Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the Blue Jays need to have a big off-season.

It sounds like the same rhetoric we’ve heard every year dating back to 2019, but this winter has to be different. With even more on the line in 2025, this is the most pivotal off-season of the Mark Shapiro/Ross Atkins-led Blue Jays.

It was different in the early years of this regime, as they had to keep the nucleus of a successful team afloat for the first few seasons. Then came the rebuilding years of 2017 to 2019, and the competitive window flung open ahead of the 2020 season once the Blue Jays dove head-first into free agency by signing Hyun-Jin Ryu.

Every year thereafter, the Blue Jays built on top of that roster, inching this team further into that high 80s/low 90s win total. But now Shapiro and Atkins have the herculean task of elevating this 74-win team back into Wild Card contender, which is much easier said than done.

Judging by their behaviour at this year’s trade deadline, we know the Blue Jays aren’t intent on tearing this down just yet. So rather than dip back into the hellscape of a rebuild, the mission of the off-season is to turn this ship back around.

The first piece of business is a contract extension for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. If that doesn’t get done this winter, it doesn’t mean Vladdy is out the door at the end of next season, but having a franchise player locked up long-term makes it much easier to game plan for the future.

To have Guerrero, Bo Bichette, Jordan Romano and Chris Bassitt all exiting at the end of 2025 would hit the reset button for the Blue Jays by default, so locking up at least one core piece like Guerrero props the window of contention open for several more seasons.

Despite his otherworldly season in 2024, Vladdy can’t do it all on his own. He may not need “protection” per se, but the Blue Jays need at least one more power bat in the lineup to compliment Guerrero’s power, and another top-of-the-order left-handed bat that has some pop, but can also hit for average.

Add to the laundry list that Atkins and company must also rebuild a bullpen that was one of the worst in the majors in 2024. Considering that many of their starting pitcher options are on the long-term injured list, adding some starting pitching depth is another area that the Blue Jays need to address.

Toronto’s off-season shopping list is longer than it’s been since their 95-loss campaign in 2019. But it’s not like the Blue Jays have an infinite budget to cross all these items off the list; they have to prioritize which areas to hone in on and improve for next year.

And while Shapiro and Atkins’ overall record since taking over the helm in 2016 has been decent, the team’s performance as of late and its inability to win in the postseason would get them fired in most scenarios.

Just like last season’s off-season pursuit of Shohei Ohtani, the easiest way to make people forget all the heartbreak and anguish is by signing the best free agent on the market. The probability of landing Juan Soto is quite low, but I also thought the Blue Jays had no shot at Ohtani.

Rather than putting all their eggs into one basket, the Blue Jays could spray the free agent market with a bunch of darts and hope that at least one of them pans out. Shopping in the Anthony Santander, Teoscar Hernandez, Christian Walker, Tyler O’Neill, and Joc Pederson tier is a good place for Toronto to be.

The roster transformation won’t take place completely through free agency. Atkins and company will need to make some trades as well, not only to clear up the logjam of similar-skilled players, but to raise the floor of talent on this team.

As we saw from the New York Mets a few years ago, when they infused $423 million into their payroll during the winter of 2023, spending big doesn’t guarantee immediate results. But as the Mets bounced back this year, they’ve shown that investing in the team can pay dividends.

When you get into a “spending for the sake of spending” or trying to be too cute, you get the Kendrys Morales three-year/$33 million contract. In retrospect, it wasn’t an egregious miscalculation by the front office, but shopping in the discount bin often produces discount results.

Most Blue Jays fans would prefer the team to be overly-aggressive in free agency and trade than sit on the sidelines like they did last year. When your organization is expected to win 90-plus games, it’s better to swing and miss than to not swing at all.

For the last two years, this club focused a bulk of their resources on run prevention, and while that model worked to a degree for some period, it underestimated how important it is to fortify the starting lineup. Pitching and defence play in the playoffs, but you’ve got to get to the playoffs for that strategy to bear fruit.

And maybe the first domino has already fallen as the Blue Jays have reportedly dismissed Guillermo Martinez from his role as hitting coach. Something has to change around 1 Blue Jays Way, and running it back (for the most part) for three straight years will not cut it.

2025 will be a telling year for Shapiro, Atkins and this Blue Jays organization. With a successful winter, they could be back in October for the fourth time in a six-year span. But if things go sideways once again, we could be talking about how many more years until the next wave of Blue Jays are fighting for a World Series title.