The Jay of Reckoning Is Upon Us

The first deadline of the 2025 season has come and gone: February 17, the last day Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was open to signing an extension with the Blue Jays before he hits free agency this coming winter. While both Guerrero and Toronto GM Ross Atkins remain interested in continuing their partnership, it does not appear that the two sides were close to a deal. Guerrero has his price, and the Jays didn’t meet it. No hard feelings; we’ll talk again in November.

It seems like just last week that Guerrero brought his bonkers power and elite hit tool up to the majors, but time flies. Should Guerrero choose to play elsewhere next season, losing him would be a definitive moment in Blue Jays history. Not just because of his star power and the hype that accompanied him since he first signed with the team as an amateur free agent, but because he’s Toronto’s best player by far.

There have been some ups and downs in Guerrero’s career, but in 2024 he hit .323/.396/.544 in 159 games and 697 plate appearances. For those of you who want something meatier than “he hit .300 with 30 homers and 100 RBI,” that’s a wRC+ of 165.

I want to place that number — a 165 wRC+ — in a little context. Because I think popular baseball discourse tends to smooth over the distinction between good players and great ones by treating all All Star-level players, say, as roughly equivalent. It’s the “in the conversation” thing I keep harping on, and the very best players in baseball, especially the hitters, get underrated as a result.

In the past decade, there have been 41 individual seasons of 500 or more plate appearances and a wRC+ of 160 or better. Vladito was sixth in wRC+ last year; most seasons, that number will get you a spot or two higher. But also, Brent Rooker posted a 164 wRC+. Marcell Ozuna was at 155. You don’t have to be a franchise hitter to have one franchise season at the plate.

But Guerrero is one of 11 players who’s posted multiple 160 wRC+ seasons in the past 10 years. Eight of those players have won at least one MVP Award. (The exceptions: Guerrero, Juan Soto, and Yordan Alvarez. Give it time; that’ll probably change.) Most of those 11 players either are yet to reach free agency or signed long-term extensions before they could get there.

The four who did hit free agency in their prime — Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, and Soto — have something in common: Each one set a new record for richest free agent contract in baseball history.

That’s the short version for why it was always going to be tough to sign Vladito to an extension: He can credibly claim to be one of the rarest, most special hitters in baseball. He’ll also be hitting free agency at age 26, which means whichever club signs him will be getting more prime and less decline phase than, say, a 30-year-old free agent. It also makes it palatable to spread a contract over 13 or 15 years, rather than eight or 10. Youth has been a selling point for record-breaking free agents for decades, from Soto to Harper and Manny Machado, to Alex Rodriguez all the way back at the start of this century.

So there’s this sales pitch on one hand. On the other are the reasons for caution. When I say I’d worry about signing Guerrero to a 15-year contract, I want to be specific about why. Guerrero gets a lot of grief for his body shape; I don’t care about that even a little. We’re not selling jeans here, I heard someone say.

What does concern me is the overall player profile of a right-right first baseman with bad defensive numbers and a fine-but-not-awesome walk rate. So, you know, exactly the same reason Pete Alonso had to slink back to New York without the last six years of the contract he wanted. Add to those concerns Guerrero’s frequently troubling propensity to pound the ball into the ground at a million miles an hour, plus his inconsistency. Those two monsters seasons were three years apart, with a lot of ugliness in the meatime.

Vladito, in addition to being four years and change younger than Alonso, is a better player by some margin. In a good year, the Blue Jays slugger is good for an additional 50 points of batting average, and by extension OBP. His career strikeout rate is seven percentage points lower, and in 2024, Guerrero struck out only slightly more than half as frequently as Alonso. Far from posting a wRC+ in the 160s twice, Alonso’s career high is just 144, and his wRC+ over the past two seasons is 121.

But there’s a sizeable gap — more than $700 million, as it turns out — between Alonso’s contract and Soto’s. Where Guerrero deserves to go in that range, I don’t know. Whether he’ll get whatever he’s worth is an even bigger mystery.

One thing that’s working against him is that the big spenders don’t have anywhere to put him. The four biggest payrolls in the league belong to the Dodgers, Mets, Phillies, and Yankees. The Dodgers are committed to Ohtani and Freddie Freeman. The Mets could move on from Alonso in the short term, but considering that Soto will likely need to move to first base or DH eventually, they’d be locking in their easiest two defensive positions through the 2030s. The Phillies have Harper at first and I’d be surprised if they don’t extend Kyle Schwarber.

Maybe the Yankees could have Guerrero keep first base warm for two years and then move him to DH when Giancarlo Stanton’s contract expires after the 2027 season. (I bet you thought Stanton’s contract would never expire.) OK, that’s a decent fit, though the Yankees’ willingness to spend waxes and wanes year by year.

I’m not going to go down the line any further, because — believe it or not — the Blue Jays are currently running the fifth-highest payroll in the league. They’re currently lined up to hit the first competitive balance tax surcharge threshold, and a modest raise for Guerrero would probably put them over the second.

Only, he’s not their only key free agent after this season. The Jays are also set to lose Chad Green, Max Scherzer, Chris Bassitt, and Bo Bichette as well. None of those players are irreplaceable, but they’re all valuable. Well, the last three are valuable at any rate. I’ll put it this way: I understand why the Blue Jays might be frustrated enough to move on from Bichette, but finding a better starting shortstop who makes less than $17 million is going to be tough.

And that’s just what it’d take to tread water. The Blue Jays — who play in a massive market and have a deep-pocketed corporate owner — can stand to run a $250 million payroll. But for that much money, it’s reasonable to expect to make the playoffs at a minimum.

Take this for what it’s worth, but we’ve got the Blue Jays projected to go 82-80, with a 38.0% chance of making the postseason. This is a pretty good team, but it’s a brutal division that got even less forgiving when the Red Sox added Walker Buehler, Garrett Crochet, and Alex Bregman this winter.

All of this is to say the following: The Blue Jays are at a crossroads. We blinked, and that delightful swashbuckling, free-swinging club is getting old and expensive. And since the Great Second-Generation Player Cavalcade of 2018-19 (which saw the debuts of Guerrero, Bichette, Cavan Biggio, and Lourdes Gurriel Jr.), Toronto has appeared in the playoffs three times. But “appeared” is the strongest word I feel comfortable using, because the Jays went home without winning a game all three times.

I had a lot of faith in the core Toronto built back then, but the results have been — at best — a moderate disappointment. That group’s going to get one last go-around. After that, Atkins, Mark Shapiro, and whichever functionaries from Rogers sign the checks are going to have to make a choice.

Do the Blue Jays ride this out or blow it up and try something new? Option A probably means re-signing Guerrero, whatever it takes. Option B necessitates a second choice: Try to rebuild quickly, or return to the state of affairs the team operated under for 20 years, starting in 1994. Those Blue Jays teams were mostly forgettable. There was always something else to blame: The division is too stacked; the Yankees are too rich; the Canadian dollar is too weak. (Not that I’m feeling great about the strength of the American dollar over the next few years, but that’s a problem for another day.)

The excuses will always be there. This much I know beyond a shadow of a doubt. What remains to be seen is this: Will the Blue Jays need them?