Are the Blue Jays finally getting serious about locking up Vlad Guerrero Jr. to a long-term deal to help cement an optimistic long-term foundation for the franchise?
Potentially so.
A report from the Athletic’s well-respected MLB insider Ken Rosenthal late Thursday suggested that Jays management is working hard towards making that happen prior to a critical early January deadline.
Citing “sources briefed on the Jays’ discussions,” Rosenthal reports that the Jays are in talks with Guerrero and his representatives on a deal that would keep the 25-year-old from free agency following a critical 2025 season for both the player and the team.
Rosenthal cites those same sources as suggesting the Jays are “fielding interest” in a trade for shortstop Bo Bichette, who is also a season away from free agency. As a caveat, Rosenthal noted that the Jays aren’t actively shopping Bichette, but that the team is “open to moving him” if the price is right.
Whether bombshell information or serious industry chatter, the news certainly speaks to the urgency the Jays front office folk are navigating at present.
As for extending Vladdy, how long these talks have been going on and how fruitful they have been is unclear given how close to the vest both parties have kept details of those negotiations for years now. Guerrero has professed his love for Toronto and everything Blue Jays, the front office has been decidedly muted. Neither position means a thing, frankly.
It’s also worth noting that for bigger transactions, anyway, the Jays front office under team president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins rarely leak information on any of their dealings.
But where there’s smoke, there often is fire and the desperation of the Toronto braintrust to make something happen this winter is well known throughout the industry.
If the Jays have serious designs on getting Guerrero locked up long-term — and it would be lunacy for any front office to think otherwise for a litany of reasons — the timing to ramp up the talks is especially prudent.
Heading into his walk year towards free agency, according to pre-arbitration projections Guerrero may be set to make just shy of $30 million US anyway. So why not lock that large outlay into part of a longer-term deal? The Jan. 9 arbitration filing deadline is now inside three weeks, heightening the urgency of the reported proceedings.
Sure, there’s a possibility that Guerrero could be signed to a long-term deal beyond the filing cutoff, but the chances certainly would diminish and the temptation for the Jays all-star first baseman to be the darling of next year’s free-agent class would only blossom further.
The Guerrero situation (or, let’s face it, borderline mess) serves to create pressure on the current configuration of the Jays front office that is clearly at an all-time high.
Shapiro, the man who has consistently persuaded Rogers CEO, Ed Rogers, to unlock the vault of the telecommunications giant, has one year remaining on his contract. His GM/sidekick Atkins, has two years left.
If there is a whiff of desperation to the weeks ahead, it is well-earned for a front office that purportedly has money to spend, but has had difficulty doing so in a meaningful, franchise-improving way over the past two winters. And the fallout is real.
Suddenly there is a perception that the Jays are no longer a prime destination for free agents. Fair or not, the organization is viewed as one that can’t get Guerrero or Bichette signed to a long-term deal and furthermore has had a three-year stretch that included epic post-season collapses (2022 and 2023) and an unsightly plunge to the AL East basement (2024.)
Of course, all this serves to strengthen Guerrero’s bargaining power. He already has won an arbitration hearing with the Jays last winter — one he attended in person, presumably to make the front office squirm — and is coming off one of his strongest seasons at the plate.
If a Vlad extension is going to happen — and there’s certainly far from any guarantee it will — the sooner the better for a Jays front office that would then have a better chance to salvage the remainder of this off-season.
The long-term presence of Guerrero would clearly help the Jays pitch to free agents considering Toronto as their next stop. And the benefits grow from there.
For a team with a potential image problem and plenty of holes to fill or risk a long-term rebuild, the urgency to deal with the Guerrero situation grows more urgent by the day.
Is it possible that the Jays are willing to let Guerrero walk or unwilling to go to an inflated salary stratosphere to keep him? Yes.
Is it also possible that it serves them well to at least have the story out there that they are at least trying to lock up their best home-grown star? Sure.
In any event, the next three weeks promise to be interesting — and potentially franchise-altering — in how Shapiro and Atkins handle the exorbitant case of Vlad Guerrero Jr.