Brock Beauchamp

Owen and Jesse break down the Blue Jays' signing of Japanese star Kazuma Okamoto. They dig into why he’s going to help the Jays in the near term, and how it shifts the roles of other players like Addison Barger and Anthony Santander. The guys also talk about how his signing impacts the Blue Jays’ pursuits of other free agents like Kyle Tucker and Bo Bichette. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jays-centre-podcast/id1846108462 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Bi7SzfpcqMo5xYWnbCeoL Listen on iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-the-jays-centre-podcast-300304824/ Listen on Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/2qk9wqxd Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jayscentre View full article

Owen and Jesse break down the Tyler Rogers signing before digging into the slow-moving free agent position player market, analyzing Alex Bregman's potential fit with the Jays, as well as digging into Bo Bichette and Kyle Tucker's markets. They also look at the Jays' AL East rivals and discuss the Baltimore Orioles' additions of Pete Alonso and Shane Baz, as well as the New York Yankees' missing out on Tatsuya Imai. The guys finish up by listing New Year's resolutions for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Daulton Varsho, Addison Barger, Dylan Cease, and Anthony Santander. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jays-centre-podcast/id1846108462 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Bi7SzfpcqMo5xYWnbCeoL Listen on iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-the-jays-centre-podcast-300304824/ Listen on Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/2qk9wqxd Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jayscentre View full article

Welcome to Jays Centre!

One year ago today, we did a mad scramble and launched the new site. Thanks to all of you for sticking around through the transition, and particularly to the moderators for helping keep this place in order.

Welcome to Jays Centre!

During the Winter Meetings, it was speculated that third baseman Alex Bregman could be a fallback option if the Blue Jays fail to sign Bo Bichette. Now, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, Bregman could be a primary target for Toronto. Toronto’s winter to date has largely centered on pitching. The club added Dylan Cease on a seven-year deal, signed Tyler Rogers and Cody Ponce, and acquired Chase Lee in a trade. Bregman turns 32 in 2026, coming off two productive seasons. In 2024 (age 30), he played 145 games and logged 634 plate appearances for Houston, hitting .260/.315/.453 with 26 homers. His wOBA was .331, his wRC+ was 117, and he finished at 4.2 fWAR. In 2025 (age 31) with Boston, he appeared in 114 games and had 495 plate appearances, batting .273/.360/.462 with 18 homers. He posted a .356 wOBA, a 125 wRC+, and 3.5 fWAR. His 2024 BB% was 6.9% and his K% was 13.6%. In 2025, his BB% was 10.3% and his K% was 14.1%. View full rumor

Owen and Jessie examine the MLB Winter Meetings, which saw some star players move off the board, but the Blue Jays sat out most of the action this year, signing only reliever Cody Ponce to a three-year deal. But several rumors emerged out of the meetings, and the Jays are still looking to add. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jays-centre-podcast/id1846108462 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Bi7SzfpcqMo5xYWnbCeoL Listen on iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-the-jays-centre-podcast-300304824/ Listen on Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/2qk9wqxd Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jayscentre View full article

Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet has reported that the Blue Jays are interested in Robert Suarez, one of the top relievers in this free agent class. Nicholson-Smith says that the interest has not yet moved into negotiations. The 2025 Blue Jays bullpen finished the regular season with a bullpen FIP- of 94, ranked 5th among MLB relief units. Jeff Hoffman handled the ninth inning, with Seranthony Domínguez, Yariel Rodríguez, Louis Varland, and Brendon Little working the highest-leverage situations. Over the final month of the regular season, Toronto relievers posted a 3.42 ERA and 3.60 FIP, ranking ninth and seventh in the league, respectively. Suarez has four MLB seasons with San Diego, beginning in 2022. From 2022 through 2025, he threw 210 innings, striking out 219 batters. In 2025, he appeared in 70 games and pitched 69 2/3 innings, with a 2.97 ERA, 2.88 FIP, 75 strikeouts, and 40 saves. View full rumor

