The losses keep piling up for the Toronto Blue Jays.
On the field, there were 88 of them during a disastrous and disheartening 2024 to cap off a colossal two-year plunge into the basement of the American League East.
Off the field, there was another spectacular swing and miss on a generational free agent, losing out on Juan Soto a year after a similar much-hyped failure in a bid to land Shohei Ohtani.
And up next, perhaps the biggest misfire yet for the front office braintrust of general manager Ross Atkins and team president Mark Shapiro, which is truly saying something if it ends up happening.
If the Jays let Vlad Guerrero Jr., get to free agency 11 months from now — which seems more like a certainty by the day — the current iteration of the franchise may never recover.
Sure, after losing out to Soto — who signed that epic 15-year, $765-million US deal with the New York Mets on Sunday — the Jays can regroup and make re-signing Guerrero a priority. But even if the team did re-sign its star first baseman, who is about to enter his age 26 season, Vladdy would be a fool to accept nothing but an insanely rich offer.
And Vlad Guerrero Jr. is no fool.
As one of the top young hitters anywhere, he’s well-regarded by superstars around the game and loves being in their company. And watching the frenzy in which owners are spending on free agents these days, he knows it will soon be his turn.
The indifference by the Jays to let it get to this point — mixed in with a losing visit to an arbitration hearing a year ago — is as baffling as it is blundering.
By shopping at the very top of the market the past two off-seasons while presumably ignoring Guerrero, the Toronto front office is now at acute risk of letting the player long seen as the face of a winning franchise get away for nothing.
Think about it: Owner Rogers Communications was reportedly willing to bid more than $1 billion Canadian in its futile bid for Soto while saving the Guerrero business for later. How can it not insultingly erode whatever loyalty Vladdy might have for the team and a city he professes to love?
There’s never been any doubt that he will be handsomely paid, but with each passing day, there’s less guarantee it will be by the only big league franchise he’s ever known.
Guerrero’s payday isn’t likely to be in the Soto stratosphere, but let’s start the projections with eight figures (likely with a five as the first digit) and a minimum of 10 years. If Jays management had any hope of extending Guerrero before his free-agent showcase season, good luck with that now.
Guerrero knows the money is coming, whether it’s from Toronto or a long list of suitors that would woo him a year from now. He also must know that a bet-on-himself season as Soto just did, will be the way to go. Given the tenor of negotiations with the Jays and the money other stars are getting, why would he do otherwise?
On one hand, the team’s public stance on Guerrero has been muted. (To be fair, there’s little transparency about much from Atkins, who prefers a vague answer to just about anything regarding his team, so we really don’t know how much the franchise values its star slugger.)
On the other, it’s certainly well-known that, for two off-seasons now, the Jays have helped drive up the price for both Ohtani and now Soto after being armed to discharge obscene amounts of Rogers cash. What good is it, though, if you have clearance to spend the dough but can’t get what you want for it?
To be fair, now that the Soto deal has mercifully been completed, the doors to free agency 2025 should swing wide open at the winter meetings down in Dallas.
Fittingly, Jays fans must be bracing themselves for the next round of well-placed rumours that the team is “in” on (name players X, Y and Z here.)
Trouble is, there are plenty of other big-spending teams out there willing to do the same and those players will want to land with franchises that are proven winners, or at least look that way.
That, of course, circles back to Guerrero, a player widely regarded as a superstar and the home-grown Toronto talent that the team promised it would build World Series contenders around. With his future uncertain, the attractiveness for other big names to come to Toronto lessens noticeably, especially given the overall dearth of organizational talent.
For his part, Guerrero has enthusiastically, and regularly, stated that he would love to be a Blue Jay for life. He might even mean it. But for it to happen, he’s going to get paid and he’s not going to accept a home-town discount. Instead, he continues to see his market grow stronger and the prospect of heading to free agency that much more enticing.
So what does all of this mean for the Jays front office now?
Unlike last year, when the non-Ohtani options were meek and the returns pitiful in terms of high-end impact, Atkins needs to strike big. Being “in” on the big guns is getting old in a hurry and giving the Jays an unflattering reputation in the marketplace.
And each failure to significantly improve the roster via free agency or trade exposes another weakness. In the early days of their tenure, Atkins and Shapiro promised they’d be a successful draft-and-develop team. How has that worked out for them?
Worse, they are now in danger of losing one of the true development success stories that remains.
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