Some good articles written today on the TSN site on what to expect from the Jays this offseason (and a separate good 3 minute video from Steve Phillips). The Toronto Star site also has a Richard Griffen article written to warn that there may be a power struggle on the horizon between Shapiro and Alex IF Rogers previously allowed Shapiro full autonomy on the team with final say on everything. I think from all these articles and video, they're pretty spot on. Alex did a fantastic job this year on some of the best deals any GM has ever done to make that big of a dramatic change, that I think he can be trusted to not get caught up in a bureaucracy. Rogers is obviously a corporation so there will be some bureaucracy, so that's to be expected, but again, I think AA has a smart enough baseball and business background that he should be given enough autonomy to do things his way for most transactions. Alex has also said that his home is paid for and he's from Canada, so money isn't the issue. One would think that autonomy is, so I think that's his bargaining chip.
As for this off-season, I imagine Rogers will increase the budget slightly to re-sign some existing players, but I don't think increase dramatically enough to just add. I do think there'll have to be creative trades to shift salary from batting to pitching.
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