Blue Jays Insider
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