The bottom line on the Blue Jays’ failure to secure a long and prosperous future for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has nothing to do with the actual bottom line.
No, money was not going to be an issue in locking up a player that for a decade now was widely and universally considered the next big superstar of Blue Jays baseball.
The issue, it seems apparent in the wake of Guerrero’s inability to snare a multi-year extension before his self-imposed deadline that passed on Monday night, is what the team thinks of him.
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It’s really that simple and, for a jilted and loyal fan base, that insulting.
When asked how the Jays would be equipped to chase Guerrero in free agency at the end of the 2025 season, team president Mark Shapiro was typically blunt and to the point.
“I’ll let you know in nine months,” Shapiro told reporters in Dunedin on Tuesday morning. “We are certainly positioned well. We have the financial wherewithal to pursue the contracts we want to pursue.”
There you have it.
With minimal parsing required, Shapiro spoke his truth: The Jays don’t really value Guerrero as much as his fans and teammates.
Depending on how Guerrero’s career plays out, the when and why of how that belief in the four-time all star broke down may go down as some of the most vexing questions in franchise history.
But here’s the thing: Shapiro’s latest words are consistent with the front office’s narrative for more than a year now. The team took him to arbitration prior to the 2024 season, an action Shapiro and his general manager, Ross Atkins, defended as routine baseball business, but an action that Guerrero took personally.
Then came Shapiro’s post-season address following his team’s disastrous last-place 2024 campaign. When asked whether he viewed Guerrero as a generational player, Shapiro was forthright once again, basically dismissing the notion of a phrase that is admittedly difficult to define.
While there’s a chance that the Jays just grossly misread the market in letting Guerrero’s contract status get to the precipice, there’s at least an equal possibility that they knew exactly what they were doing.
Did the team want to extend Guerrero? Of course it did. But it also had its own valuation and stuck resolutely to it without caring what both the fans and Guerrero think. Is there a price to be paid for that brazenness? We’re about to find out.
So what propelled the demise in the belief of Guerrero as an indispensable cornerstone of the franchise, which is the way he was viewed since he was a young teenager signed out of the Dominican Republic?
Were the Jays irked at the inconsistencies of his career trajectory, when a brilliant 2021 season was followed by uneven performances each of the next two years? And, if so, was the timing a bit of misfortune given that by the time Guerrero rebounded with a significant offensive output in 2024, it was too late to find a financial number that worked for both sides?
Does the team view a long-term deal for the 25-year-old Guerrero the type of contract that wouldn’t age well, even as he enters what could well be the peak elite seasons of his career?
It could be a combination of factors — and since we don’t know the details of the Jays offer and the Guerrero camp’s demand, that part of the equation remains a mystery. What you can be almost assured of, however, is that if Shapiro really wanted to spend a large chunk of the Rogers riches on Guerrero, he would have been cleared to do so.
To say Tuesday’s development — as unsurprising as it was — isn’t a seminal moment in franchise history would be a naive undersell of what went down. Guerrero’s talent, personality and potential all are such a defining force in the Shapiro-Atkins era that it’s impossible to view things otherwise.
The Jays management group are brainier than the rest of us and aren’t afraid to articulate that sentiment. The difficulty, of course, is that when results don’t follow all that apparent wisdom, what does it matter?
Manager John Schneider tried to put a brave face on the situation when he told reporters in Dunedin on Tuesday that it’s time to turn the page from business to baseball — if only it were that easy.
You can fully expect that players will have a united public (if cliched) front that they’re preparing for the season ahead. But there’s no diminishing that happened this week in Dunedin was the end of an era and, with it, the business of baseball for this front office and ownership got infinitely more complicated.
There is now a cloud over the start of a long season and an even longer farewell to one of the most popular players in franchise history. Always on the lookout to lure a gullible fan base to the Rogers Centre, that task got more difficult as well.
But hey, at least there’s 13 more Loonie Dog nights remaining in the Vladdy era. For now.