He is not even a free agent, but Toronto Blue Jays 25-year-old first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is one of the biggest names in offseason talk anyway. Guerrero has heated up as as subject just in the last few days after he gave an interview to Abriendo Sports in which he made an eye-opening revelation.
Guerrero has only the 2025 season remaining in his commitment to the Blue Jays. He is estimated to win an arbitration award of a one-year, $28.8 million contract, after prevailing over the Blue Jays in arbitration to the tune of $19.9 million prior to last season.
In the Dec. 22 interview, Guerrero revealed the Blue Jays had extended an offer of a multi-year contract extension to him, but, "What they offered me is not even close to what I'm looking for," he said, according to journalist Héctor Gómez, who translated Guerrero's statement from Spanish on his X (formerly Twitter) account.
What, then, is the Blue Jays superstar looking for? In the interview, he strongly implied that he should receive a contract offer similar to the mega-deals bestowed upon Juan Soto by the New York Mets earlier in December, and on Shohei Ohtani by the Los Angeles Dodgers last year.
Guerrero said the Blue Jays offer that he spurned was about $340 million over multiple years, though he did not specify how many.
"My numbers changed thanks to Juan Soto," Guerrero said in the interview, as translated by Gómez. "Shohei Ohtani changed the system for Soto and Soto changed the system for me."
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Soto received a 15-year, $765 million deal from the Mets. Ohtani got $700 million over 10 years (though he agreed to defer all but $2 million of his annual $70 million paycheck for another decade). Estimates by baseball insiders of Guerrero's eventual contract top out around $500 million, though some see him reaching the $600 million mark — a massive sum, but still well short of Soto's and Ohtani's paydays.
Is Guerrero really worth a contract in the Soto-Ohtani range? Not based on a comparison of his statistics with this two historically talented players. Guerrero's on base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS (which combines those two numbers) are all significantly lower than Soto's.
The gap with Ohtani is even more glaring. Despite playing only 41 fewer games in his career than the National League's 2024 MVP, Guerrero's Wins Above Replacement (WAR) total (21.5) is less than half of Ohtani's (43.8).
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Given that Guerrero and the Blue Jays appear far apart, and that the four-time All-Star set a deadline of the first full day of spring training — Feb. 20 — to complete negotiations, Toronto may be left with no alternative but to cut ties with its superstar via trade before he hits free agency following the 2025 season.
The team taking Guerrero would need the financial capacity to handle his contract demands, and would also need the ability to send back a player who can replace Guerrero in the Blue Jays lineup.
The one team with a young power-hitting first baseman who is still under team control would be the Boston Red Sox, and their 24-year-old first-bagger Triston Casas. With a rate of one homer per every 20 plate appearances, Casas so far has gone yard more frequently than Guerrero, who averages one round-tripper every 22.1 plate appearances.
Depending on how the talks between Guerrero and the Blue Jays progress, a Casas-for-Guerrero trade could soon become the hot topic of this offseason.
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