A little birdie told me an Ohtani decision could come Friday night (but the general range is 24-36 hours). "More than likely Friday night" is what the team was told for now. The Jays believe it's down to them, Dodgers, Angels and Mariners and that they've offered the most, but aren't sure if the other teams have their final offers in yet. Front office vibe is cautiously optimistic. Nothing else has happened yet because they had a singular focus on Ohtani, pivoted to Soto for a bit and then went back to all in on Ohtani.
After the pitch meeting at the complex, they felt they had done all they could do there and began looking at other needs. Originally they were in a purely wait and see stance with Ohtani but they are at the point now where they feel ready to become active on other fronts. LaCava's team was asked to bring reports on 3B, RP, OF and lefty utility and that was worked on yesterday.
Chapman is the only pending free agent they're considering bringing back, they feel Schneider, Biggio and Orelvis can replace the others. Looking to patch 3B/RP via trade but could consider a bigger name for the OF. Earlier off-season conversations included Bellinger, Candelario, Rosario, E-Rod, Miley, Joc, Frazier, Gurriel, Teoscar, Brantley and Lane Thomas. Thomas is one of the names that has resurfaced again in the new phase of discussions and was discussed heavily at the trade deadline. They came very close to reacquiring Teoscar at the deadline as well. Not sure if he's back on the radar now but other names to come up along with Lane Thomas since yesterday are Tyler O'Neill and Soler.
Padres inquired about Vlad early on in Soto conversations and Jays immediately shut it down. When asked who else was untouchable in a Soto deal, Tiedemann was on that list. Package would have been built around Manoah.
The reason there was so little information on Ohtani is because only a very select few of the most senior execs knew anything. Shapiro, Atkins, Starkman and Colabrese obviously among them. Beyond that small group, even upper level front office people were kept completely out of the loop to the point where even they didn't know where Ross was when he did his press conference. Upper management wasn't briefed on Ohtani until this morning and that's where most of this was shared.
Also, Yamamoto has personally requested a meeting with the Jays and according to the source, that's somewhat unusual and that these types of requests are usually extended by the teams.
Won't know until it happens how accurate any of this is but the person has never had bad information before.
- TL