Blue Jays extend the olive branch to Bo Bichette in the hopes he'll return to Toronto

The deadline for MLB teams to offer their impending free agents a qualifying offer is on Thursday at 5pm. Prior to that time, teams had an exclusive window to negotiate with their players and if no deal is reached, the window of opportunity soon opens up to the other 29 teams to pitch their franchise as the best landing spot.

The Toronto Blue Jays have likely been in talks with all six of their impending free agents, but the biggest of the bunch is Bo Bichette. While he's about to hear offers from many teams the Blue Jays at the very least won't be left completely empty handed if he decides not to return to Toronto.

Blue Jays extend the olive branch to Bo Bichette in the hopes he'll return to Toronto

On Thursday afternoon, the Blue Jays took care of a necessary piece of business ahead of that 5 p.m. deadline, by extending Bichette a qualifying offer. According to Mark Feinsand of MLB.com the Blue Jays qualifying offer is $22.025 million.

The 5 p.m. deadline is the cutoff point for teams to make that offer to their soon-to-be ex players and if Bichette turns down that offer and signs elsewhere the Blue Jays will receive a compensatory draft pick for the 2026 MLB draft. Bichette has until November 18 to decide if he'll take that one-year deal, but don't be shocked if he doesn't.

At the very minimum if the Blue Jays and Bichette don't rekindle their relationship, Toronto at the very least gets a chance to draft a potential replacement for Bo down the road. It's not much but at least it's something and earlier on Thursday Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins addressed their approach to bringing back Bichette in a year end media conference.

"Bichette has had a massive impact on this organization and our ability to win baseball games...he's been important and we will be in his market. As it speaks to the timing of the negotiation or lack thereof is really coming from our respect from his right to get to free agency," says Atkins.

Whether that gives anyone any confidence in them getting a deal done with Bo will be a story to watch as the offseason unfolds. What is known at this point is that Toronto have indicated they are willing to come to the table and Bichette has indicated he wants to come back.

"I want to be here. I've said I want to be here from the beginning," said Bichette right after Game 7 of the World Series.

Bichette is coming off a very productive 2025 campaign where he slashed .311/.357/.483 with 18 home runs and 181 hits, the second most in the league and the third most in a full season in his career. Although his season was unfortunately cut short due to an injury, but he returned to play in the World Series, hitting a go-ahead three-run home run in the third inning of Game 7.