Insider: Bowden's Blue Jays rebuilding plan

[Santoki]

I'm not saying they will be better, just that Rogers has to sell the fanbase on the hope that they will still be competitive. "Just get us within 6 games of the wildcard" talk is already back in town a year after aspirations of winning a pennant.

Rogers isn't going to go full rebuild and have the fans lose that optimism (as false a sense as it is). They'll go halfway like they do everything else.

[Michael Bradley]

Rogers doesn't want a last placed, full rebuild team. They won't sell everyone because it'll hurt the bottom line and there is no guarantee the rebuild will be successful. What is guaranteed is a team that can at least garner some attention with big names still on it.

In 2010, after AA traded Halladay, the team looked like it was destined to finish dead last. Then Bautista turned into an MVP candidate and the starting rotation was well above expectations, and it lead to 85 wins. So Rogers pretty much green lighted a full on rebuild; it just completely flopped because of Bautista's emergence, among other things, which accelerated the need to win short-term.

It's funny. If Bautista never panned out like he did, then the team might have actually been better off, depending on how AA would have operated if the team was consistently bad from 2010-onwards.

[Santoki]

That's the scenario that would play out when EE and Bautista contracts run out