Gregor Chisholm: Why the big-spending Blue Jays aren’t worried about a looming MLB salary cap — yet - Toronto Star

Ross Atkins, Mark Shapiro say it's business as usual this off-season, even as MLB pushes for sweeping financial reform.

Toronto Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro has been through seven collective bargaining agreements during his time in baseball. 

Gregor Chisholm is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on X: @GregorChisholm or reach him via email: gchisholm@thestar.ca.

Major League Baseball seems dead set on reining in its biggest spenders through a new salary cap system, but that apparently isn’t going to stop the Blue Jays from going on one last shopping spree.

Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins said during his end-of-season media availability Wednesday it was “business as usual” despite the strong possibility of a lockout starting Dec. 1. Team president Mark Shapiro then essentially made the same claim a half-hour later.

Those statements matter because spending a lot of money in free agency has been one of the Jays’ biggest competitive advantages in recent years. A cap would strip that away. But until one exists, the Jays’ approach remains unchanged.

“Nothing new for me, to go through it,” said Shapiro, who has been a front-office executive through seven collective agreements. “The way you go through it is, you prepare under the current system and then you adjust along the way, so that’s what we’re going to do.

“We always prepare for multiple scenarios, so we will be prepared to adjust and adapt. Any new system adopted, there will be a time frame for adjustment into that system. That’s understood. But we’ll follow the lead of the commissioner’s office on the details of that.”

On Wednesday, Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins will field questions about a lost year and what’s next.