TORONTO – In accepting the durability questions attached to Dioner Navarro, the Toronto Blue Jays are hoping they made a cash-neutral upgrade behind the plate while leaving themselves the financial ammo to get the starting pitching help they so desperately need.

The free-agent catcher’s signing to an $8-million, two-year deal pushed Alex Anthopoulos’s 2014 payroll commitments up to roughly $122.5 million for 16 players. Maintaining the rest of the 25-man roster as is projects to a total of about $135 million, leaving the GM with $10-$15 million in spending room on an estimated payroll of $145-$150 million.

That might be enough to land one starter through free agency, while a trade involving one of their pricier relievers – Sergio Santos is due $3.75 million while Casey Janssen is set to make $4 million – may help create the bait and salary space needed to land another arm for the rotation.

Still, that wasn’t the primary reason the Blue Jays went after Navarro, who has played in only 225 games the past four seasons and hasn’t caught more than 100 games since 2009.

They inquired about other free agents, like Carlos Ruiz, who was intent on re-signing with the Phillies, A.J. Pierzynski, who would have wanted more than the $8.25 million and one year he agreed to with the Red Sox, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who appears to be bound for the Twins or Marlins. And they examined the trade market, but the Cincinnati Reds were seeking a fortune for Ryan Hanigan before dealing him to the Rays in a three-team trade that landed them pitching prospect David Holmberg from the Diamondbacks.

As the catching carousel slowed, locking down Navarro and his potential upside for roughly what J.P. Arencibia would have made in arbitration (roughly $2.5-$3 million) became more and more appealing to the Blue Jays.

“You’re trying to get value,” Anthopoulos explained on a conference call. “We like a lot of players, but you like a lot of players at the right price. … You have to weigh contract terms, length, some players might get five-year deals and you’d love to have them for two or three … it’s all part of the equation. But Navarro didn’t necessarily have to cost what J.P. may have made in arbitration. It worked out that way for us.

“If Navarro would have needed a three- or four-year deal, I don’t think we would have been doing this deal.”

Hidden within that reply is the possibility that the Blue Jays might have been willing to pay more for someone else, someone who offered more stability than Navarro.

While the fact that Jose Molina played 55 games in Toronto during 2011 when he turned 36 and then jumped to 102 games the next season with the Rays gave the Blue Jays comfort Navarro could handle a heavier load in 2014 and thrive, there’s still risk there, and Anthopoulos spoke about better managing risk at the end of the season.

While he fairly points out that “every contract has risk,” the challenge the Blue Jays face in signing free agents can’t be discounted, as well.

“I can remember two years ago, we were trying to sign a free-agent closer and we were prepared to offer him significantly more money per year, but we couldn’t compete with a short flight from his home to the club he ended up signing with,” said Anthopoulos. “That was very important to him and his kids and his family, things like that.

“That’s all part of the equation as well, it’s not as cut and dried as you pick the free agent offer them more years and money, and they’ll always come. It doesn’t necessarily work out that way.”

No, it doesn’t, and between medical files revealing unknown health concerns and how various intangibles can mean “sometimes the price for one team isn’t the same as the price for some other team,” free agency can be dodgy territory.

So the Blue Jays ended up with the best catcher they could get at a price they felt was right, hopeful their proprietary metric used to measure hard contact is right that Navarro’s offence in 2013 was real and not a fluke, and that he’s as good a game-caller as the pitchers they spoke to say he is.

The extra financial flexibility they have as a result, and what they ultimately do with it, has the potential to determine how big a success the Navarro deal actually ends up.