Blue Jays might've been reminded of mistake after Athletics-Jacob Wilson extension

The West Sacramento Athletics are doing what they can to make sure that if and when they finally get to Las Vegas, they will have a team of home grown recognizable stars that their fans in the desert can watch compete for years to come.

They Athletics already invested in three core players over the past year, getting Brent Rooker on a five-year $60 million extension in Jan. 2025, followed by Lawrence Butler (seven-years, $65.5 million in Mar. 2025) and Tyler Soderstrom (seven-years, $86 million in Dec. 2025). Now as the calendar flips to 2026, the Athletics have continued to invest in that young core with their latest extension going to shortstop Jacob Wilson.

That is perhaps an indication that maybe the Toronto Blue Jays front office had a major miscalculation when their "core" was still "young."

Blue Jays might've been reminded of mistake after Athletics-Jacob Wilson extension

Wilson signed a seven-year extension worth a reported $70 million that includes a club option for 2033. The 23-year-old first round pick (No. 6 overall, 2023 draft) played in 125 games this past season, his first in the big leagues, and was worth 3.0 bWAR as he hit .311/.355/.444 with an OPS of .800. He hit 13 home runs, and had a strike out rate of just 7.5% with only 39 total strike outs and 27 walks.

This deal buys out all of the arbitration years for right-handed hitting Wilson, and keeps him in the Athletic's organization until he turns 30, possibly 31 with that club option. While that $10 million annual average value might seem high for a guy going into just his second full season in the big leagues, it could look like an absolute steal by the time he turns 27-years-old.

It should give Blue Jays fans a little bit of a pause to think, "Was a deal like that ever on the table for Bo Bichette?" Toronto recently lost their 27-year-old home grown star shortstop in free agency to the New York Mets. Bo fled for a three-year $126 million deal that came with plenty of opt-outs and will pay him a $42 million AAV.

Sure, that's a huge difference between Bichette's current AAV and what Wilson's will be over the next seven years, but consider that the Blue Jays and Bichette came to a contract agreement back in 2023 to avoid arbitration that paid Bichette $33.6 million over the final three years of his arbitration - which works out to an $11.2 million AAV.

But what if the Blue Jays decided to offer Bo a little more dollar and a little more term. At that point, Bichette was going into his age-25 season and was coming off a 3.7 bWAR season in which he led the league with 189 hits and smoked 24 home runs with an OPS of .802. If the Blue Jays had right there offered him a six-year $150 million deal ($25 million AAV) would Bo have turned that down?

It's possible, considering that still would have made him "only" the sixth highest paid shortstop in the game behind Carlos Correa ($36 million AAV), Corey Seager ($35 million AAV), Xander Bogaerts ($30 million AAV), Trea Turner ($27.2 million AAV), and Francisco Lindor ($27 million AAV). Bichette and his agent were probably already eyeing those numbers at that point and chomping at the bit thinking about what he could get when he gets to the market.

Or, he could have signed it right then and there if we are to have taken him at his word that he wanted to stay and play his whole career with his friend Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in Toronto. A six year deal would have, just like Wilson with the Athletics, gotten Bo to the market at 30-years-old and he already would have been in the triple digit millionaire's club.

So yes, hindsight is 20-20 but with the way the Athletic's are investing in their young group, it makes you wonder if the Blue Jays maybe mis-calculated what the team was going to look like in their competitive window, and have allowed one of their core pieces to move on. The positive to take from it though is that GM Ross Atkins and company took the necessary steps to prevent Bo's departure from truly gutting the team.