Extension talks between the Blue Jays and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. didn’t result in a deal before the start of spring training. That has been the slugger’s self-imposed deadline.
While he left the door ajar to hearing out other offers from Toronto, Guerrero said last month that he expects to test free agency.
The four-time All-Star provided some details on negotiations in a Spanish-language interview with Enrique Rojas and Juan Arturo Recio of ESPN. ESPN has also published a summary of Guerrero’s comments in English. Most notably, he says that his camp’s final offer to the Jays checked in below $600M, though he did not provide the specific asking price. He pushed back against the suggestion that he was seeking a deal comparable to the $765M which Juan Soto secured from the Mets.
While Guerrero seemingly wasn’t pursuing an average annual value close to Soto’s $51M mark, he did seek one of the largest contracts ever. Guerrero indicated he was looking for 14 or 15 years. Soto’s 15-year contract is the longest of all time. Fernando Tatis Jr. inked a 14-year extension, but that began in his age-22 season. Guerrero turns 26 in a few weeks. Even if the extension proposal would have bought out his final arbitration year, a deal of 14-plus years would run through at least age 39.
The Jays were involved in the Soto bidding. They were seemingly among the teams willing to go above $600M on the superstar outfielder. Ben Nicholson-Smith and Shi Davidi of Sportsnet reported shortly after Soto agreed to his deal with the Mets that Toronto’s last offer landed below $700M. One could argue they should be willing to make a similar investment for Guerrero, but his track record has been less consistent — which is reflected in the comparably lower asking price.
Guerrero is a career .288/.363/.500 hitter. He’s coming off his second-best season, as he raked at a .323/.396/.544 clip with 30 homers a year ago. Soto has a lifetime .285/.421/.532 batting line; he hit .288/.419/.569 with 41 longballs during his walk year with the Yankees. Guerrero said in December that the Jays had made an offer in the $340M range prior to the Soto contract.
That would have valued him similarly to Rafael Devers, who inked a $313.5M extension with the Red Sox in 2023. Devers was a career .283/.342/.512 hitter who was entering his age-26 season at the time. While he played a more valuable position, he’s a below-average defender at the hot corner.
It remains to be seen whether the Soto contract will dramatically improve the market for future top free agents. Teams could view him as an outlier, the kind of free agent who might only come along once every few decades. From a net present value perspective, Soto obliterated prior precedent.
Shohei Ohtani’s deal was valued around $461M and $438M by MLB and the Players Association, respectively. That reflected the massive deferral structure. Either net present value still represented the largest contract in league history at the time. Soto broke that record by more than $300M.
Guerrero and Kyle Tucker headline next winter’s free agent class. Tucker is coming off a monster .289/.408/.585 showing and plays a solid right field. He’s arguably the better player in the short term, but Guerrero is two years younger. That could give him the greatest earning power in the class, though it’ll obviously be heavily dependent on their respective platform seasons.
Guerrero will make $28.5M in his final year of arbitration.
