#blue-jays

#blue-jays

I was talking to a couple of teams, and I was really interested. I was a really signable guy,

After seeing how the Los Angeles Dodgers powered their way to another World Series title with elite pitching, the Toronto Blue Jays now know the importance of having a dominant starting rotation. Not that their starting five of Kevin Gausman, Shane Bieber, Chris Bassitt, José Berríos and Max Scherzer was a pushover, but the Dodgers practically had four No. 1 aces pitching in their rotation to help lead the team to winning success.

That's the day all 30 MLB teams have to submit their 40-man rosters and there are some interesting names currently on the table that the Blue Jays have to make a big decision on. The players that aren't on the 40-man will be left exposed to the Rule 5 Draft in December and Toronto General Manager Ross Atkins will have to weigh which ones he is comfortable losing and which ones he feels he can't let slip away.

Recreating the magic of a run to Game 7 of the World Series is never easy, but this is the task Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins faces this offseason. How do you improve a roster that came within two outs of winning it all? How do you build a team incrementally better to secure those final precious outs of the season? With plenty of players coming and going this offseason, it's an uphill battle for the Blue Jays to defend their honour as American League Champions, but they're hoping they can pull a 2014 Kansas City Royals and run it right back to the World Series after also losing in Game 7.

When a team loses Game 7 of the World Series in extra innings there is bound to be some second guessing. In the case of the Toronto Blue Jas 5-4 loss to the LA Dodgers, the failure to score both the insurance runs they needed and the winning runs when the game was on the line, will forever sting in the hearts of the teams' fans.

The dust has barely settled on the World Series, but one benefit of being a team like the Blue Jays is that there isn't much downtime between the end of the season and the offseason. Once the Game 7 confetti was swept up off the turf at Rogers Centre, it was go time for the Blue Jays front office. MLB free agency opens up on Thursday, and the Blue Jays have some heavy lifting to do.

Except, home plate umpire Mark Wegner blew the call, something that became a common theme throughout the game, and called it strike two instead. The pitch was so far out of the zone that Varsho (rightly) assumed he had been issued a free pass and started to take off his elbow guard. To the surprise of almost everyone, Wegner made a VERY delayed strike call, and everything changed from there.

The Toronto Blue Jays developed a reputation as the comeback kids during the regular season. They did that with an MLB-best 49 come-from-behind wins. That number is also a franchise record. The Blue Jays carried that grittiness into the postseason, tallying another five comebacks in games. The Blue Jays also pulled off a series comeback, beating the Seattle Mariners in Game 7 of the ALCS after trailing 2-0 and 3-2 in the series.