NASHVILLE – Silence is golden and secrecy is sublime. Standing in the eye of the biggest, boldest pursuit in franchise history, the Blue Jays aren’t saying a word. Even the name “Shohei Ohtani” is spoken carefully, each syllable tiptoeing gently to the next. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t wake the baby. The secrecy with which baseball’s brightest star lives his life has taken over his free agency, which is bubbling to a boil here at the Winter Meetings. Earlier this offseason, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that it would be “held against” potential suitors if news leaked that he’d visited a specific team.
Well, it’s happening. Every good drama has a shocking confession, and this one came from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts on Tuesday afternoon, admitting that he and members of Los Angeles’ front office had met with Ohtani in recent days. It all went very well, the veteran manager thought, and besides, the news would get out eventually. “Clearly,” Roberts said, “Shohei is our top priority.” This was a wailing siren through the silence, because even following reports that Ohtani had toured Toronto’s training facilities in Dunedin, Fla., over the weekend, the Blue Jays refused to give that fire any oxygen, instead letting it live as a detail and nothing more.
Source: https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/news/