This is an excellent article on seam-shifted wake from Brewer Fanatic. Really detailed, fascinating stuff about pitching. https://brewerfanatic.com/news-rumors/milwaukee-brewers/the-most-impactful-pitching-advancement-of-this-decade-understanding-seam-shifted-wake-r3992/

The Blue Jays have agreed to terms with right-handed reliever Cody Ponce on a three-year contract, reports Ken Rosenthal. The contract is for three years and $30 million overall; dollar breakdown by year is not yet known. Ponce was drafted out of Cal Poly Pomona by Milwaukee in the second round of the 2015 Draft, 55th overall. In his junior season at Cal Poly Pomona, he recorded a 1.44 ERA with 67 strikeouts in 62 1/3 innings over 13 starts. Ponce began his professional career in the Brewers system and later moved into a full-time relief role. In July 2019, Pittsburgh acquired him from Milwaukee in the trade that sent Jordan Lyles to the Brewers. Ponce reached the majors with the Pirates in 2020 and appeared for them in 2020 and 2021. Acr oss those two seasons, he pitched in 20 games, including five starts, logging 55 1/3 innings with a 5.86 ERA, 48 strikeouts, and a 1.54 WHIP. After the 2021 season, he left affiliated ball, ending his initial major league stint and moving on to opportunities in overseas leagues. After leaving Pittsburgh, Ponce spent three seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball and one season in the Korea Baseball Organization. In Japan, he pitched for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, making 39 appearances and throwing 202 innings with a 4.54 ERA and 165 strikeouts. On August 27, 2022, he threw a no-hitter for Nippon-Ham against SoftBank at the Sapporo Dome, facing 28 batters and recording six strikeouts. Ponce then joined the Hanwha Eagles in Korea. In the 2025 KBO season, he worked 180 2/3 innings with a 1.89 ERA and 252 strikeouts as a starter (29 games started). That performance set a new single-season KBO strikeout record, and he also set the league’s single-game strikeout mark with 18 strikeouts on May 17. He was recognized with the KBO’s Most Valuable Player award and the Choi Dong-won Award as the league’s top starting pitcher. View full article

Owen and Jesse break down the shocking signing of Dylan Cease to a seven-year contract. This alters the shape of the rotation considerably, especially with the late-season emergence of Trey Yesavage. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jays-centre-podcast/id1846108462 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Bi7SzfpcqMo5xYWnbCeoL Listen on iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-the-jays-centre-podcast-300304824/ Listen on Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/2qk9wqxd Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jayscentre View full article

Agreed. He'll probably be a pretty good player, but nothing like the 5-win player he was in 2025.

I don't have much interest in seeing Bellinger on this team, especially at the price he's likely to command this offseason.

