I first fell in love with baseball and the Blue Jays when my wife and I honeymooned in Toronto and went to see our first live game. Before we left, a friend told us that the Jays were the equivalent of Aston Villa – fun and frustrating to watch in equal measure, flirting with glory but never really winning anything and having great players who broke your heart when they left to secure their legacy elsewhere.
Those final words never seemed truer than this week, when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. announced that he would be seeking free agency in November.
I do not blame Vladdy for wanting to ensure himself the best possible deal. He had a value for himself, and he stuck to it. He loves the city, he loves the Jays, he only turns 26 in a month’s time, and he genuinely wants to stay as the face of the franchise for the next 10 years.
The fault here, as so often, lies with GM Ross Atkins and CEO Mark Shapiro.
Atkins and Shapiro are used to being unpopular, and the majority of fans have certainly been vocal with their complaints:
- Two offseasons of wasting time on implausible targets (Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Roki Sasaki) leading to minimal investment and recruitment
- A farm system that was ranked fourth in 2021 but is now ranked 23rd
- Perceived interference in the management’s in-game decision-making (such as removing Jose Berrios from the fourth inning of the 2023 Wild Card Game)
- No postseason wins in the last four years
- Team performance down on all major metrics, including a drop from 262 home runs in 2021 (leading the majors) to 156 in 2024
- Finishing 2024 ranked 12th in the American League.
The failure to extend Vladdy will be the final straw for many fans. It is particularly galling when Atkins and Shapiro were so publicly happy to spend $700M on Ohtani or Soto, but have baulked at the idea of a reported $500M for one of their own.
They haven’t been able to attract top talent to the Jays and now they can’t even sign someone who they already have and who wants to stay. They knew that Monday night was the deadline for negotiations and had plenty of time to put things in place, but Atkins couldn’t even bring himself to say how close the two sides were to an agreement because “close is a really big word.“ That sort of word soup is typical of a man who consistently communicates as well as he apparently negotiates.
Atkins and Shapiro will say that they had a value and were not prepared to move from it. They could point to Vladdy’s disappointing seasons in 2022 and 2023 after he was MVP runner-up in 2021, and they may feel, as some others do, that Vladdy is a great player but not yet on a level with Ohtani or Soto.
I think this is misguided – his numbers are on the up after a really good 2024, he is not yet 26 so will continue to develop and improve (injuries allowing), and if he doesn’t do it with us, then how sickening will it be with he becomes elite with someone else?
Of course, it may be that the Blue Jays re-sign Vladdy in the postseason, and everything is alright in the end. Do we really trust Atkins and Shapiro to deliver it though, particularly when a bidding war will send the price up?
In the meantime, the Jays can look forward to a season of uncertainty – I haven’t even touched on the Bo Bichette extension here – and an increasingly unhappy fanbase. What good is prioritising a new stadium over team improvement and sporting glory if there are no fans coming to use it?
Perhaps in that sense, we’re actually more like Tottenham Hotspur than Aston Villa…
Article by Daniel Woodrow. Want to read more Blue Jays takes from Daniel? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
