Ross Atkins isn't the only Blue Jays executive whose future might depend on Juan Soto

Anxiety is high around the Toronto Blue Jays right now. The team swung big and missed big on Shohei Ohtani last offseason, then suffered through a dispiriting 74-win season — and the team's first last-place finish in the AL East in over a decade. Oh, and Toronto's two foundational players, shortstop Bo Bichette and first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., are about to enter their walk years. It's no wonder that even rival executives expect the Jays to be baseball's most desperate team this offseason; whatever happens over the next couple of months, it's going to set the course for this franchise for years to come.

It's also going to determine the fate of Toronto's beleaguered front office. For the most part, the weight of the team's recent failures has fallen on one man: general manager Ross Atkins, who just might be the most hated man in Toronto right now given how the last few seasons have played out. If Atkins doesn't come up with something big it's hard to see him sticking around past 2025.

But he's not the only one with everything riding on this offseason. Atkins bears the brunt of the blame for the current state of the Jays, but his boss is sitting on an awfully hot seat as well. And with his contract set to expire after next season, it's sure shaping up to be Juan Soto or bust for the current Toronto regime.

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Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro's job is on the line this offseason

In his latest column, The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal breaks down the Blue Jays' pursuit of Juan Soto. Toronto reportedly had an in-person meeting with Soto and agent Scott Boras late last week, and it seems as though things went as well as could be expected. But Rosenthal points out that, if the superstar outfielder wants to land with a consistent contender, it might behoove him to look elsewhere: Landing Soto for, say, $675 million will directly affect the team's ability to keep Bichette, Guerrero Jr. or both, and a weak farm system means that there isn't another bumper crop of young talent coming to keep things afloat.

But that's hardly going to stop Toronto from putting on the full-court press regardless, in large part because their front office has no other choice. As Rosenthal writes: "The uncertain futures of Jays president Mark Shapiro (signed through 2025) and general manager Ross Atkins (through ’26) only add to the questions surrounding the club and might be fueling its desire to make a splash."

Shapiro developed a sterling reputation as both head of player development and later general manager with the Cleveland Guardians from the 1990s through the mid-2000s. But things eventually soured in Cleveland, and Shapiro hasn't been able to recapture success in Toronto. The Jays went to the ALCS in his first season as team president in 2016, but that was largely a carryover from the Alex Anthopoulos regime; Toronto posted three straight fourth-place finishes from 2017 through 2019, and has struggled to get over the hump in the Bichette-Guerrero Jr. era.

It's an old adage that executives rarely get a second crack at a rebuild. Shapiro tore things down in the late 2010s, and right now was when the fruits of that labor would be borne. Instead, the team doesn't even have a single playoff win to show for it, getting swept out of the Wild Card round in 2020, 2022 and 2023. Shapiro is entering the final year of his contract, and if he doesn't offer proof of concept now, he won't get another chance.