Some time prior to 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Vlad Guerrero Jr. will wheel into the parking lot at the Blue Jays player development complex in Dunedin, Fla. and moments later join his teammates in the clubhouse.
There will no doubt be a boisterous welcome for one of the most powerful and popular Jays, a 25-year-old once expected to be the face of the franchise for years to come.
It will be the official start of training camp, the report date for position players signalling all systems go. But far more significantly, Guerrero’s arrival could be a seminal moment for the current iteration of the franchise as we know it.
Sign the man to a multi-year deal that will be the the richest contract in franchise history and suddenly the Jays future gets a massive injection of hope from a player who electrifies fans and terrifies opposing pitchers.
Let Guerrero’s self-imposed deadline for an extension pass and potential chaos ensues. And with it, should the Jays show indifference to their most popular player would trigger even greater uncertainty about both the short and long-term future of a franchise that as recently as three years ago was considered and up and comer and now is looking to climb out of the basement of the AL East.
A front office that hasn’t exactly been exuberant in its praise of the all star first baseman is on the clock un more ways than one.
Since the Blue Jays took him to arbitration more than a year ago, Guerrero has been resolute in his assertion that he won’t settle for less than what he believes he’s worth – likely something significantly north of $400 million US on a multi-year deal.
Anything less and the long, slow march to free agency following the 2025 season will begin. And with that, the Guerrero mess – it can be viewed as nothing less – will be an ongoing and outsized distraction for the team throughout spring training and the 162-game that follows.
It will also further erode the credibility of a front office taking serious heat for the potentially wayward direction of the team going forward.
How owners Rogers Communications and the front office headed by team president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins is incredulous unless, of course, the braintrust doesn’t see Guerrero as an elite player destined to lead the franchise back to respectability.
If that’s the case, expect the volume of fan angst and unrest to increase exponentially.
More significantly, the implications are massive for a franchise coming off a last-place season and one that has fallen short of attracting high-end free agents, in part because the front office has been unable to lock up its own, home-grown all star. Those teammates anxiously awaiting Guerrero’s arrival are well aware of his impact and his status given his age and incredible talent as a hitter.
The fact that talks, however serious they may or may not have been, have gone right to the wire of Guerrero’s self-imposed deadline is no surprise, really. Atkins has been guarded in his commentary on the negotiations – which is to be expected – but the fact that he has hinted that the team is willing to negotiate beyond the Guerrero deadline is curious at best. It could end with one final big-money surge from management, but that will require a shift from the Jays brass.
Of course, the mixed messages surrounding Guerrero have been around throughout the past several years. The team had legitimate concerns about his fitness a few years back, but those concerns were allayed in 2024 and judging by the photos posted to his Instagram account the past couple of weeks, Guerrero may well be in the best shape of his career.
An MVP runner-up in 2021, Guerrero has been uneven in performance since, though the booming 2024 campaign had to erase some of those concerns. But even if the team’s internal valuations of Guerrero suggest he isn’t worth what the player is demanding – believed to be in the $450 million US plus range – surely Team Rogers is well aware of market inflation the past two years.
Back to his scheduled arrival on Tuesday for the first full day of camp, which will be followed by the first Grapefruit League game on Saturday. Pitchers and catchers may have reported this past Thursday, but it’s Guerrero talk that is driving the entire narrative around this team.
Despite Atkins’ attempts to play down the significance of the negotiations – and especially the deadline – it certainly doesn’t seem as though Guerrero is going to fold. The opposite, really.
Guerrero is betting on himself and looks to be in the type of incredible shape of a man committed to unleashing a huge season. A slugger with much to gain, he is thus at the opposite end of a front office at risk of pulling off one of the biggest blunders in franchise history. Which is saying something.