What Would a Vladito Contract Look Like?

In a generally bleak 2024 season for the Toronto Blue Jays, one of the few bright spots in that Kafkaesque wasteland was the return of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. as a force to be reckoned with in the lineup. Guerrero followed up his MVP-caliber performance in 2021 with a solid-but-underwhelming 2022 season and a below-average 2023, and there were real questions about his value as a player as he neared his expected free agency after the 2025 campaign. His .323/.396/.544, 165 wRC+, 5.5 WAR line last year was a dramatic demonstration that his 2021 season was a lot more than a stone-cold fluke. Free agency beckons, and the Blue Jays are down to the last year of his services before he reaches the open market. Guerrero set the deadline to work out an extension with Toronto for February 17, and that date has come and gone without an agreement.

My colleague, and notable non-pitcher, Mike Baumann wrote about the risks and rewards of signing Guerrero to a long-term deal from the perspectives of both parties, so you ought to read that for further exposition on the topic. We’re hear to put the fear into numbers, the numbers into dollars, and the dollars back into fear!

The question of a Guerrero contract is a tricky one, as there are factors that both strongly urge and forcefully condemn the idea of giving him a monster deal. And unless he has a terrible 2025 season, a monster deal is what he will get; he already turned down a $340 million offer in December that he characterized as “not even close” to what he is seeking. So long as he and his representation don’t negotiate like Homer Simpson, we can presume that his desired number is significantly higher than that!

Generally speaking, this is not a great time to be a right-right first baseman in free agency. When Pete Alonso hit free agency, the ZiPS projections suggested only a three-year, $66 million deal for him, or $77 million spread out over four years in a neutral park. But I was actually confident that his pedigree was enough that at least one team would give him a contract that would handily beat those numbers. Turns out, that was not the case. As Baumann lays out in his piece, Guerrero is “a better player by some margin” than Alonso, but as a bat-only first baseman, Guerrero does face a similar risk that his services will be worth significantly less on the open market than he expects.

On the flip side, Guerrero is more than four years younger than Alonso is now, and his relative youth should be extremely beneficial for him when he reaches free agency ahead of his age-27 season. Only three of the 110 batters listed on our free agent tracker this offseason are younger than 27, and 92 of those 110 hitters (83.6%) will be at least 30 for the 2025 campaign.

So let’s start off the projectionating with a fictional construct to illustrate the point: What if Guerrero were four years older than his actual age? Here is the future ZiPS projection for a free agent Guerrero, if he were 31 years old for the 2026 season. I’m going with a neutral park for these projections.

With still a full season to go before free agency, ZiPS would only be interested in offering this older version of Guerrero a contract worth around $100 million. It also primarily would be interested in only the first five years. Now, let’s compare that to the actual projection.

Given his up-and-down career, ZiPS isn’t comfortable enough to give Guerrero what the Blue Jays offered, but the system still would offer him a deal worth nearly three times as much as it would give the hypothetical 31-year-old Vladito. But just to get a third look at a Guerrero projection, let’s project 2026 through 2034 with the assumption that he puts up the same numbers in 2025 that he did last season.

With a repeat of his 2024 season, ZiPS is a lot more confident in Guerrero’s future, adding enough to get to the $400 million mark over nine years, with the rest of his career after that point tacking on another $100 million. While it’s not universally true, professional athletes tend to be quite confident in their abilities, and the extension negotiations thus far look a lot like Vladito is expressing his belief in himself. The Blue Jays also clearly believe in him more than ZiPS does – you don’t offer $340 million to players you don’t think will be worth it – but their offer also probablly had something to do with their fear of the consequences if they do not sign him. So, what do the Jays look like in a future without Guerrero and Bo Bichette, who is also set for free agency after this season?

To answer this question, I did an absurdly early 2026 ZiPS projected standings run, based on no team having any of their currently unsigned players for 2026.

ZiPS already projects the 2025 Blue Jays as the weakest time in the AL East, but one that’s only a game or two behind the Rays and Red Sox, and only seven games back in the division. But come 2026, ZiPS believe Toronto’s hand is far weaker, with aging and free agent departures projected to severely diminish the team’s production, especially compared to its AL East rivals. Sure, if the Blue Jays decide not to pay Guerrero, they’ll free up nearly $30 million to spend on a replacement, but after their multiple attempts to add high-profile free agents these last two offseasons, they know as well as anyone that it takes more than money to sign superstars. Everyone who wants to spent $150,000 on a Porsche can get a Porsche, but if another team wants to sign Juan Soto for three-quarters of a billion bucks, and he chooses that club instead, he’s gone for good, with no similar players available. Guerrero represents the same dilemma, even though he won’t make close to Soto money; very few star offensive players are hitting free agency over the next few years. Here are the hitters who are currently eligible to become free agents after either 2025 or 2026, ranked by projected OPS+ from 2026 to 2028.

Of the top 100 players by projected 2026-2028 OPS+, only 11 will be free agents (Happ is ranked 102nd), and that’s if the Rangers don’t pick up Pederson’s option for 2027. Even taking into consideration Guerrero’s inconsistent career, there doesn’t appear to be anyone out there you’d like to pay as much as him. That’s why the ZiPS projected contracts for Guerrero are likely considerably below what he will actually get.

So now the Blue Jays find themselves at a crossroads. Personally, I think their failure to sign Guerrero before his deadline should be treated as the fatal blow to the organization — not just for the next few years, but for this one as well. A lot of things would need to go right for Toronto to turn a Guerrero-less roster into a serious AL East threat if he leaves as a free agent. Considering this, the Jays might be better off trading Guerrero — they would almost certainly get an excellent return package for him — to retool for another run two or three years from now, even though that would all but officially take them out of contention for the 2025 campaign. Whatever happens, because the Blue Jays didn’t extend the face of their franchise, this is shaping up to be their most consequential season since the mid-1990s.