Every offseason, we offer our You’re The GM! tool to build your ideal Blue Jays roster. This year, we’ve updated and streamlined the tool a bit to improve the experience. The idea behind this feature is to give fans a chance to play the role of General Manager (or CBO or PoBO… you get the idea) for their favorite team, the Toronto Blue Jays. It’s meant to give fans the opportunity to discuss (and, let’s be honest, argue) how they would approach the long, dark MLB offseason. This tool is intended to be informal and fun, so we’ve left it as open as possible. There is a payroll “budget” that loosely resembles the Blue Jays' 2025 payroll, but there is no penalty for going over that number. It’s a guideline, nothing more. Second, you can submit as many blueprints as you like throughout the offseason. As the offseason landscape changes, users often return multiple times over the winter and create new blueprints. Before we get into the breakdown of the tool, you can save your blueprint and come back to it at any time. The only restriction is that you must register an account on the site to create a blueprint (so we can save a draft for you and also post the blueprint for others to discuss). Let’s get into the tool itself. It has four quadrants that work best if addressed in a counter-clockwise order (this tool works much better on a desktop due to its complexity, but it will work on mobile devices if need be). Top Left: The 26-Man Roster We have created a rough guideline for the Blue Jays' 26-man roster today. The roster is flexible; you can add or remove players as you see fit. We’ve also included either guaranteed salaries or, in the case of arbitration and contract options, the recommendations of MLB Trade Rumors. This section is where you build your roster and make changes based on the following two sections. As you make changes to players and salaries, the total payroll number (right side of the screen) will change, allowing you to track your budget on the fly. The bottom field in both columns is for any dead money you assume during the course of your offseason. Acquiring dead money should be uncommon, but we want to give users the option to take on dead salary if it suits their purposes. Bottom Left: Arbitration & Trade Decisions Here, you will find a selection of arbitration options and internal options (usually from the 40-man roster or minor leagues) to assist in building your offseason roster. On the right-hand side of this column, you will see Trade Candidates, a list of the 40 players most likely to be traded this offseason, per MLB Trade Rumors. To help you get up to speed with these candidates, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on trade candidates. Bottom Right: Free Agents Here, you will find the top 50 free agents, again per MLB Trade Rumors. These are sorted by position to facilitate quickly finding your desired free agent and include the recommended salary for that player. Because this is a blueprint for a single year, we only include their projected salary for the coming season, not the number of years or anything else. To help you get up to speed with these free agents, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on the best 50 free agents available this winter. Top Right: Dead Money, Your Total Payroll, & Commentary The only unalterable field on the page is Dead Money; it is players to whom the team has committed money but has no reasonable way to get out of the contract. Below that, you will see the recommended budget, your current total, and the percentage you are over or under that budget. Again, keep in mind the budget is only a guideline, and you can go above it as much as you like… But defend your choices, coward! The following field is Title, which gives other users an idea of what to expect with your blueprint (e.g., Be Unreasonable, Sign Kyle Tucker!). When your blueprint posts for other users, it will read “Your Username’s 2025 Payroll Blueprint: Be Unreasonable, Sign Kyle Tucker!”. The following field is Your Comments & Explanation, a long-form field meant to type out the rationale behind your decisions. Here is the place to fully explain your trades (including which players are leaving the Blue Jays to bring in new players), why you targeted specific free agents, and any promotions from the minors you advocate or any options you declined to extend to a specific player. This is often multiple paragraphs; you can write up as much detail as you desire. That’s it, you’re done! At this point, you can either publish your blueprint to the forums or save it for later if you feel it’s incomplete. Thank you for joining us at Jays Centre. I hope you enjoy playing the role of general manager, at least for a moment! Start Your Payroll Blueprint Now View full article

Thanks!

We made some significant changes to logins this morning; most of you will not notice a difference, but some of you might see your passwords "change" or other oddities pop up. That's because we just rolled out a new parent site, DiamondCentric.net. Here is a quick rundown on what it is and why it exists. Introducing The All-New DiamondCentric! - DiamondCentric - DiamondCentric DIAMONDCENTRIC.NET You've used one of our team sites; now we have an MLB site!

We're looking for contributors to write Blue Jays content over the offseason! First, feel free to reach out via email at brock.beauchamp@jayscentre.com or reply to this article. Writing Articles If you’ve ever wanted an audience for your Jays takes, this is the perfect place. While we generally lean into analytics and analysis, we also take a “come as you are” approach to baseball and give writers a lot of leeway to write about the game in a way that interests them. That could manifest in historical pieces, previews, or regular series. It’s a matter of finding your niche in the fandom and carving out a space for it. Making Videos We're also looking for videographers! Most of our content is on the shorter side (3-7 minutes), though we have space for plenty of different formats and ideas. Like the writing side of the site, we usually lean into analytics, but it's not the only path we're open to exploring. It is also noteworthy that we pay our content creators. It’s certainly not enough to quit your day job. So don’t do that. However, it might be enough to show that we value your time, talent, and effort. If you know someone who might be interested in creating Blue Jays content as a side job, please share this with them! View full rumor