TORONTO — Clearly, you can’t keep Toronto Blue Jays fans down on the farm once they’ve seen the bright lights of the post-season. Jesse Chavez? J.A. Happ? Meh … don’t come around here no more. David Price or bust, baby!

Here are some hard truths a week ahead of the winter meetings, for a skeptical fan-base doing quick mathematics on napkins to figure out how much extra revenue was generated by all those ticket sales in September — rounding up, no doubt — to see how much they’re being screwed by cheap ownership and that evil Mark Shapiro and which absolutely believes that David Price wants to sign here because, well, he seemed so happy and all that and WHY THE HELL CAN’T WE HAVE NICE THINGS, BLAIR, DAMMIT!

First, as the term implies, “free agent” means the freedom to sign anywhere for however much you want. Jordan Zimmermann agrees to a five-year, $110-million deal with the Detroit Tigers and the wailing begins. “Why didn’t the Blue Jays offer that?” as if that guarantees he’d sign here. (News flash: he might prefer pitching in a pitcher-friendly park!) If a team is told or gets the sense from an agent that a player won’t sign or re-sign, it doesn’t matter how many nice words the player said or tweeted out; it’s best to move on. Could the Blue Jays have received that indication from Price’s agent, Bo McKinnis? Absolutely.

Second? It is perfectly logical to not want to give a 30-year-old pitcher a seven or eight-year contract, regardless of your financial clout. In fact, there is sound statistical evidence that it’s sheer lunacy. I mean, I’m sorry … but beaver away on the internet if you don’t believe me.

Third? If the 2015 Blue Jays — let alone the Kansas City Royals — showed us anything, it’s that a team really is the sum of its parts. What was the conventional wisdom going into the off-season following 2014? The Blue Jays needed to add starting pitching and a closer, probably through trade or free agency, because they had very few holes in their lineup. Yeah, right. General manager Alex Anthopoulos instead upgraded at third base and catcher, bringing in Russell Martin and Josh Donaldson to fill non-existing holes. His sop to the cries for pitching was a relatively-unheralded trade for Marco Estrada, who most of you believed was going to get his you-know-whats lit up at homer-friendly Rogers Centre. (I know I did.)

Then, while everybody was waiting for a starting pitcher at the trade deadline, he upgraded at shortstop — Troy Tulowitzki for Jose Reyes — and added a left-fielder and lead-off hitter in Ben Revere in addition to bringing in Price. Oh, and that closer thing? It took care of itself from within. I mean, I could go all WAR and under-lying peripherals on you or point out that a team that was intent on stripping down wouldn’t be signing the J.A. Happs of the world for $36 million, but that would only frustrate you and me, and I’d just as soon wait until the off-season plays out, you know? And, yeah, I like nice things, too. I would have liked Andrew Miller last winter and Zimmermann this winter … but that doesn’t mean it’s already lost.

DeMAR DeANSWER FOR LAKERS?

The first thing I thought of after reading Kobe Bryant’s retirement letter on The Players Tribune was whether the countdown had officially begun to DeMar DeRozan’s departure from the Toronto Raptors. Vince Carter … Chris Bosh … DeMar DeRozan?

DeRozan, still just 26, can opt out of his contract after this season and is looking for a max deal. He is L.A. through and through — out of Compton, a student of Bryant and all things Bryant, who freely admits the finer points of his game owe a great deal to the Los Angeles Lakers great. With next year’s salary cap expected to soar past $90 million at a time when the Lakers have enviable cap space, DeRozan would seem a natural offensive fit as Bryant’s replacement; a player with his prime still very much in front of him.

As for Bryant? I don’t know if there’s any other sport or league in which it is tougher to make cross-generational comparisons. People who watched basketball longer than me and in whom I trust will go on about Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson and Wilt Chamberlain. In my time as a fan, he’d be well behind Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in terms of players whose primes coincided with my interest in the game. But ahead of, say, Tim Duncan whose career has dove-tailed with his and whose haul of NBA titles, all-star appearances, etc., mirrors that of Bryant …

QUIBBLES AND BITS

Tough to quantify what gives an athlete a sense of timing, but Kaillie Humphries certainly flirted with the very definition of that characteristic this weekend in Altenberg, Germany, winning the first women’s World Cup bobsleigh event of 2015-2016 on a track that is the spiritual home of the powerhouse German team, and in the process shaving off .002 seconds from her own, six year old track record. Two-time Olympic gold medallist Humphries, with brakeswoman Melissa Lotholz of Barrhead, Alta., turned in a combined, two-run time of one minute, 53.57 seconds to finish ahead of Belgium’s Elfje Willemsen and Sophie Vercruyssen and capture her 30th career podium just two weeks after Bobsleigh Canada told her it would not allow her to race a four-man sled on the men’s World Cup circuit.

Humphries was one of the leaders of a move that forced the usually stodgy International Bobsleigh and Tobogganing Federation to allow women to compete in four-man racing until a women’s four-man circuit could be established. Humphries finished second overall on the World Cup circuit in 2014-2015 without winning a race.

While his captain seems to have decided to become a fighter — penalized three times for fighting in his eight previous seasons, Jonathan Toews has thrown down twice this month and had a third bout stopped on Friday when a pair of officials quickly intervened as he and long-time nemesis Ryan Kesler eyed each other — Patrick Kane continues to roll.

The Chicago Blackhawks winger had a goal and an assist Sunday in a 3-2 overtime loss to the L.A. Kings to set the longest single-season points streak among American-born players (19) and is two away from Bobby Hull’s team record set from Dec. 5, 1971-Jan. 23, 1972. Hull had 23 goals and 12 assists during that streak; Kane has 11 goals and 20 assists and is tied with Denis Savard (16 goals, 21 assists during a 19-game streak between Dec. 6, 1985-Jan. 15, 1986) for the second-longest streak.

Sidney Crosby is the last NHL player with a single-season points streak as long as Kane’s: Crosby had points in 25 consecutive games between Nov. 5-Dec. 28, 2010, during which he scored 26 goals and 24 assists. The NHL record is Wayne Gretzky’s 51 games, when he racked up 153 points from the start of the 1983-84 season until Jan. 28. Had Gretzky stopped playing at that point, he would have still won the NHL scoring title by 27 points. Given the way the NHL has become offensively-challenged, it’s a single-season record that will never be threatened.

Further proof that the rich aren’t like the rest of us: Real Madrid and Wales winger Gareth Bale, at $10 million U.S. per year, the most expensive soccer player in the world, has stopped driving his Lamborghini because his posture in the low-slung car was damaging his hamstrings. Don’t laugh … Manchester United all-time great Ryan Giggs made a similar decision in his career, and many footballers drive larger SUVs because it’s easier on the legs. Bale has been sidelined by hamstring injuries six times since 2007. But Bale has found a new hobby when he’s at home: he is building a three-hole golf course in the backyard of his house in Vale of Glamorgan, with one hole modeled on Augusta’s Amen Corner, another on Troon’s Postage Stamp and the third on Sawgrass’ 17th.

THE END-GAME

CFL commissioner Jeffrey Orridge’s State of the League address on Friday was so shallow that even the league’s media acolytes took him to task. Coming under particular scrutiny was the league’s laughable attempts at a drug-testing policy, which was odd given it’s obvious that the CFL and CFLPA have more reasons than any other league to drag their heels on the matter. It costs money to properly run a program, and this is the CFL. Second, given the lack of talent — the well must be shallow if you’re a league that can fete as its most outstanding player a 41-year-old quarterback who has played for half your teams — the CFL simply can’t afford to be anything other than a league that turns a blind eye. Cynical? Yes. But also, I think, reality.