After the Toronto Blue Jays moved within one victory of winning the World Series, the club extended the contract of president and CEO Mark Shapiro for five more seasons, it was announced Friday.
The Blue Jays went 94-68 last season while winning the American League East in a tiebreaker against the New York Yankees. This was Toronto’s first AL East title since 2015.
The Blue Jays then eliminated the Yankees in the American League Division Series before topping the Seattle Mariners in a seven-game AL Championship Series.
Toronto had a 3-2 World Series lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers before losing the final two games at home, with Game 7 going to the Dodgers in 11 innings after the Blue Jays were two outs away from their first championship since 1993.
“It’s not just that the players on the field accomplished championships and great things, it’s what they stood for while doing it,” Shapiro said in November, according to MLB.com. “At the end of the day, you could watch them play the game and know their identity as a team and our identity as an organization. I think all of us, across Canada, saw ourselves in them. We saw things that inspired us, things that lifted us up, reasons to believe, reasons to feel like we belonged and were part of something.”
Already this offseason, Toronto added right-hander Dylan Cease to a seven-year, $210 million contract. Star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is set to begin a 14-year, $500 million contract extension in 2026.
Shapiro, 58, not only oversaw the Blue Jays’ rise from a 74-88 record in 2024 to a near title a year later, he also presided over recent renovations to the team’s ballpark as well as the spring training facility in Dunedin, Florida.
Shapiro played with the Cleveland Indians from 1991 to 2015, before becoming general manager in 2001 and team president after the 2010 season. He has been president and CEO of the Blue Jays since 2015.
–Field level media
