With Romano gone, Vlad is the only Blue Jays link left from the Alex Anthopoulos era

With the Blue Jays deciding to non-tender closer Jordan Romano on Friday, the last remaining player linked to the Alex Anthopoulos era in Toronto is their All-MLB First Team, Silver Slugger first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Anthopoulos drafted Romano in 2014 and signed Guerrero in 2015.

While the Romano move is understandable given a projected $7.75M arbitration salary and ongoing concerns about the health of his arthroscopically repaired pitching elbow, remember this is a front office that previously took risks signing Kirby Yates to a one-year, $5.5M contract despite two physicals that raised red flags, and also signed Chad Green to a two-year, $8.5M contract while he was recovering from Tommy John surgery.

However, after releasing lefty Tim Mayza in early July, moving catcher Danny Jansen to Boston at the trade deadline, and losing utility infielder Luis De Los Santos in a waiver claim to the New York Mets earlier this month, Vlad is the only player from the Anthopoulos era still rostered in Toronto.

He’s projected to earn $29.6M in his final year of arbitration in 2025 and can test free agency for the first time after that if the Blue Jays are unable to come to a long-term contract extension with their 25-year-old superstar, who was an AL MVP finalist in 2021 and finished sixth in MVP voting this year.

The four-time All-Star was initially signed as a 16-year-old international free agent on July 2, 2015, Anthopoulos’ final year in Toronto. Ismael Cruz, the Blue Jays’ Latin America scouting director at the time who oversaw Guerrero’s signing after scouting him for almost two years, suggested in a Baseball America podcast in 2019 that: “Vlad’s hitting prowess was evident as early as 11 or 12 years old, when Vlad Sr. pushed his son to face 91-92 mph fastballs. It was a recurring theme — Vlad Jr. never shying away from facing older, more mature pitching.”

Cumulative post-Jays WAR of Anthopoulos-era players

With Romano now a free agent, we updated our analysis of the post-Toronto WAR of Anthopoulos-era players who’ve left either via trade, walked in free agency or been released. We’ve then compared that to WAR of players who team president and CEO Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins either acquired for those players via trades, or who were signed as free agents to directly replace a departing Anthopoulos-era player.

We used the Baseball Reference measurement for calculating wins above replacement (WAR). For example, Edwin Encarnación went on to post a bWAR of 7.2 in his post-Blue Jays career after walking as a free agent. The two players Atkins signed to replace him, Kendrys Morales and Steve Pearce, combined for a Blue Jays bWAR of 1.4, creating a talent deficit of -5.8 bWAR that needed to be replaced in subsequent seasons.

Of the players and prospects Shapiro inherited from Anthopoulos in October 2015, we calculate that a bWAR of 60.5 has walked out the door, either via trade, free agency or release through the end of this season. The players who Toronto acquired via trades for those players or who were signed as free agents to directly replace them have added a bWAR of 43.5 through 2024. That’s obviously still a moving target given trade trees for players like Erik Swanson and José Berríos.

We’re just looking at players who Anthopoulos either drafted, signed or traded for who went on to play for Toronto after Shapiro and Atkins were hired. So David Price, who left as a free agent after 2015 and went on to post an 11.1 bWAR after leaving Toronto, isn’t included.

J.A. Happ, who was re-signed as a free agent that same November by Shapiro’s interim general manager Tony LaCava to replace Price (and went on to post an 8.7 bWAR from 2016-18), is included. As is Liam Hendriks, who posted a 10.4 bWAR after he was traded by LaCava for Jesse Chavez (-0.1 bWAR with Toronto in 2016) following Shapiro’s hiring.

Josh Donaldson went on to post an 11.8 bWAR after he was traded in August 2018. The player to be named later they acquired for him, Julian Merryweather, posted a bWAR of -0.2 with Toronto before he was designated for assignment ahead of the 2023 season.

But Daulton Varsho, who was acquired via trade in December 2022 for Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Gabriel Moreno, both international free agents signed by Atkins, isn’t included in the calculation. Nor are any of the other players that Atkins has either drafted or signed as international free agents, like Alek Manoah and Alejandro Kirk. Bowden Francis, acquired in the Rowdy Tellez trade, is included.

We also include trade trees in the calculation. For example, trading Anthopoulos-era starter Drew Hutchison (+0.1 bWAR post-Toronto) for Francisco Liriano, Reese McGuire and Harold Ramírez in August 2016 resulted in Liriano being flipped for Nori Aoki and Teoscar Hernández, who was later flipped for Swanson and Adam Macko. Adding up the cumulative bWAR of those players from that trade tree in their Blue Jays tenure all the way through to Swanson results in a talent gain of +13.3 bWAR, thanks mostly to the 10.6 WAR put up by Hernández.

In another ongoing trade tree, Marcus Stroman (drafted 22nd overall by Anthopoulos in 2012) has a 9.6 bWAR since he was moved at the 2019 trade deadline. The return of Anthony Kay (0.0 bWAR with Toronto) and Simeon Woods Richardson (flipped for Berríos, who has 5.4 bWAR as a Jay) has resulted in a talent deficit of -4.2 bWAR, but Berríos remains a key part of Toronto’s core.

Unable to fill the resulting talent gap with prospects from the farm system, the front office has had to pursue more expensive free agent signings since the start of their current competitive window in 2020, starting with Hyun Jin Ryu, who was then followed by Robbie Ray, Marcus Semien, George Springer, Kevin Gausman, Yusei Kikuchi and Chris Bassitt.

Those free agents, who didn’t directly replace any Anthopoulos-era players, have put up a combined bWAR of 39.3 in a Blue Jays uniform since 2020, which has easily made up for that -17 bWAR talent deficit we calculated above, and has helped power the team to a 378-330 (.534) record since 2020.

To the extent those bigger free agent signings have limited their payroll capacity to fill holes this offseason, excluding what appears to be a player specific approval to spend on Juan Soto, they likely help to explain the Romano non-tender. The front office simply needs the money to sign players and doesn’t have the luxury to take such a risk again, given the immense pressure they’re under to field a competitive, contending team in 2025.

Blue Jays long-term extensions few and far between

The only rostered players who Shapiro and Atkins have been able to extend by five years or more in their nine seasons running Toronto’s front office are Randal Grichuk (five years, $52M) and Berríos (seven years, $131M). Both were acquired via trade, which means that they haven’t been able to extend a single homegrown talent longer than the three-year, $33.6M extension they gave to Bo Bichette to buy out his remaining arbitration years. That list includes Stroman, Mayza, Jansen and now Romano.

While Blue Jays fans and players alike are hoping for a long-term extension for Guerrero ahead of his age-26 season, the longer extension talks take, the more likely he will instead opt to test free agency a year from now along with Bichette. Should he depart, no players from the Anthopoulos era will remain.

More from Jays Journal