Was thinking about this recently. The Jays have a LOT of salary coming off of the books the next few years, with only Reyes' $22mil guaranteed past 2015. Assuming Bautista and EEs' options are picked up, we're at $46 mil payroll + a few more mil for buyouts in 2016. While that flexibility is great (albeit not as great in a non-capped league), theres a lot of uncertainty. Would it be advantageous to sign Hutch and Stroman to Chris Archer - Type "team friendly" deals that give the team cost certainty through their Arbitration years and a Free agent year or 2. If they would accept such a deal, granted, big if, the Jays would pay a little more than they would in the near-term years, but it would help us a lot down the road, when it seems we'll have to be looking at the free agency market to fill holes.
Flip side. The Ricky Romero and Morrow contracts, while thought to be "team friendly" at the time have not worked out for the team at all. Also, The Policy of 5-year contracts term max would preclude a deal that would be advantageous to both sides, since the Jays couldnt take the contract into a free-agent year. Not getting that value, they'd have to bring down the near-term premium to the ML min salary they'd offer in the pre-arb years that the player would value in such a deal.
Thoughts?