Interim general manager Tony LaCava heads a four-man Toronto Blue Jays team at the GM meetings this week in Boca Raton, Fla., looking to lay the foundation for the off-season moves needed to defend the club’s American League East championship.

LaCava has been the club’s point man for a week now after Alex Anthopoulos’s shocking departure as general manager, and will be leading the dialogue with other teams and free agents. Typically, only a handful of transactions take place at the GM meetings, which officially open Tuesday and wrap up Thursday, but the information gathered is instrumental in the wheeling and dealing to come.

In the background, meanwhile, new Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro said during his introductory news conference that “among the many priorities that I’m balancing will be beginning the search for a general manager.”

“How that transpires, I’m not sure,” he continued. “Certainly there’s some benefit to getting that done sooner rather than later, but I also am confident in Tony’s ability to lead this organization in the interim.”

That confidence could make LaCava a legitimate contender for the job on a permanent basis.

The 54-year-old first joined the Blue Jays as an assistant to the GM under J.P. Ricciardi in October 2002, and became the organization’s No. 2 man when Anthopoulos was promoted to GM on the penultimate day of the 2009 season. LaCava was one of three finalists for the GM job with the Los Angeles Angels that went to Billy Eppler last month, and in 2011 he turned down an offer to become GM of the Baltimore Orioles.

“I’m a Blue Jay, so whatever my seat on the bus is, that’s fine,” LaCava said during Shapiro’s introduction.

Industry speculation has focused mainly on Ross Atkins, the Cleveland Indians’ vice-president of player personnel, as the leading candidate due to his close ties to Shapiro, and he may end up in Toronto in some role whether or not he gets the GM job.

Other names floating around include Tyrone Brooks, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ director of player personnel, and Josh Byrnes, the senior vice-president of baseball operations with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Both have past ties to Shapiro.

So too does LaCava, who spent the 2002 season as a national crosschecker with the Indians before joining the Blue Jays. His accumulated organizational knowledge is pivotal during this period of transition.

When asked about LaCava’s candidacy last week, Shapiro was full of praise for him but said: “It’s premature for me, and along the way I’m not going to comment on who the candidates are.” Some interpreted that as indifference to the possibility, but that isn’t the case.

Shapiro also said at the time that: “I’m comfortable in Tony guiding our baseball operations staff. It’s not just Tony, just like it’s not just me, it wasn’t just Alex, there’s a strong group of people … I’m comfortable in Tony tapping into that group along with John Gibbons to help us construct an off-season plan.”

Joining LaCava in Boca Raton will be assistant GM Andrew Tinnish, pro scouting director Perry Minasian and Joe Sheehan, just promoted to the newly created position of director of analytics.

Much of their focus will be filling in the pitching staff’s many holes, and one possibility for a quick resolution is the free agency of Marco Estrada, who received a qualifying offer of $15.8 million last week and has until Friday to accept it.

One scenario is that his representatives spend this week trying to see if he can beat that with a multiyear deal on the open market, and if not, accept the strong one-year salary and return to market next fall.

Either way, an off-season of intrigue is set to begin.