Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the Toronto Blue Jays were roughly $50 million apart in their final offers during unsuccessful extension talks last month — a separation that averages out to $3.571 million a season over a proposed 14 years.
Relatively small or insurmountable? Just pay the man or let him walk after the year? That’s up for fans to decide now that, after three weeks of being closely guarded, the team’s offer and then the player’s ask leaked in separate reports Tuesday afternoon.
Initially, Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported that the Blue Jays tabled a bid of about $500 million with significant deferrals that reduced the offer’s present value down to the $400-$450-million range. Soon after, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported that Guerrero was seeking $500 million in present value, regardless of structure.
Industry sources told Sportsnet the valuation on the Blue Jays’ offer was about $450 million, better defining the gap with Guerrero’s final request ahead of the Feb. 18 cutoff on talks set by the four-time All-Star first baseman.
Less clear, beyond widespread frustration, will be the fallout.
That the details leaked mere days after Guerrero, speaking in Spanish with ESPN’s Enrique Rojas and Ernesto Jerez, said his demand was under $600 million, raised industry eyebrows about the timing and motivation.
After all, the details had remained under wraps for three weeks. Why did they get out now? And to whose benefit?
No matter how you answer those questions, the sharing of secrets usually signals an attempt to shape public opinion, which is a bad place for the Blue Jays — approaching an abyss of contractual control with their key core players — to be with Guerrero, who is headed to free agency this fall.
If $50 million, give or take, keeps a deal from happening now, what chance will they have of re-signing him next winter if he delivers another monster offensive season? What would the floor for Guerrero be then, especially given how clubs have behaved when elite young talents — Guerrero will be selling his age 27 season and beyond — hit the open market?
Astronomical as the numbers are, Guerrero’s $500 million ask is 65 per cent of the record $765-million, 15-year contract the New York Mets gave Juan Soto, whom the Blue Jays pursued this winter.
Is Guerrero only two-thirds the player Soto is? Based on the WAR and wRC+ metrics, he’s produced to at least that level, if not better, through the same points of their careers.
The mega contract isn’t an issue, as even if the Blue Jays’ bid for Soto was under $700 million, that pursuit, as well as their willingness to ante up for Shohei Ohtani the previous winter, demonstrated the franchise’s financial wherewithal.
And given where the Blue Jays are with their core, is the extra $50 million over the duration of 14 years, an expense of one middling reliever per season, not recouped by preventing the collapse of the current competitive window by extending the face of the franchise?
Consider as well that the way all teams, the Blue Jays included, routinely end up making deals that go bad, $50 million over 14 years is essentially a cost of doing business.
In January, the Blue Jays spent about a fifth of that, $11 million, on Myles Straw simply to bolster their attempt to lure Roki Sasaki away from the Dodgers. Guerrero is covered when you combine that with the $2 million they gave reliever Franklin Morales for five appearances in 2016, the $8 million for Jaime Garcia in 2018, the $10 million they ate on Kendrys Morales in 2019 and the 2021 trio of $10 million for a released Tanner Roark, $3.175 million for the released Shun Yamaguchi and $5.5 million for Kirby Yates before his elbow blew out.
On the flip side, worth remembering is that the Blue Jays are only in position to carry the type of team-record payroll they have on the books for 2025 by running a responsible business and being disciplined to their valuations.
In making an offer worth $450 million in present value, they no doubt stretched well beyond their comfort zone to get a deal done, and they surely want to maintain consistency in their negotiations, demonstrating that their final offer is indeed final. They may also believe the money earmarked for Guerrero can be effectively spent elsewhere to reboot their lineup.
And, it goes without saying, the risk inherent to any such contract is immense, amplified in this case by Guerrero stuffing two mid-years between his MVP-runner-up 2021 and his similarly elite 2024.
Committing an owner to this type of spend, good or bad, is career-defining for a front office and it’s always safer to not do this type of deal, although not taking the risk to lock up Guerrero, at an uncomfortable number, early in his career is why they’re in this bind now.
Regardless, a $50 million split, at this scale of contract, with the roster at such a crossroads, shouldn’t be an unbridgeable gap, even with both sides dug in.
Maybe the leak was intended to push the two sides toward common ground and if so, then it came from a good place. The alternative, that it was designed to turn opinion against one or the other, is a far darker possibility for the Blue Jays and their fans.