The Blue Jays are willing to hand over $15.8 million to Marco Estrada for 2016 by giving him a qualifying offer.


Marco Estrada posted a record of 13-8 with a 3.13 earned run average in 2015 for Toronto. He also went 2-1 with a 3.20 ERA in the playoffs. (Image from Toronto Sun).

The National Post spoke to Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro about his desire to upgrade the team's spring training facilities. The team's lease with Dunedin expires at the end of 2017.


Dunedin has been the Blue Jays spring training home since its expansion year of 1977. (Image from @diamondperday)

The Arizona Fall League is holding its Fall Stars Game this Saturday. One Blue Jays prospect is in the game and you can help another get there as well.


Rowdy Tellez is hoping Jays fans step up and get him to the Arizona Fall League's Fall Stars Game. (Image from TorontoObserver.com)

The new boss at his introductory presser. Items of interest: 1) Tony LaCava is the interim GM; 2) he's not wedded to the five-year limit, says he can envisage longer deals for a player in the right circumstances. Doesn't believe in absolutes.

Said all the right things, as you'd expect from an experienced pro, and expressed a lot of enthusiasm.

So here's what happened...

We have a once-proud franchise, one that had been scuffling on the margins of irrelevance for more than a decade despite the presence on their playing roster of some truly outstanding players. All else having failed, team ownership decided to entrust the team to a hometown boy. It's an internal promotion - the new guy had been an assistant to the outgoing general manager. The new GM slowly assembles the talent required to make this team a contender. There are setbacks along the way - it took a few years to find the right manager, there were some trades that didn't work out, there were some unique issues with team ownership. Eventually, however, in his sixth year on the job - thanks in large part to a key trade and fuelled by a remarkable second half hot streak - it all came together in a 93 win season that ended, alas, with a memorable showdown against the eventual World Series champs.

Naturally, said GM isn't going to see a seventh year on the job.

Blood on the carpet, mud on the mattress
Waking up with that American sadness
Afternoon matinee, midnight madness
Come on everybody, let's get on with the business

Multiple sources are reporting that Alex Anthopoulos has turned down the Blue Jays' extension offer. By all reports, this is not about money or term. All the other GM jobs are filled. So this is about power, and he wasn't going to have as much as he felt he needed under Mark Shapiro's new regime.

The season is over as far as I'm concerned but MLB insists on one more best-of-seven set before officially closing the book on 2015. Apparently, Game 1 of the World Series between the team I can't bring myself to identify and the New York Mets was supposedly an eventful one.

OK. Now we can start talking about the off-season.

I come from downtown
Born ready for you
Armed with will and determination
And grace, too

Here's some windy baseball lore, to tide us through a Day With No Baseball.

You see, it struck me that we might have just seen, in a little more than 24 hours, the worst start by a Blue Jays pitcher in their post-season history, quickly  followed by the best start in the team's post-season history.

There's no simple explanation
for anything important any of us do
And yeah, the human tragedy
consists in the necessity
of living with the consequences
under pressure

I can cry, beg and whine
To every rebel I find
Just to give me a line
I could use to describe

Tom Thomson came paddling past
I'm pretty sure it was him
And he spoke so softly in accordance
To the growing of the dim
He said, "Bring on a brand new renaissance
'Cause I think I'm ready
I've been shaking all night long
But my hands are steady"

I know your crowd
And they're not that proud
At least not from what I've seen
Flies in the ink leave
Footprints across the sea
Trace them back to where it all gets had
You find the cuts never run too deep
The cuts never run too deep