Late on Wednesday night, the Toronto Blue Jays came to terms with free agent starter, and future Hall of Famer, Max Scherzer on a one-year deal worth up to $10 million in incentives. 

With Scherzer in the fold, the Blue Jays now have eight starting pitchers for five spots: Scherzer, Jose Berrios, Eric Lauer, Kevin Gausman, Shane Bieber, Dylan Cease, Cody Ponce and Trey Yesavage.

Bieber is set to start the year on the injured list, alleviating the depth to some degree, but there is certainly a question of how Toronto will handle things moving forward.

Let's take a look at the options:

Given that Scherzer is going to be 1-2 weeks behind everyone else, he may need to start the year in the minor leagues to build up his workload for a start or two. That would alleviate the excess depth for a little while, but it's only a temporary band-aid.

And, given Scherzer's reputation as a notoriously hard worker, he may be perfectly up to speed from day one, negating this possibility entirely.

Six-man rotations aren't really that popular given that they take away depth from the bullpen. Furthermore, the beginning of the season has so many off days that you don't even always need five starters, nevertheless six. Still, if the Jays want to keep most everyone happy, this is an option.

Also, it would serve as a nice buffer for Yesavage, who manager John Schneider already said wouldn't see a full workload this season.

The Blue Jays could roll with Cease, Gausman, Yesavage, Scherzer and Ponce in the rotation, and then move one of Berrios and Lauer with the other staying in the bullpen. 

Berrios and his inflated contract are nearly impossible to move, but Lauer's $4 million salary might be just what a team looking for a rotation member is willing to pay.

Keeping Berrios and Lauer both in the bullpen isn't necessarily great from a pure bullpen perspective, as neither one has the swing-and-miss profile of a reliever, but keeping both down there would give Schneider the opportunity to have real length in that bullpen, helping alleviate some of the stress on relievers like Louis Varland and Jeff Hoffman, who pitched deep into the 2025 season.

Is Bieber more hurt than the organization letting on? The depth issue would still be there, but it would make more sense as to why Scherzer was brought in in the first place.

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