The dust has barely settled on the World Series, but one benefit of being a team like the Blue Jays is that there isn’t much downtime between the end of the season and the offseason. Once the Game 7 confetti was swept up off the turf at Rogers Centre, it was go time for the Blue Jays front office.

MLB free agency opens up on Thursday, and the Blue Jays have some heavy lifting to do. While Shane Bieber opted in for next year and will remain a Blue Jay, others like Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt are free agents and may not return to the starting rotation.

Once Scherzer returned from his thumb injury, his second wind was a treat to watch, and he was effective in the postseason for the Blue Jays. But could they look to bring back the 41-year-old for one more season? Oftentimes, teams have to pivot and go for another arm on the market, depending on whether Scherzer even wants to pitch again, or if the Blue Jays prefer to go in a different direction.

If the Blue Jays are looking to go the veteran starting pitcher route on a one-year deal, there are plenty of intriguing options in the free agent pool. These are among the more interesting names the Blue Jays should consider to fill the Scherzer role for the 2026 season.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again? The Blue Jays were linked to veteran starting pitcher Justin Verlander multiple times in the past. But with him entering his age-43 season and the Blue Jays coming off a World Series run, could that be enough to tip the scales in favour of Toronto this go-around?

It was a tale of two completely different halves for Verlander, his first half being a 15-start sample size with a 4.70 ERA compared to a 14-start 2.99 ERA in the second half. As any fantasy baseball manager can attest, Verlander was a streaming favourite down the stretch thanks to his late-season resurgence.

At 93.9 MPH, Verlander’s fastball velocity is still middle of the pack, and his strikeout rate was 20.7% in 2025 with the Giants after dipping down to 18.7% in 2024 with the Mets and the Astros.

Verlander missed a month with a right pectoral injury earlier this year, but he still logged 29 starts for the Giants and finished with 152 innings pitched and a 3.85 ERA. On the whole, Verlander technically had a better season than Scherzer, but would Verlander be an upgrade over Scherzer?

As crazy as it sounds, I think there’s more upside with a 42-year-old Verlander than there might be with a 41-year-old Scherzer in the Blue Jays starting rotation.

Over the last several years, Merrill Kelly has flown under the radar as one of the most durable and steady starting pitchers in MLB. Kelly was a late bloomer, not breaking into the big leagues until his age 30 season with the Diamondbacks, and Arizona was all he’s known until the Dbacks dealt him to the Texas Rangers at the trade deadline.

He continued to deliver for his new team, making 10 starts for the Rangers and pitching to a 4.23 ERA. Kelly didn’t blow the doors down, but he ate up innings and maintained a decent strikeout rate. The one red flag was his HR/9 shot up from 0.98 with the Diamondbacks compared to a 1.456 HR/9 with the Rangers.

Even with those warts, any team would be happy to have Kelly at the back end of their starting rotation, especially a club like the Blue Jays that has two vacancies on their starting pitcher depth chart. Because he’s only 37 years old, I think Kelly actually lands a multi-year deal, which wouldn’t exactly fit the Scherzer mould of a high AAV contract on a one-year deal.

But Kelly’s peripherals and advanced metrics are really appealing to a team like the Blue Jays, who need to find starting pitchers who can keep the ball in the yard and who are less prone to giving up those big homers.

Had the Blue Jays not gone for an impact starter for Shane Bieber at the trade deadline and had the Texas Rangers decided to be sellers rather than buyers, there’s a scenario where Patrick Corbin made sense for the Blue Jays as a depth starter piece.

As his fastball velocity continues to dip, Corbin has to rely on deception as a finesse pitcher to get outs these days, but he does an okay job at limiting damage. At the very least, he doesn’t allow many home runs, and at 36 years old, his 19.8% strikeout rate in 2025 was the highest he’s posted since 2020 with the Washington Nationals.

If I’m Pete Walker and the Blue Jays’ pitching coaches, someone like Corbin is very intriguing to see if a little tinkering can be done under the hood to unlock even more potential. Since split-finger fastballs are so en vogue across the league and especially with the Blue Jays, potentially adding a new pitch could be the difference-maker.

Credit to Jose Quintana, he is perpetually one of these “he’s still pitching” who continues to reinvent himself and find work year after year. Aside from an injury-shortened 2020 and 2023 campaign, Quintana has been solid for around 30 starts a season, dating all the way back to his debut season in 2012 with the Chicago White Sox.

Just as a comparison, there aren’t any active MLB players who suited up for the Blue Jays back in 2012, so Quintana is in pretty exclusive company when it comes to pitchers who have stuck around this long. At 36 years old, he’s another starting pitcher I like to fill that Scherzer role as the fifth starter or a depth option for the Blue Jays.

Unlike Scherzer, who averaged 5.0 IP per start in 2025, Quintana was slightly better, averaging 5.5 IP per start this season. Scherzer had a 35% quality start rate, while Quintana had a 33% quality start rate, even though the Brewers gave Quintana one full run better support than the Blue Jays did in Scherzer’s games in 2025.