Blue Jays: Is the front office aggressively pursuing contract extensions?

Early Bird Catches the Worm?

In general, the closer a star player gets to free agency, the more expensive it is to come to terms on a contract extension. The closer they get to free agency, the more likely the player wants to test the market to see what other teams might offer. AL MVP Aaron Judge, 30, comes to mind, earning a record nine-year, $360M free agent contract at an AAV of $40M to return to New York after leveraging competing offers from other teams like the San Francisco Giants.

Younger players will sometimes agree to more team friendly deals to buy out their arbitration years. A player like Ronald Acuña Jr. come to mind. While he’s struggled with injuries the past two seasons since a monster start to his young career, he’s still averaged an OPS+ of 133 and wRC+ of 134 to go with an 18.4 fWAR over his first five seasons. In April 2019, following his 2018 NL Rookie of the Year campaign, he signed an eight-year, $100M contract at an AAV of $12.5M.

Judge’s contract will take him through his age 39 season, whereas Acuña will be 28 when his contract, which includes two more team option years at $17M a season, expires. Injury risk and the increasing likelihood of position players breaking down in their mid-to-late thirties also means paying large sums to older players increases the risk of burdening a team with bad contracts.

The recent Rafael Devers 10-year, $313.5M extension with Boston should serve as a good template for what a potential contract could look like for Guerrero. The six-year, $200M free agent contract Carlos Correa signed to return to the Twins might help give some structure to the Bichette discussions.

For Manoah, Spencer Strider’s six-year, $75M extension with the Braves might make sense, as would an AAV around the $15.175M that Tyler Glasnow agreed to in his $30.35M, two-year extension with the Rays. The Tony Gonsolin arbitration hearing (asking for $3.4M from the Dodgers versus their offer of $3M in his ARB1 year) will also be instructive for next year, when Manoah should qualify for arbitration via ‘Super Two’ status for players in the top 22% of service time for those with between 2~3 years of MLB service time.

Are They Aggressively Pursuing Contract Extensions?

It certainly would make sense to get deals done sooner with a few younger core players. 2021 MVP fInalist and Silver Slugger, two-time All-Star and 2022 Gold Glover Guerrero has said on multiple occasions, including as recently as this week, that he’s open to extension talks; but apparently no conversations yet this year despite supposed plans to continue talks. So are the Blue Jays playing a dangerous game by not aggressively pursuing extensions with young stars like Vlad, Bo and Alek?

Of course there are still 66 days until Opening Day 2023 when the Blue Jays visit the Cardinals. Vlad and Bo won’t be free agents until after the 2025 season. Varsho and Kirk are under team control through 2026, while Manoah won’t be a free agent until after the 2027 season. There is still time, but as they say in Latin, tempus fugit — time flies!

Recent examples where the Blue Jays could have offered extensions also offer a lesson how not to do it. Starter Marcus Stroman, closer Ken Giles and 2020 rental starter Taijuan Walker all mentioned how the Blue Jays front office never even made formal contract offers. As Stroman told Rob Longley of the Toronto Sun, the Blue Jays never offered a contract extension despite GM Ross Atkins saying there were talks. “There was nothing offered ever from their perspective,” then-28-year-old Stroman said after being traded to the Mets in late July 2019.

Let’s hope there isn’t similar confusion or miscommunication around the front office’s stated intention to continue extension talks and the apparent lack of conversations yet this year with Vlad! What do you think Blue Jays fans, how aggressive should the team be in trying to sign these players to contract extensions?