The Toronto Blue Jays introduced Russell Martin after signing the catcher on Monday to a five-year, $82 million contract. General manager Alex Anthopoulos also cleared the air about the team's interest in Pablo Sandoval.
Martin was the beginning of Toronto's free agency moves. The veteran catcher will make $7 million in 2015, then $15 million in 2016, followed by $20 million in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The Blue Jays have been big spenders over the past two seasons with payrolls of $127 million in 2013 and $137 million in 2014. They already have $110 million committed for 2015 and that's expected to increase.
According to Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com, the Blue Jays will also have an additional $17 million committed to arbitration-eligible players. However, the team still has areas they need to fill at third base, second base, left field and throughout the bullpen. The ideal plan would be to add a third baseman so they can shift Brett Lawrie over to second base, but Lawrie has only played in 177 over the past two seasons and hasn't been reliable. Fortunately he's still young, so the team can afford to keep him around for now.
Because of their need at third base, the Blue Jays have been heavily speculated to make a run at free-agent Pablo Sandoval. In fact, Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe noted on Wednesday that Toronto would be making the third baseman an offer in the next 24 hours. That has yet to happen and Anthopoulos took time during Martin's introduction to address the swirling rumors.
"We're not close to anything," Anthopoulos said via this MLB.com article, in response to Cafardo's report. "We don't have any offers out to anybody, we're not being 'aggressive' with anybody. Our focus was on Martin and that just took a lot of time and energy. We didn't have five balls in the air, it was sole singular focus on getting him done."
He noted they still need to take time to structure the payroll and see how many spending dollars they have left before offering any more contracts, especially to a player such as Sandoval. Another issue is that Toronto has a club policy of offering a maximum of five years on a contract and Sandoval has made it known he wants at least a six-year deal.
"Talk of free agents that we're interested, sure, we've talked to all kinds of guys," Anthopoulos added. "But talk being close, talk of making offers, I find it amazing that there are guys out there that I have never spoken to or met that are reporting we have plans to make an offer. That's news to me."
While Toronto takes time to assess their current payroll situation, the winter meetings are approaching in a couple of weeks and that's when the Blue Jays may strike and sign another player.
