The Blue Jays Finally Get a Free Agent Slugger To Say Yes

The Toronto Blue Jays have finally signed a free agent slugger, agreeing to a five-year, $92.5 million deal with outfielder Anthony Santander on Monday afternoon. A former Rule 5 pick out of Cleveland, Santander has spent his whole major league career with the Baltimore Orioles. He’s amassed 9.6 WAR, 155 home runs, and a 113 wRC+ in 2,830 plate appearances since his 2017 debut, but these numbers are also dragged down a bit by the fact it took him a few years to really get going as a hitter. Since the start of 2022, his age-27 season, he’s been worth 8.3 WAR and posted a much sunnier 124 wRC+. This past year was the best full season of his career thus far; he slashed .235/.308/.506 and set career highs with 44 homers, a 129 wRC+, and 3.3 WAR en route to earning his first All-Star selection and Silver Slugger award.

Anthony Santander and Blue Jays are in agreement pending physical, sources say. @MLBNetwork

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) January 20, 2025

Santander’s deal includes a club option for 2030 and an opt-out after the 2027 season, according to multiple reports. The club option is a conditional one; if Santander chooses to opt out, Toronto can void his decision so long as it tacks on the sixth year, which would bring the total value of the contract to $110 million. The options here don’t change the calculus of the deal all that much. Considering Santander is already 30 and doesn’t offer much more than his power, he probably won’t risk the security of his contract unless his production with the Jays exceeds what he did with the Orioles — and even then, he might rather stay put. Similarly, the Jays probably won’t exercise their option for the sixth year unless he continues to be a viable middle-of-the-order slugger into this mid-30s.

Other than crushing homers, Santander doesn’t have an exciting set of skills, but he’s also better than your typical one-dimensional slugger. His defense isn’t good, but he isn’t a disaster in the outfield. He gets the most out of his power because he doesn’t pound pitches into the ground, and his ability to make contact is better than his low on-base percentage would suggest. He’s a switch hitter who is good against pitchers of both handedness; he has a career 116 wRC+ against lefties and a 111 wRC+ vs. righties. He also doesn’t struggle against any particular pitch type much more than others. Altogether, he’s certainly not as dangerous at the plate as some of the game’s more complete power hitters, but he doesn’t have an obvious weakness, and opposing teams can’t exploit him with specific matchups.

Santander heads to Toronto at a time when the franchise is a bit at the crossroads. The Blue Jays missed the playoffs last season, and although they have made the postseason in three of the past five years, they were swept out of the Wild Card round each time. Now, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette both set to reach free agency after this season, Toronto is pushing hard to build up its roster for what could be its final run with the two stars. So far, though, the Jays have fallen short in their attempts to reel in marquee free agents. Sure, these are efforts of the real kind, not the stabs in the dark that teams make from time to time — such as the insultingly low deal the White Sox offered Manny Machado in early 2019. Alas, unlike second graders learning spelling and math, there are no points for trying in baseball.

Understanding this, Santander’s addition is certainly a disappointment for Toronto fans, especially considering the other free agents the organization targeted but failed to sign these past two offseasons, most notably Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto. But it would be wrong to say Santander is nothing more than a big-ish name consolation prize. As I mentioned above, he is a capable power hitter with a fairly high floor.

While it’s too early to say exactly how the Jays will use him defensively, my initial expectation is that Santander will see time at both designated hitter and in right field rather than playing either role exclusively. George Springer is penciled in as Toronto’s starting right fielder, and he is still probably a better defender than Santander. That said, Springer is now 35 and has dealt with injuries and some age-related decline over the past few seasons. With Santander around, the Jays can give Springer some DH days without having to take some thump from their lineup; instead, two players will simply swap positions. The Jays could also play either Santander or Springer in left field, with the other one in right. The defense would probably suffer a bit with both of them at the corners, but this would allow for Will Wagner to be Toronto’s primary DH. And there’s also the possibility that the Blue Jays add another bat. They’ve been linked to Pete Alonso, and if they sign him, he would probably be their everyday DH unless they decided to start Guerrero at third. We’ll have a better idea what their lineup will look like in two months.

Let’s run the ZiPS projections for Santander.

ZiPS is rather lukewarm on this signing, suggesting Santander is worth five years at $70 million. There are obvious reasons why ZiPS is a bit lower on Santander: Less-than-elite sluggers who are more or less one dimensional tend to decline sharply in the early 30s. However, that doesn’t mean this is a bad deal. Toronto needed another productive bat now, and that’s exactly what Santander should be in 2025. The Blue Jays won only 74 games last year, but that win total was more likely an underperformance rather than a reflection of their true talent, so we shouldn’t use that as a baseline expectation to project what they’ll do in the upcoming season. ZiPS and Steamer both view Toronto as a middle class team, not a basement dweller. Before signing Santander, ZiPS projected the Blue Jays to finish with a win total in the mid-80s, and his addition should raise their floor by about 1.5–2.0 wins.

By all public accounts – and I’ve certainly heard nothing different – the Orioles were not serious players for Santander. From a baseball standpoint, it’s understandable why they refrained, given their outfield options and solid offensive depth. For this Gen X Orioles fan at least, what makes me the saddest is that Santander signed with Toronto. During my formative years, the Blue Jays were arguably Baltimore’s biggest divisional rival, not the Red Sox or the Yankees. The Jays took all the fun out of the 1989 “Why Not?” season in Baltimore, and I’m still kind of annoyed, more than 30 years later, that Blue Jays then-manager Cito Gaston didn’t use Mike Mussina in the 1993 All-Star Game in Baltimore. I was at that game, and I was one of the fans near the bullpen booing as loudly as I could.

Aside from making 15-year-old Dan very angry – which teams don’t care about and which has no effect on the playoff race — there’s not much to dislike about the Santander signing. He makes Toronto a better team, and that should make the AL East even more interesting. Even so, the Blue Jays shouldn’t stop with Santander. Another few additions would go a long way toward cementing Toronto’s status as a legitimate Wild Card contender.