This past Tuesday was the deadline Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. set to have a new contract worked out with the Toronto Blue Jays. Like a lot of athletes going into the final year of a deal, they don’t want it to be a constant distraction during the season and prefer to have any extension done before the year starts. They also want to apply some pressure to their current team to get that deal done.
But a new deal wasn’t reached, and now it seems clear that Guerrero will become a free agent at the end of the season. There’s a chance, of course, that Guerrero re-signs with them anyway, but if he has the sort of season we’ve come to expect from him there are going to be quite a few teams throwing money in his direction. That will almost certainly cost the Blue Jays way more money to retain him than it would have cost to reach an agreement on an extension with him now. And it may cost them his services entirely.
Since Toronto has made a habit of offering enormous deals to big-name free agents in recent years, including an offer somewhere in the neighborhood of $700+ million to Juan Soto this offseason, their reluctance to extend Guerrero at market rates is pretty puzzling. Of course, it’s possible they’ve made him reasonable offers and he simply has an overblown sense of his worth, but that doesn’t appear to be the case based on reports. He’s said several times that his preference to be a Blue Jay for life, so it’s doubtful he’s been pushing for every last dollar.
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