Jays try to lure in free agents
11/09/2005TORONTO -- The Blue Jays are buyers this winter, but they can't get any business done without selling themselves to each of their prospective signees.
You can see it in the team's pursuit of A.J. Burnett, for instance. It's no longer enough to present a compelling match between the lines -- nowadays, teams have to convince players that their city is a positive instead of a potential drawback.
That's why Burnett was in town last week, meeting with front office executives and Toronto ace Roy Halladay. Toronto general manager J.P. Ricciardi knows the Jays have to take extra steps to land they players they want.
"What's happened is that the big leagues have become almost like college sports," he said recently. "You see a lot of these guys going up and taking a tour of the city. It's like recruiting."
Ricciardi's team has a lot of selling points, but the GM believes the city of Toronto is one of the more underrated perks. That's why he wants to get potential additions to the roster up early -- so they can find out what the city is like well in advance of their decision.
Once that's out of the way, Ricciardi is confident that players will see a young team that has its best baseball in front of it. Toronto has approximately $25 million to spend this offseason, and Ricciardi wants to add one arm and some additional offensive help.
"I think we're in a better spot because of what we have -- we have more depth," he said. "We'll use Ted Lilly as an example. Ted's a guy we could trade in the offseason. Ted's a guy we could bring back next year.
"Ted's a guy we could offer arbitration to and get a draft pick for, and if Ted's a guy we could lose at the end of [the 2006 season], we could have [David] Purcey or [Zach] Jackson step right in. We haven't been in that position before.
"Most of the contracts we have are good contracts from that standpoint. They can either bring us something in return or they can help us here."
The Jays will likely scour the free agent market, but they could also be involved in some trades. Ricciardi said blockbuster deals aren't likely, though. He said he'll have a better chance of adding talent if he doesn't have to surrender any of his own.
"I think trades are getting harder to make because more teams are doing a better and better job of managing their payroll," he said. "They don't have to make trades to move money. It has to be their need for your need, and it's getting tougher and tougher to match up."
The Jays are likely to make a full run at Burnett, which could take up a lot of their attention and discretionary income. After that, the offense is the next priority -- and Ricciardi said he'd like to add a few mid-level bats.
Toronto had some problems in the power department last season, but that's not likely to be corrected this winter. Ricciardi said it would probably be easier to find a few solid hitters with plate discipline, which puts more of an emphasis on situational hitting.
"There will always be someone out there, but we don't want to just spend money for the sake of spending money," he said. "If we take the whole team, bring the whole team back and nothing changes, with Halladay healthy, I think we win 85-87 games.
"It's our goal to get better than that, so we have to do some things to get over the hump."
Source: http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/
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