Blue Jays' $60M splash on Kazuma Okamoto completely destroyed Mariners fantasy

At least where their lineup is concerned, the Seattle Mariners' offseason shopping has mostly been in stasis. Rob Refsnyder and Andrew Knizner were nice additions, but neither is the big bat the club has been seeking since it secured Josh Naylor in November.

As of a couple days ago, you could talk yourself into Kazuma Okamoto being the right guy to be said big bat. His profile was low-key perfect for the team's needs, and the M's were reportedly in on him as his posting window was set to close on Sunday.

Even just a few days later, it's amazing how quaint this notion feels. Okamoto became a Toronto Blue Jay on Saturday by way of a four-year, $60 million deal. No matter how "in" on him they were, it's hard to imagine the Mariners ever going that far for the slugger out of Japan.

Mariners' Kazuma Okamoto fantasy gets destroyed by Blue Jays' $60M splash

Did the Mariners' budget have room for a $15 million per year deal for Okamoto? It's at best a "maybe," as they're somewhere between $9 and $11 million away from realizing Jerry Dipoto's kinda-sorta promise that the 2026 payroll would open where the 2025 payroll closed.

Even so, the market seemed to be trending in Seattle's favor. Whereas MLB Trade Rumors had projected two of Okamoto's countrymen, Munetaka Murakami and Tatsuya Imai, to land contracts worth a total of $330 million, what they actually got was $88 million. Based on those outcomes, you could see Okamoto similarly settling for less than MLBTR's projection of four years, $64 million.

Hence the question: Why did he do so well even after Murakami and Imai had done so poorly?

The Blue Jays of it all is certainly a factor. They have chosen to throw caution to the wind after coming two outs short of winning the World Series in 2025, as they had already committed $276 million to three pitchers even before signing Okamoto. And he's perfect for them, as he can play third base and should fit well in a lineup where patience, contact and power are somehow in equal supply.

While there's never any certainty with players coming over from NPB, Okamoto also seems to have a much more solid floor that Murakami does as an everyday player in MLB. He doesn't have Murakami's swing-and-miss issues, and he's a better defender, to boot.

For their part, you can imagine that the report of the Mariners being involved on Okamoto was merely a smokescreen. Their primary connections have been to Brendan Donovan first and foremost, and then to Ketel Marte as a pie in the sky and Eugenio Suárez as a fallback. If they wanted to gain some leverage in those talks by pretending to pivot to Okamoto, then so be it. Solid strategy.

Even if they were serious about Okamoto, a four-year, $60 million deal was probably never in the cards. Dipoto has only ever dumped that much money on one free-agent hitter, and that was for a very special case after Naylor made the team and the city fall head over heels late in 2025.

And so, the status quo holds. And even if Okamoto was never likely to be the guy for Seattle, the reality is that there's now one less big bat out there as spring training creeps closer.