LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Typically during major baseball gatherings like the general managers meetings, Scott Boras will at least once regale media with his trademark one-liners and witty analogies about his clients, the spending habits of individual teams, and his overall take on the industry.

Few put on a better show.

But the influential and powerful agent went next level in a courtyard outside the Waldorf Astoria on Wednesday, delivering a 40-minute allegorical dissertation on how payrolls aren’t keeping pace with increases in the game’s revenue growth, the injustice of tanking teams distorting the standings, and how there’s enough money to go around for all clubs to be bidding on pricey players.

Teams really trying to win are intent on living in the 12-room mansions of exclusive “Playoffville,” said Boras, where there are plenty of “firemen” for the bullpen and “business analysts” in the pressboxes to serve the legions of fans who more than cover the neighbourhood’s steeper “property taxes.”

Boras continued to build on his symbolic narrative throughout the session, too, and anyone who can freelance allegory for that long in a rapid-fire-question setting deserves props. And regardless of how you feel about his tactics, he does raise some interesting questions for the Blue Jays.

In 2015, they moved into “Playoffville,” remained there in 2016 and got bounced this past season. They are trying to get back there again in 2018, but with an aging roster, only a year of contractual control left on third baseman Josh Donaldson, a gap between the wave of young players that will make up their next core, and an estimated $25 million or so to work with this winter, the locale they settle is uncertain.

“What are the reasons for that?” Boras said during a brief interview with Sportsnet. “The calculus of that is going to be their opinion, their analysis of what they look at. All I know is we have a number of teams that have won 70 or 80 games, and then they won 90 games and then they stepped back and won in the mid-to-low 80s. What did they do to improve? When you go across the board, they went out and added. Houston added (Brian) McCann, they added (Josh) Reddick, they added (Carlos) Beltran. When you go back and look at when the Cubs got good, they added (Ben) Zobrist, they added (Jason) Heyward, they brought in people to support the existing club they had. And you know what? I think it turned out OK.”

Given that the Cubs won it all in 2016 and the Astros this year, it’s pretty tough to argue the point.

The Blue Jays are in a much different spot than those clubs, looking to maintain rather than ascent with a roster that has too many players on the wrong side of 30 and lost 1,408 games to injury in 2017.

“Both those teams lost a whole lot to get where they are, both those teams picked in the top-5 of the draft and both those teams have as good of a young core of talent as anyone in the game, other than maybe Cleveland,” countered Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro, taking part in the owners meetings running alongside the GM meetings. “Yes, they went out and added – to a young core of talent with a balanced roster.”

The Blue Jays want to get younger, too, but as Shapiro aptly put it, “there’s no button to push to convert all nine players to five years younger.”

Ultimately, that will only happen once prospects like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and Anthony Alford start turning over the core, leaving the Blue Jays operating on the dual tracks of trying to win in any way possible while also building up the farm.

“That’s really just playing out the team that was put in place in 2015, trying to give that team every chance to continue to win,” said Shapiro. “A high cost was paid. Rightfully so. But now we have to do everything we humanly can to extend that window as long as possible.”

Shapiro refused to discuss specifics as it relates to payroll, but the Blue Jays have $88.3 million in guarantees plus another $47.8 million in projected arbitration salaries, assuming that Tom Koehler gets non-tendered. If their payroll is to be in the $160 million range they started with last year, that leaves them roughly $25 million to augment the current group.

One approach they could take is to buy a middle to high end player or two, leverage the production now and ride out the decline on the back-end of the contract once the kids arrive. Or they could try to trade for a longer-term piece that could time with both groups. Or they could spread the money around on a number of different pieces, searching for value or upside plays that could, potentially, provide a collective push.

“How that ends up unfolding, I can’t tell you today,” said Shapiro. “I know in a perfect world, as an intellectual exercise, what we’d like to have happen. But there’s no use in talking about that publicly, because the likelihood of that transpiring is miniscule. So there’s some scenario-planning where you say, OK, we’ve got these trades to explore, these are the ideal trades to think about where we can build the best possible team, here are the free agents that will fit well, not perfectly but well with what we’re trying to accomplish, and here are clearly the places we need to fill just to get better, or to upgrade on what we had last year, or where we have a hole and we need to add productivity.

“That’s the way we’re looking at it.”

To that end, the Blue Jays are prioritizing the areas in which they’re most vulnerable, a productive middle infielder with positional versatility and some offensive game highest on that list. Agents who have spoken with the Blue Jays expect them to add a starter while they’re also looking at beefing up the bullpen.

This week, they met with the agents for dozens of free agents, holding talks that didn’t extend much beyond the preliminary stage. “We showed them our board and that was pretty much it,” said one representative, although the cautious pace seems to be par for the course so far this off-season.

“Everything is slow,” said another agent, emphasizing slow.

In contrast to last year, when Ross Atkins left the GM meetings to visit with Kendrys Morales and locked down a deal with the slugger the next day, along with a contract for Cuban prospect Lourdes Gurriel Jr., the Blue Jays are probably going to need more time this off-season, waiting for a path they feel is best to become clearer.

Asked if it’s worthwhile for the Blue Jays to add pieces, even if they aren’t ideal fits longer-term for the short-term benefit, Shapiro replied: “I would answer that question like, is it worthwhile to try and continue to compete, and I think we’ve already said yes.”

“We’ve got a good enough internal core of talent, with a strong rotation and some of the best position players in the game, so yes it’s worthwhile adding, even if they’re not ideally what we’d want to add,” he added. “We want to add younger, more balance to the roster. But if it’s not that and it still helps us win, that’s where we are. You only have the alternatives that exist. The kinds of trades people fictitiously talk about, they aren’t out there. We’re not going to trade Vladdy, we’re not going to trade Bo, we’re not going to trade our best young talent. Then we’re on a treadmill, then we’re never getting anywhere. We’re trying, desperately, to build that farm system back up.”

That’s one way for the Blue Jays to get back into “Playoffville,” but not likely in time for 2018.

The would-be mayor of that imaginary place has his own ideas on how teams can get and stay there, and it involves spending a lot of money on free agents.

“I don’t make cases about their decisions,” said Boras. “We do our own analytics on success and when people ask me these questions, I think I can give you prudent and demonstrated evidence of what other teams do. Whether or not that’s good business for the Blue Jays to do, or their ownership to look at, or their fanbase to look at, all I know is if you’re asking me how do you get from where they’re at, which was good, mediocre and back to good, that’s what the other teams do.”

Maybe the Blue Jays will try that road to “Playoffville.” More likely, is that they try to forge their own path there.