DUNEDIN, Fla. — A late Monday deadline looms over the Toronto Blue Jays and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. as they try to hammer out a long-term contract extension that will keep the all-star first baseman from free agency in the fall.
The stakes are immensely high for a club facing the possibility of both Guerrero and fellow cornerstone player Bo Bichette entering the open market together after the season, with the risk one or both sign elsewhere and collapse the current competitive window.
Similarly, high stakes exist for Guerrero, who in the absence of an agreement will head into 2025 needing to build on the 5.5 fWAR campaign he delivered last summer to max out in free agency. A couple down months or an injury could easily derail a chance to talk with all 30 teams.
That the talks are going right down to the wire isn’t surprising, as the baseball industry is largely deadline driven, with executives and agents alike tending to believe that only when a cutoff is imminent do the best offers hit the table.
The primary gap between the camps, as it has been since they first discussed a long-term deal after Guerrero’s MVP runner-up campaign of 2021, is how to value the 26-year-old.
Back then, the $340-million, 14-year extension Fernando Tatis Jr. signed with the San Diego Padres shifted the market and divided the sides, while now the $765-million, 15-year deal the New York Mets gave Juan Soto in free agency again moved the yardsticks.
By how much is up for debate but by not finding a long-term deal early, the Blue Jays have left themselves chasing the market. Had they signed Guerrero to the Tatis deal after his 2021 season, they would have essentially bought his free-agent years for roughly $270 million over 10 years, since they paid $70.8 million for his four arbitration seasons.
A similar scenario could play out if there’s no agreement before the deadline and the Blue Jays are left to try and retain him in free agency. That’s what happened in the spring of 2022 when Aaron Judge turned down a $213.5-million, seven-year extension offer from the New York Yankees, put up monster numbers and then received huge bids from the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants before returning the Bronx for $360 million over nine years.
Layered atop that, and particularly pertinent to Guerrero and the Blue Jays, is how clubs have behaved when elite young talents become available in free agency.
And Guerrero would be selling his peak years, beginning with his age 27 season, should he reach free agency.
The Blue Jays, of course, would be factoring in the scarcity of such players, along with other intrinsic elements, into their valuation and one trait they’ve consistently shown in free agency is a strong discipline to their rational evaluations.
There’s a time and a place for such an approach — it helped them land free agents like Anthony Santander, Jeff Hoffman and Yimi Garcia at relatively comfortable numbers this winter — but they also risk getting trapped by their processes if they can’t stretch when necessary.
Whether the Blue Jays feel it’s necessary in this case is another matter and doubters can point to the volatility of Guerrero’s performance — sandwiched between his elite seasons in 2021 and 2024 are seasons of 3.3 fWAR and 1.3 fWAR in 2022 and 2023 — as reason for caution.
If Guerrero — and/or Bichette — were to walk, the Blue Jays could theoretically reallocate the combined $46 million the duo is earning this year toward other free agents, seeking to take an alternate route to remaining competitive.
However, Guerrero, with his combination of power, average and zone control, all supported by top-percentile underlying data, is the type of carrying player that rarely gets to market and there’s no guarantee the Blue Jays can sign the alternate free agents they want.
All of which makes this negotiation one of the most fateful in franchise history, with the coming fork their road leading either toward stability through the biggest contract the Blue Jays have ever handed out; or directional uncertainty for a roster that can be easily unravelled if 2025 goes awry.
