#Ross Atkins

On its own, the Toronto Blue Jays signing a 34-year-old infielder to a one-year deal is not the kind of thing that will cause fans to wonder what brand of ski googles the players will wear in their Champagne-soaked clubhouse. Brandon Belt? Nice hitter, when healthy. Strong beard. Excellent name with many headline-pun possibilities. But also a guy…

The Toronto Blue Jays continue to try and break out of the giant shadows cast by the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox in the AL East ahead of the 2023 season. While general manager Ross Atkins and president Mark Shapiro have undergone heavy criticism for not pulling the trigger in the past, they have made some solid moves this winter, ahead of a…

This is one of baseball's most exciting weekends for those who follow and love the MLB draft process. Later today is the All-Star Futures Game, where two Blue Jays prospects Ricky Tiedemann and Yosver Zulueta made the roster and could potentially pitch an inning or two in the game at some point through the day (start time 4. p.m. PT). On Monday the…

Seemingly out of nowhere, the day before Christmas, the Toronto Blue Jays pulled a monster trade that not only shook up the American League East but also re-shifted. We reached out to Johnny Avello, director of race and sportsbook operations for DraftKings, and a member of the Sports Betting Hall of Fame, for his thoughts on the trade the brought…

Hockey players used to come from places like Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat and Prince Albert. Now they come - some of the biggest stars, it seems, some of the most explosive players - from Scottsdale and Phoenix and suburban Los Angeles. When Tage Thompson scored five goals the other night for the Buffalo Sabres, bringing his total to 21 in 26 games…

The Toronto Blue Jays head into the new season firmly fixated on building for the future after definitively closing their previous competitive window during a miserable 2018. At the transition's forefront is top prospect Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who tore through Double-A and Triple-A while earning wide acclaim as the best prospect in baseball.…

Look for your mobile phone to light up with news updates this week as the Winter Meetings unfold in San Diego. The Toronto Blue Jays are going to be front and centre, as they look to upgrade their roster and take advantage of a closing competitive window led by star players like Bo Bichette, Vlad Guerrero, and Alek Manoah. Bichette will be a free…

After a slow-to-develop off-season, there has finally been some movement in Major League Baseball's free agency, and with the annual winter meetings just around the corner, the pace might be about to pick up even more. This week saw veteran slugger José Abreu join the Houston Astros on a three-year deal worth $60 million (all figures US).…

This is the first time since 2016 that the Blue Jays will host a postseason game at Rogers Centre. They welcome to the north the Seattle Mariners in an intriguing AL Wild Card Series. The winner gets to face the Astros in the next round. Here we'll discuss our Toronto Blue Jays AL Wild Card Series predictions as they take on the Mariners. The old…

The Blue Jays made the first big move of the MLB offseason, sending All-Star outfield Teoscar Hernandez to the Mariners. What motivated the move? The Toronto Blue Jays had the best offense in the American League and had almost all of their position players returning in 2023. The Blue Jays lineup was too right-handed heavy and making a trade was the…

This story was excerpted from Keegan Matheson's Blue Jays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, . And to get it regularly in your inbox. The biggest decision facing the Blue Jays this offseason is what they do with their talented trio of young catchers. It's a rare and fascinating problem to have, with three starting-calibre options…

The Cardinals are in the market for a catcher. Hopefully they'll be smart about this and view the opening as an opportunity to upgrade their offense. Defense must be a consideration, which doesn't really need to be stated. But in this case the defensive requirement has been overstated, with too much attention being paid to the standard established…

Yesterday, the Blue Jays made some moves to their active roster that caught a few people by surprise (myself included). They activated Hyun Jin Ryu and Vinny Capra, both of whom were on the 60-day IL and needed a roster spot, as there is no IL during the offseason. For Ryu, he will return to the injured list in 2023 considering he will likely be…

LAS VEGAS - Perhaps the biggest question facing the Blue Jays this off-season is whether they'll trade from their enviable catching depth to address other needs. Thanks to Danny Jansen, Alejandro Kirk and Gabriel Moreno, Blue Jays catchers generated an MLB-best 7.3 WAR in 2022. They combined to lead MLB in batting average (.273) and on-base…

What should the Toronto Blue Jays do with Teoscar Hernández this off-season? The 30-year-old outfielder has been a vital part of the roster since 2020, winning two consecutive Silver Sluggers and hoping for a third in'22. The organization is likely nearing a crossroads with the right-handed slugger, though, and deciding how to move forward could…

The Toronto Blue Jays played 18 innings of playoff baseball, and won the middle 15 of them by a score of 8-6. The start and the end of their postseason? Not so great. But such is the nature of Major League Baseball in the expanded-playoffs era. A team that is built to win over the slog of 162 regular-season games, and which does a fine job of that…

Imagine a starting rotation of Luis Castillo, Alek Manoah and Kevin Gausman. And then add in a little hope for the future with Jose Berrios and Hyun-jin Ryu, and the dependability of Ross Stripling. It could have happened had Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins beat the Seattle Mariners to the punch at baseball's trade deadline this summer. It…

PITTSBURGH - September baseball leads to October baseball - and in the case of the Toronto Blue Jays, anyway, has the potential of flushing the mediocre performance from an under-achieving August. The Jays arrived here in the Steel City on Thursday, a travel day/off day to collect their thoughts and prepare to put up a better effort against another…

From the time he was four years old, when September came around P.K. Subban knew what team he was going to be playing for. In his early years in the GTHL, there was annual demand for Subban's immense talents. The phone calls were many. The annual recruitment was heavy. And then he became an NHL player, a legend of sorts, a magazine cover waiting to…