MLB Insider Shockingly Doesn’t List Blue Jays As Most Improved This Offseason
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The Toronto Blue Jays have been doing everything in their power to improve their team from 2025 and have easily emerged as one of the best rosters in baseball for 2026 with a plethora of elite faces joining the roster.
Despite immensely upgrading their pitching staff and adding an elite bat one MLB insider does not dub them as the most improved this offseason. Jim Bowden (via. the Athletic) has the Blue Jays ranked No. 3 on his list trailing both the Baltimore Orioles and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
This is quite puzzling as they might not have added as many players as the Orioles but the quality is incredibly high and addresses the gaps that the Jays had on their roster in 2025.
Team Improvements During Offseason
The Blue Jays were clear going into this offseason that they were going to improve their pitching staff which was ultimately their Achilles heel in 2025. Management has been aggressive and they arguably have the best starting rotation in baseball right now.
Dylan Cease: Cease has been an absolute strikeout machine since taking on a primary role as a starter back in 2022. This was his fourth consecutive season with 214 or more strikeouts and will be a really nice complement to Trey Yesavage, Kevin Gausman and Shane Bieber.
Kazuma Okamoto: This will be Okamoto's first time playing in the majors as he has been playing in foreign leagues for the last 11 years and emerged as quite a bat. In 2025 the 29-year-old played in 77 games where he batted over .320 to complement an OPS over .990.
Cody Ponce: The KBO MVP from 2025 was an absolute menace for hitters and in his last season in the KBO with the Hanwha Eagles he was not only named the MVP, but set a record for most strikeouts in a game, 18, and eventually finished the year with 252 in less than 181 innings.
His stat-line for 2025 included:
- 17-1 Record
- 1.89 ERA
- 252 Strikeouts
- 0.93 WHIP
Shane Bieber: The 2020 Cy Young Award winner might have been on the roster in 2025 but it wasn't until the trade deadline and he hadn't thrown a pitch in the majors since his Tommy John surgery. After posting a 3.57 ERA for the ballclub in his seven starts during the regular season he will be back and a vital part of their starting rotation.
Tyler Rogers: Rogers is the key piece to their bullpen that the Blue Jays won a bidding war for. After posting a 1.98 ERA and 0.98 WHIP in 2025, it seems likely that he will be their newest closer.
As of right now their pitching staff looks solid and they are still looking to make moves with a pair of free agents left up for grabs: homegrown Bo Bichette, and 2x Silver Slugger Award winner Kyle Tucker. If they can retain either of those guys, their roster could easily make them the best team in baseball and ready to dethrone the Dodgers.
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Maddy Dickens resides in Loveland, Colorado. She grew up with two older brothers, where their lives revolved around sports. She earned a master's degree in business management from Tarleton State University while simultaneously playing basketball and competing in rodeo at the collegiate level. She successfully parlayed a reserve national championship into a professional rodeo career and now stays involved in upper-level athletics by writing for On SI on several different MLB teams' pages, along with some NCAA sites.