Vladimir Guerrero Jr. #27 of the Toronto Blue Jays grounds out in his first Major League at-bat in the second inning during MLB game action against the Oakland Athletics at Rogers Centre on April 26, 2019, in Toronto.Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images
After spending the final month of the season staggering toward the finish line, the Toronto Blue Jays had one mission in their final homestand – leave people with a little hope.
Getting their doors blown off two days in a row by one of the worst teams in baseball didn’t help. So for Sunday’s Game No. 162 they put Vlad Guerrero Jr. in the leadoff spot.
As he had the day before, Guerrero went hitless. He finishes the year stuck on 199 hits. The teammate closest to him had 80 fewer. That’s your Toronto Blue Jays 2024 baseball season in one statistical comparison.
The Miami Marlins beat the Blue Jays 3-1 on Sunday afternoon to complete a three-game, season-ending sweep.
You really want to have a measurable impact on the baseball team? How about putting Guerrero in the GM spot? Maybe he can figure out how to re-sign himself.
As is their habit, lose, lose or draw, the Jays were keen to cast the year as a learning experience. Think of all the data they accumulated by throwing out a bunch of a minor-league wannabes for half a season and watching them be no worse (but also no better) than the major-league wannabes they’d started with.
Asked to assess the team’s needs and wants for next year, manager John Schneider pinpointed the bullpen and “a couple of guys sandwiched in between” Guerrero and Bo Bichette.
“More power?” someone suggested.
“Yeah, I think so,” Schneider said.
After the game, the team’s best player put this idea into more general terms: “Everything,” Guerrero said. “We have to get better at everything.”
This year was an across-the-board failure, but it clarified something for the Jays. They have only one significant asset – Guerrero. His decisions will determine the short- and medium-term future of the team.
Every baseball team needs its best players more than the players need it, but there are few instances where that relationship is as unequal as this one. If Guerrero bails on the Jays – either contractually or by word or deed – the team is cooked. The Jays might as well join the Pacific Coast League.
Given that, you would think the Jays would spend more time cozying up to their main squeeze, but no. They are oddly ambivalent about Guerrero.
They forced him to arbitration this year, knowing that all they’d accomplish was antagonizing him. They got rid of most of his best friends on the team. Whenever the question of a contract extension comes up, it’s hard to get an unequivocal commitment from the club that they intend to do that.
It’s difficult to picture the Yankees treating Aaron Judge this way, or the Orioles doing it to Gunnar Henderson, or any other team with a star player it scouted, selected and developed.
For his part, Guerrero doesn’t act as though he’s put out by this lack of feeling. He’s happy when he’s playing well, unhappy when he isn’t and otherwise off in his own world.
“God’s timing is perfect,” Guerrero said through a translator about his contract status. “When it happens, it’s going to happen.”
In other words, don’t call me. I won’t call you.
The impression given by the Jays and Guerrero is of a couple that doesn’t hate living in the same house, but isn’t interested in spending a lot of quality time together.
If the goal is negging Guerrero until the club gets him into a psychological position that advantages it, it isn’t working.
“In my mind, I’m the best player in the world,” Guerrero told ESPN recently.
Playing in Toronto must help with that mindset. He’s looking around the room thinking, ‘Who’s my competition here? George Springer?’ Guerrero must feel like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig rolled up into one person when he’s amid this group.
Why would the “best player in the world” want to stay on a team that needs to change “everything?”
So the first question for Toronto over the next calendar year isn’t whether it can retain Guerrero, but whether either party has real interest in the staying together. It’s not like they have kids to think about.
Guerrero has never flat-out said he is determined to stay, and the Jays have never flat-out said that they will do whatever it takes to keep him. Considering that the team’s immediate future hinges on this outcome, it’s been a weirdly lacklustre affair.
Maybe what everyone wants to achieve here isn’t a renewal of vows. Maybe it’s the perfect breakup – one that’s nobody’s fault, and lets everyone off the hook.
If Guerrero leaves, he can restart with a team that feels that hot hot heat for him. It had better. It’s going to cost it $300-million or $400-million.
Once he’s gone, the Jays can begin the rebuild they never wanted (but actually did).
Based on their current signings, the Jays’ roster’s natural expiry date isn’t until after the 2026 season. Letting Guerrero wander off puts that timeline into hyperdrive. Without him, nobody has to keep pretending this team is a contender. They can just let the whole thing fall apart.
In the way of Toronto sports, the team can feel pretty sure that people will be angry at Guerrero for leaving, rather than at the team for letting him go.
The Jays can go dormant for another four or five years. In a perfect world, they wake up just as the Orioles and Yankees start aging out.
It’s not a good plan. But it’s better than their current plan, which, based on the miserable bust of a season just past, is no plan at all.