Although the Toronto Blue Jays fell just short of the playoffs in 2021, the club’s team-building efforts reached a number of milestones new to the Mark Shapiro/Ross Atkins era.

Last year, the Blue Jays shopped at the very top of the market by adding George Springer, traded blue-chip prospects for a veteran star, and signed one of their own players to a nine-figure extension. While none of those moves reinvented the wheel, they were firsts for a front office that often spoke of sustainable success and had previously shown limited willingness to sacrifice future value for present results.

In 2022, it’s likely that the team will cross new thresholds we haven’t seen in this era of Blue Jays baseball. Here are a few markers along the trail to contention the Blue Jays could traverse as they dive deeper into their competitive window.

Trade for a big-time rental

The acquisition of José Berríos showed the Blue Jays were willing to sell some serious prospect capital for a win-now solution, but they have yet to dive into the deep end on a rental.

They club has taken on a number of players on contract years like Robbie Ray and Taijuan Walker in 2020 and Francisco Liriano and Joaquin Benoit in 2016, but they’ve never landed one of the best hired guns.

Getting a rental with star-power doesn’t automatically make you a World Series favourite, and it’s possible to win the Fall Classic without one, but if you take the plunge that’s a statement of intent that you see yourself as one of the league’s top teams. Even the model franchise for sustained contention — the Los Angeles Dodgers — has repeatedly been willing to trade serious young talent for a single bite at the apple with deals for the likes of Manny Machado and Yu Darvish.

If the Blue Jays get off to an excellent start in 2022, they might find themselves willing to push their chips in on a single season for the first time since 2015.