Fateful arbitration hearing for Blue Jays and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. looms Tuesday

TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays have, in the past, managed to veer from the brink and escape contentious arbitration cases. In 2016, for instance, they signed Josh Donaldson to a two-year contract while last year, they gave Bo Bichette a three-year deal, both times narrowly preventing potentially damaging arguments from being made in a hearing room.

Now, once again, they are on the precipice, this time with Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the all-star first baseman’s hearing set for Tuesday. And it’s believed there have been no negotiations since the Jan. 11 filing deadline, when the team offered $18.05 million and the player asked for $19.9 million.

While it’s still possible the sides could settle, the Blue Jays are a “file-and-trial” team, meaning once numbers are exchanged, they’ll only do a multi-year deal outside a hearing room. That’s the route they took with Donaldson, with whom they had a $450,000 gap, and Bichette, with whom they were $2.5 million apart.

The apparent lack of recent dialogue in this case, however, doesn’t bode well.

First, there isn’t much time remaining and once you factor in that Guerrero is eligible for free agency after the 2025 season, any agreement, even a two-year deal that only covers this year and his final year of arbitration-eligibility next year, will be difficult to complete.

Further complicating matters is that a hearing in this case carries industry-wide ramifications because, win-or-lose, Guerrero’s 2024 salary will be the highest ever awarded by a three-person arbitration panel. The precedent of the decision, therefore, is of interest to all 30 teams, as well as other players, so the arguments could be particularly pointed under such circumstances.

Arguing to win a hearing while not alienating the player, particularly one with franchise cornerstone talent, is probably an impossible line to walk. While teams regularly argue that arbitration is simply a part of the game and everything is business, not personal, such a notion holds true more in theory than reality.

After all, who likes hearing their boss or bosses explain, in excruciating detail to a neutral third-party, why they think a salary request isn’t deserved?

In that way, the arbitration process is designed to incentivize the sides to reach a deal before the filing deadline.

Finding suitable comparables can be difficult. The arbitrators are wild-cards, with no real clarity on the type of arguments that sway opinions, and no explanations of how past decisions are reached to shed any clues. Between the loss of control inherent to that uncertainty, the cost of preparing a case and risk of ill-will after the fact, players and teams only reach this point if negotiations have gone awry along the way.

The question, then, is how the Blue Jays could let this friction-point topper to a sad trombone winter happen, especially with Guerrero just two years away from free agency?

A gap of $1.85 million between offer and ask suggests the sides struggled to find common ground on a comp or comps, which also indicates a divergence of opinion on who the relevant peers are for Guerrero.

Through his first two trips through arbitration, Guerrero and New York Mets slugger Pete Alonso were seemingly tied together by similar trajectories in both salary and production.

Though their stats separated a bit in 2023, Alonso posting much stronger power numbers than Guerrero but with fewer hits, a much lower average and less on-base, he still looks to be the most suitable comp.

The Mets and Alonso settled at $20.5 million shortly before the filing deadline and if he’s used as a tracking marker for Guerrero, then the debate is over how much separation should there be between their salaries.

As the chart below shows, Guerrero started out ahead of Alonso thanks to a stronger, AL MVP runner up 2021, but Alonso caught him with a better 2022 campaign and surpasses him this year, by either $600,000 if Guerrero wins, or $2.45 million if the club wins.

A failure to see eye-to-eye on relevant peers now may also make agreeing on a long-term contract that covers Guerrero’s free-agent seasons more difficult, as well.

The 24-year-old said in an interview last April that he and the Blue Jays had some discussions on an extension but the talks “haven't reached the point that there's something serious about it.” He later added, “I know who I am. I know my value. We're going to keep having conversations, but all my focus every day is here on the field.”

Given the organizational turning point looming after the 2025 season — when Bichette, Jordan Romano, Chris Bassitt, Tim Mayza, Erik Swanson, Chad Green and Cavan Biggio, among others, will also be eligible for free agency — the inability to find common ground now adds to the challenge ahead.

What does he read into how the Blue Jays see him? What do the Blue Jays read into how he sees himself?

All of which makes Tuesday’s hearing so much more fateful.

Sure, in a sense, it’s merely a collectively bargained mechanism to help decide a player’s salary. But the process is inherently adversarial. Arguments made can be taken as insults. When the relationship between player and team is so important, the stakes skyrocket.

For those reasons, if Guerrero’s case gets to the hearing room, it won’t really matter how the arbitrators rule, because win-or-lose, by simply ending up in this situation, the Blue Jays will have already lost.