DUNEDIN, Fla. — In the end, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the Toronto Blue Jays had vastly different ideas on the value of a young slugger, the appropriate contract to award a player still one year away from free agency and the import of retaining a star who’s only known one baseball home.
And now, Guerrero is just 162 games from hitting the free agent market and learning just how much other clubs might want him.
Guerrero, the Toronto Blue Jays’ 25-year-old superstar slugger, failed to reach agreement on a contract extension by the Monday night deadline he’d set in advance of spring training, Guerrero said Tuesday morning. The talks extended past the 9 p.m. ET deadline to around 10:30, but ultimately the club and Guerrero failed to come to terms.
And with that, Guerrero, a Blue Jay since he was 16 years old, is prepared to hit the market next winter, knowing that 26-year-olds like him get paid like no other free agents – young, in their prime and with franchise-changing ability.
The sides weren’t particularly close, Guerrero said, the Blue Jays sticking to their value and his camp his, likely something well north of $400 million given that Juan Soto reset the bar for marquee free agents with a 15-year, $765 million deal this past winter.
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Guerrero said Soto’s contract didn’t impact his mindset. Yet he proudly notes that he has a number in mind – and the Blue Jays came nowhere near it.
‘We didn’t get to an agreement,’ Guerrero says, through club translator Hector Lebron, ‘and now they’re going to have to compete with 29 other teams.’
Guerrero was the 2021 American League MVP runner-up, a four-time All-Star and has a .863 career OPS, upping his value after a 30-homer, .940 campaign in 2024. He debuted as a 20-year-old in 2019, and in hitting the market at 26 joins Soto, Manny Machado and Bryce Harper as young players in their prime ready to cash in.
‘Listen, I’m a man already. I’m 25 years old, ready to understand the business and how it goes,’ Guerrero, who turns 26 next month, said Tuesday morning before the Blue Jays’ first full-squad workout. ‘But conversations went well, negotiations were calm. At the end of the day, we just didn’t get an agreement.
‘I know my value. I’m going to stick with it.’
And the Blue Jays’ recent track record has proven that rarely ends well in Toronto.
They were rebuffed in efforts to sign Soto this winter and Shohei Ohtani after the 2023 season. This time, though, it was their own guy, signed out of the Dominican Republic, a franchise cornerstone alongside fellow pending free agent Bo Bichette, and a player to which fans in Canada have long been attached.
Yet Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins sounded similar themes of fiscal responsibility that have marked their inability to extend Guerrero in the past. In short: Guerrero wants market-value money and the Blue Jays are not willing to be irrational relative to their valuations.
Next winter, Guerrero and Chicago Cubs outfielder Kyle Tucker will easily be the best position players on the open market.
‘How you come up with a value and are willing to reach certain thresholds, you have to stay disciplined, to the fact that we’re running a business,’ Atkins said Tuesday morning. ‘The offers we made for Vlad would’ve been record-setting and made him one of the highest-paid players in the game.’
To be clear, Atkins meant a Blue Jays franchise record, which is a mere $150 million they gave outfielder George Springer, an overpay at the time and nowhere near what a premier free agent might command in this market.
In a sense, Guerrero and the Blue Jays were operating on different tracks: Guerrero eyeing what he could and believes will command on the market next winter, and the franchise treating the negotiations as they are: Bargaining with a player still one year shy of free agency.
Club president Mark Shapiro cited contracts signed by Mookie Betts (12 years, $365 million with the Dodgers a year before free agency in 2020) and Jose Ramirez (seven years, $141 million in April 2022, two years before free agency) as relevant data points.
“When you go into a negotiation, each side has a rationale for a number. In this case we couldn’t align on a common number that shared risk,” says Shapiro. “Both sides take some on. A decision from both parties couldn’t be found.
“There’s no such thing as close or not close. There’s done or not done.”
Shapiro insisted the Blue Jays did include subjective factors such as emotion, fan sentiment and the import of retaining a legacy player. Club chairman Edward Rogers spoke to Guerrero and was involved in talks.
And in the Ohtani-Soto-Yoshinobu Yamamoto realm, he insists that the club will “keep pounding and eventually we’ll get one of those guys,” and that they were within a group of just three to five teams in those derbies.
Yet that also indicates a willingness to swim in more irrational waters – the Blue Jays offered the same $700 million, heavily-deferred package Ohtani accepted from the Dodgers – for external players but not one of their own just a year from free agency.
That doesn’t do Guerrero any good right now. His platform season has now transitioned from the Tampa-area gym where he works out in winter to the Jays’ sprawling complex to the west, and human nature dictates he’ll be even more fired up for 2025.
“It’s a great motivation right now, for me to wake up every day and thinking about working out harder than before and trying to put up good numbers, stay healthy and try to go to the playoffs,” he says. “I love this city.
“I love the fans, but at the end of the day, it’s business. I’ll do anything, everything I can to stay here. I love it here. I want to be here. But it’s business and I want to take care of that, too.”
The Blue Jays will also harvest nearly seven full seasons from Guerrero, sending him to the minor leagues in April 2019 to ensure he didn’t reach free agency until after 2025, unlike elite 2019 rookies like Fernando Tatis Jr. and Pete Alonso, who both started that year on the Opening Day roster.
Alonso hit free agency at 30, while Tatis’ debut set the stage for the Padres to give him a 14-year, $340 million contract several years before free agency.
The 2024 Blue Jays still have high hopes; Atkins insists Guerrero won’t be traded before the season, and it’s likely he won’t be moved at the trade deadline should the Blue Jays contend. Yet the likelihood of Toronto fulfilling both of Guerrero’s prerequisites – a market value contract and a chance to win a World Series ring that eluded his Hall of Fame father, Vladimir Guerrero – seem remote.
The clock is ticking toward that chance now.
‘A winning team. That’s what I’m going to be looking for in free agency,’ says Guerrero of his free-agent goals. ‘You guys know, my dad played a lot of years and never won a World Series.
‘And I always say, my personal goal is to win a World Series and give the ring to my dad. That’s all I’m looking for.’