Santander embraces 'new brothers,' old connections in Toronto

TORONTO -- Anthony Santander and the Blue Jays sounded like baseball soulmates Tuesday afternoon as he slid on that crisp white jersey for the first time.

It’s the love story this organization needs after a year stacked with heartbreaks. There’s nothing complicated about signing Santander to a five-year, $92.5 million deal, no “but” and no negative coverage. The match that’s made sense all along is finally official.

“We had a jersey floating around our office with your name on it all offseason,” GM Ross Atkins said, turning to Santander.

Since the moment Santander hit free agency fresh off a 44-homer season with the Orioles, he’s heard “Toronto, Toronto, Toronto” from everyone around him.

Santander is close with Victor Martinez, who now works with the Blue Jays as a special assistant and was present with the club through spring and parts of the regular season last year. He also knows fellow Venezuelan Andrés Giménez, who Toronto traded for in December, and he has spoken with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. throughout the process. Alek Manoah, who trains at the same facility as Santander in the offseason, has been lobbying the 30-year-old all winter.

Sometimes, this works out naturally. There was no need for a PowerPoint presentation to explain who the Blue Jays are, where they play and what Tim Horton’s is. Santander has played eight seasons in the American League East, including 27 games at Rogers Centre. The moment the dome is mentioned, he calls it his “favorite park.”

“They have a pretty good team, they want to win and they want to get back to the playoffs,” Santander said. “It’s important to me to make that move. There’s a winning mentality. The city is great. The environment at Rogers Centre is amazing. I’m going to bring what I learned in Baltimore the last two years, being in the playoffs, and share that with my new brothers here.”

Santander also holds a personal connection to the front office. When Santander signed with Cleveland in 2011 as an international free agent, Atkins was the director of player personnel. Mark Shapiro was the club’s president at the time, more removed from the lower levels of player development, but Toronto first-base coach Mark Budzinski was Santander’s manager in 2016 with the Class A Advanced Lynchburg Hillcats.

Listening to Santander speak, it’s clear that he didn’t just remember these things … they mattered.

“Ross believed in me when I was in Cleveland,” Santander said. “He trusted me as a person, as a player in those times when I had a lot of injuries. He always tried to push me to develop me as a player, and that gave me comfort. Thank you, Ross. With Mark [Budzinski], he was my manager and a great guy, a great person. He always pushed me through my injuries and gave me an opportunity to play every day. We always had good communication to stay on the field. Thank you, Mark, too, and I’m going to see you soon.”

Now comes the fun part: pairing Santander with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the Blue Jays’ lineup.

“Anthony is about as good of a fit as we can find,” Atkins said. “Doing it from both sides of the plate, putting the ball in the seats a regular amount. His ability to do damage on a nightly basis is exactly what we were looking for. He’s a great addition to this lineup.”

Atkins says the Blue Jays are working “around the clock” to continue to add to the team, and even after Santander’s deal, the club has the financial flexibility to push further. The free-agent market is still full of names who would help, including first baseman Pete Alonso and outfielder Jurickson Profar, and Toronto remains involved in the market for a veteran starter.

Santander moves this offseason back in a better direction, though, after last week’s whiff on Roki Sasaki, and the involvement of deferred money shows the club's willingness to get creative to make this payroll work in the short and long term. Santander sounds like a player who is already comfortable with the Blue Jays, the perfect match between an organization that wanted him all along and a player who finally said yes.