Ross Atkins’ latest roster move won’t get the Blue Jays any closer to signing Juan Soto

Coming off a disastrous 74-88 campaign, the Toronto Blue Jays have a lot of work to do to try and get back in the postseason hunt. Barring a major improvement, Ross Atkins' job could be on the line.

With that in mind, the Blue Jays are big-game hunting and are squarely in the mix to sign the best free agent out there in Juan Soto. Signing Soto probably isn't likely, but money talks — and the Jays have lots of it, as we saw last offseason in the race to sign Shohei Ohtani.

Signing Soto would immediately fix what was an underwhelming offensive team outside of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. It'd give the Jays arguably the most intimidating dynamic duo of the game, and considering their respective ages, there's a chance they'd dominate the AL East for the next decade.

The problem is that we know Soto is primarily concerned with contending, and outside of money, the Jays don't have much to offer. Their 2024 record speaks for itself, and even if Soto came to partner with Guerrero, the first baseman is only under club control through 2025 and is far from guaranteed to be in Toronto long-term.

To get Soto to sign on the dotted line, Atkins is going to have to fork over tons of money while also convincing Soto that he can win in Toronto. Part of how Atkins can do that would be to improve what was easily the weakest link of the team this past season: the bullpen.

But Atkins' first big decision of this offseason didn't exactly fix the bullpen. In fact, an argument can easily be made that the bullpen is in an even worse position now than it was entering the winter.

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Blue Jays non-tendering Jordan Romano makes signing Juan Soto an even bigger long-shot

This past season wasn't only a disaster for the Jays, but it was a rough one for Romano as well. The right-hander posted a 6.59 ERA and was limited to just 15 appearances all season, missing most of the year due to elbow troubles.

Now, the elbow injury likely played a role in this decision. Romano was set to make around $8 million in his final year of arbitration. While that's undoubtedly a lot of money for a reliever coming off a rough season and dealing with an elbow injury, did the Jays really have another choice here?

Romano being gone means that an already dreadful Blue Jays bullpen just got substantially worse on paper. Yes, this past season was a disaster in every which way, but Toronto's 4.82 bullpen ERA ranked 29th in the Majors, and its -2.5 bullpen fWAR ranked dead last by a substantial margin. Those struggles were even with Yimi Garcia pitching for half of the season.

With Romano hitting free agency, the Blue Jays bullpen now consists of Chad Green and a whole bunch of question marks. Eric Swanson rebounding would go a long way, but his season was so bad that he spent time in the Minor Leagues. The rest of this group, meanwhile, leaves a lot to be desired.

Again, there's no arguing that Romano's 2024 season was bad, but he pitched to a 2.29 ERA in 199 appearances in the four years prior, and his 97 saves during those four years ranked third in the AL. He was one of the best relievers in the sport, and the Jays cut him loose after one bad season.

The bullpen needed a complete overhaul with Romano, and now it just became a lot harder to pull that off. The Jays can re-sign him, and it'd be ideal to bring him back at a lower number, but given the fact that he's free for all 30 teams to sign, he's sure to receive a good amount of interest as a buy-low candidate.

The Jays would have a hard time selling Soto on Toronto even with a large contract offer due to the state of their team right now and the lack of exciting prospects in their pipeline. Making their biggest weakness even worse won't help them convince Soto to come aboard.