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But with theÌýBlue Jays holding the American League’s best record three-quarters of the way through the season, things are happening around the ol’ ballpark that we haven’t seen in a very long time.

“I think we’re capable of winning the last game played,” the Jays president and CEO said in his annual in-season meeting with the media at the Rogers Centre on Tuesday.Ìý

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Shapiro is putting Edward Rogers’ money where his mouth is. The Jays are currently running the highest payroll in club history, even knocking on the door of being $40 million (U.S.) over the competitive balance tax threshold of $241 million. If a team goes that high over the threshold, its top pick in the next year’s draft gets pushed back 10 spots.

“We don’t really comment on that,” Shapiro said of a potential penalty that would be the first in club history. “What I can say definitively is it wasn’t a factor in any decisions we made or will make.”

It’s not just the payroll, though. A fortnight ago, at the trade deadline, the Jays moved one of their top prospects in a deal for a rental player, something they haven’t done since Alex Anthopoulos traded high-ceiling left-handed starters Matthew Boyd and Daniel Norris, along with Jairo Labourt, to the Detroit Tigers for David Price in 2015.

You’ll remember that, at the time, Shapiro was not a fan of the move. Things appear to be different now, with the Jays moving Khal Stephen — the fourth-best prospect traded by anyone at this year’s deadline, according to  — to Cleveland for Shane Bieber, whose stay in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ likely won’t last beyond this season. 

“Every decision we’ll weigh the opportunity at hand, the chance to grab the brass ring,” Shapiro said.

Weighed, of course, with what’s on the opposite side of that coin.

“There’s a residue of winning that makes it more of a challenge to sustain winning going forward, but we want to make it as hard as possible,” Shapiro said. “If that means we pick later in the draftÌý— the better our record, the later we pickÌý— that’s OK. We want to be in a position to have those types of tough decisions.”

Up until this year, they have faced those sorts of decisions with some level of caution.

They avoided any luxury tax penalties when they sold off at the trade deadline last season. ÌýThey have hoarded their top prospects, or they haven’t let any of them go without getting back a top-tier player with whom they would have some contract control.

There are no guarantees of winning a championship, no matter how good the team. The winningest team over 162 games has gone on to win the World Series just six times in the 30 years of the wild-card era. Four teams won at least 99 games in the 2023 regular season and not one of them survived its first playoff round.

While Shapiro’s team has shied away from all-in moves in the past, perhaps, like Anthopoulos a decade ago, the spectre of an expiring contract is inspiring him to green light taking a bigger shot than he ever has. Or maybe his mindset is changing after zero rings in almost three-and-a-half decades in the game.

“You understand that there is no definitive,” Shapiro said. “But you also understand if you’ve been there and you’ve had a three-games-to-one lead in the ALCS and you’ve watched that evaporate and you’ve seen the team you lose to go on to win the World Series (as happened to his Cleveland team in 2007) and then you recognize how difficult it is to get back there again.

“Or you’re playing in back-to-back ALCS’s like this franchise did not too long ago (in 2015 and 2016) and you recognize just how hard it is to get backÌýthere. When you have a chance to get there, you fight to take advantage of that chance.”

There have been many missteps along the way but whatever the motivation, this aggressiveness is a welcome change. There are still no guarantees the Jays will win “the last game played,” or even a single playoff game, but this is the best chance they’ve had in a long time.