The Blue Jays are having a quiet weekend at the winter meetings but a couple of rumours have injected some life into the blogosphere on a gloomy Monday in Toronto.

 

 

The first rumour comes out of Boston with “multiple major league sources” of Rob Bradford’s telling him that Edwin Encarnacion is setting a deadline of the end of spring training to work out a contract extension to keep him with the club.

 

 

This is a very interesting development but I’m not sure that giving the club an ultimatum will get him an extension. Baseball is a business and Edwin probably stands to come out with the most money by going the free agency route. If true, this play by Encarnacion could be a way to be seen as giving the Jays a chance to lock him up.

 

UPDATE: Shi Davidi at Sportsnet.ca is also writing about the same spring training deadline.

 

The other rumour, coming to us from Howard Berger, a former Fan590 Maple Leafs reporter (so I’m not entirely sure how he’s getting scoops in baseball) who tweets that the Blue Jays are serious about trying to sign former Orioles’ slugger Chris Davis.

 

#BlueJays and free agent slugger Chris Davis appear to be in a serious contract dance. This would be a terrific move – short and long-term.

— Howard Berger (@Berger_BYTES) December 7, 2015

  While separately, these pieces of rumour mongering are interesting, they are potentially explosive when taken together. If the Blue Jays are serious about Davis in the longterm, then the Jays will clearly not be extended Edwin. Davis is three years younger than Edwin and so there would be more upside towards the end of a long-ish term contract (say, anything longer than three years).   But if the Blue Jays are in such hot pursuit of Chris Davis, why did they just give Justin Smoak $3.9 million for 2016? He could probably be moved if Davis is signed but probably so would Encarnacion if they Jays wanted to fit Davis in under their budget, as Gideon Turk tweeted just a few minutes ago.  

Source: Interest in Chris Davis is “legit”. “Lots of fans in the scouting dept”. Would need to move players to fit the salary. “Longshot”. — Gideon Turk (@GideonTurk) December 7, 2015

 

Basically, folks, these rumours will swirl and I don’t think we should get our hopes up about getting Chris Davis or about a contract extension for Edwin. At least not longer than two years. Still, it gives us something to talk about in December.

 

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