Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., left, reacts with teammates during spring training in Dunedin, Fla., on Feb. 18.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
They say that the worst sign for any relationship is when one party expresses contempt for the other. What other word would you use to describe the way Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has just dealt with the Toronto Blue Jays?
There were graceful ways Guerrero could have managed the off-season before his walk year. He could have negotiated in private. He could have said from the off that he wanted to test free agency. He could have refused to negotiate at all.
All those things would have been easier than the way he chose.
Guerrero gave regular updates about what a bad job the Jays were doing wooing him. He negotiated in public. He waited until the club had blown its pursuit of several major free agents, and then announced that he had given them a deadline to sign – the start of spring training.
As the drop dead neared, he began posting from his solo workouts, including a daily countdown clock.
Tuesday was zero hour. Guerrero showed up in Dunedin and let the team down hard.
“They had their numbers. I had my numbers. But it’s just business, like I always say. We all good,” he told reporters in Florida through a translator.
Asked how the last week has gone, Guerrero laughed.
“To be honest with you, I wasn’t even thinking about that,” he said. “Focus on my workouts.”
And posting about them. Having planted a shank in the club, Guerrero spent 20 minutes twisting.
On the one hand he “loves” the city, and “wants to be a Blue Jay for the rest of my career.” He will do “anything, everything I have to to stay here with the Blue Jays.”
But also it’s “business.” He kept banging on that word – negocios – like a drum. The Jays will have to compete with “29 other teams” for his services.
So he’ll do anything to make it happen, except make it happen.
The Jays have a lot of problems headed into the 2025 season. The biggest is that their best player hates their guts.
Guerrero knows what he’s doing. By keeping the door ajar, however disingenuously, he makes it less likely the fans will turn on him. In other, better markets, it wouldn’t work. In Boston or New York, you can’t have it both ways like this. In Toronto, you can have it every which way. Just lie to us and tell us we’re the only one for you.
Now we enter the city’s three favourite stages of grief – anger, depression and bargaining.
The anger will be directed at Jays general manager Ross Atkins and club president Mark Shapiro. With different people, at a different club, they would be the victims here. Guerrero broke all of baseball’s rules of decorum. He’s the one saying he wants to stay so badly, while creeping backward toward the door.
But because Jays’ management has blown so much social capital over the years, everything that goes wrong with this team is their fault.
It doesn’t help when Atkins appears tableside to toss one of his famous word salads.
“Confident that every thought, idea we had, every dollar was communicated,” Atkins said. Then later, “I think both sides just learned a great deal about different avenues and different ways to solve problems.”
How did this Brené Brown of the diamond fail to make an emotional breakthrough? That’s the real mystery here.
This breakdown between the club and a player they have had in their systems since he was 16 years old puts a different spin on the Shohei Ohtani/Juan Soto/Roki Sasaki negotiations.
Maybe it isn’t that people don’t want to come to Toronto, or weren’t offered enough, or preferred some other place. Maybe it’s that they just don’t like the people Toronto has doing its deals. Maybe it’s personal.
Guerrero certainly seems to think so. He’s made this as personal as possible without actually calling people out by name. That may come later.
So Guerrero’s gone, but he’s going to make it painful.
When the alpha in the locker room mentally checks out, everyone else falls into a funk. Even on the worst team, this doesn’t usually happen until July or so. This is the only thing the Jays are doing at a best-in-baseball pace.
If Guerrero’s made up his mind to leave, having a good year personally has nothing to do with winning. It just means that he needs to get his stats. He did that in 2024 and the Jays finished last in the AL East.
It’s not like other teams will blame him for fronting a loser. Everybody knows the Jays are hopeless. That’s another thing Guerrero can blame on Atkins and Shapiro.
Eventually, some months from now, we will arrive at bargaining. By that point, it will have become obvious that the Jays are headed back into an extended malaise.
Guerrero will leave. Bo Bichette – the forgotten man in all of this, and someone who may be even more resentful because of it – will leave, too.
And then the Jays will be left with what in their batting order? Anthony Santander and the last ride of George Springer?
There’s no one in the pipeline to replace what the Jays will lose. The cupboard isn’t just bare. There’s no cupboard. By next February, this could be the worst lineup in baseball.
This club is headed south, but the way it’s structured, it won’t be able to get down far enough, fast enough. They still have enough overpaid talent under contract to make the full tank difficult. So it’ll be years.
Meanwhile, they have the same people in charge, saying the same things, making the same mistakes, turning their best employees feral and having no clue what to do next.
It won’t be a good year for the Toronto Blue Jays. It’s probably going to be a terrible year. But something tells me it’s going to be an exciting year.
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