Jose Bautista's one-day contract with Blue Jays a symbolic repatriation

TORONTO – Ideally, Jose Bautista’s final game at Rogers Centre would have come for, not against the Toronto Blue Jays, wearing the jersey he starred in for a decade as opposed to a New York Mets uniform, one last farewell rather than a final, awkward hi-and-bye.

Dream endings, however, are hard to come by, which is why the franchise icon was up on a dais Friday afternoon, accepting a certificate handed to him by club president and CEO Mark Shapiro that doubled as a one-day contract, and signing it to retire as a member of the Blue Jays.

Ahead of his addition to the club’s Level of Excellence on Saturday, the contract was a symbolic repatriation of the fearsome slugger into the organizational fold after that incongruent 2018 season split between Atlanta, the Mets and Philadelphia, his last year in the majors.

“It’s huge obviously,” said Bautista, whose last games of consequence were in 2021 with the Dominican Republic at the Tokyo Olympics. “I owe a great deal to this franchise, they gave me a chance and I was able to accomplish a lot here. I definitely was already in my head retired as a Blue Jay, but to make it official is kind of cool. This way, fans can have their moment, too, and know that I was probably a member of a club, I guess, for one last time, and it was officially the last club that I was a part of before officially announcing my retirement.”

The deal for a day isn’t a first for the Blue Jays – at the end of the 2013 season, Roy Halladay approached team officials and asked if they’d be open to the idea, which they obviously were.

Plans for Bautista to follow suit began a few years ago but were shelved among the tumult COVID-19 pandemic restrictions caused for the Blue Jays.

“With the contract, you're giving the chance for the fans and for Jose to celebrate his time with the Blue Jays, with closure and an end to his career,” said Shapiro. “When a player's career ends, often it's an awkward moment and there's not that opportunity to do it at that time. I had the chance to do that in Cleveland with Jim Thome, who went on to play in five other places after he left, incredibly meaningful and something that after Jose stopped playing or was contemplating if to stop playing, that dialogue started pretty quickly about doing that here. Then we had the interruption of the pandemic and this seemed like the right time.”

Bautista will be the first player added to the Level of Excellence since Halladay in 2018 – by the foul pole above the right field he once patrolled – and it was his ascension to superstar status that helped the club reset from the Hall of Fame right-hander’s trade following the 2009 season.

In the years that followed, Bautista became one of the most important figures in Blue Jays history, his legacy including the signature bat-flip homer during the madcap seventh inning of Game 5 in the ALDS versus the Texas Rangers, but also running far deeper than that.

He’s the franchise’s all-time leader among position players in Wins Above Replacement, as calculated by Baseball Reference, at 38.3; his 288 homers are second only to Carlos Delgado’s 366; his 803 walks second to Delgado’s 827; his 790 runs second to Delgado’s 889; his 766 RBIs third, behind Delgado’s 1,058 and Vernon Wells' 813. Along the way, he also helped rekindle interest in and passion for a franchise that had been stuck in the mud after consecutive World Series titles in 1992 and ’93.

Bautista and the Blue Jays parted ways after a difficult 2017 season when the club declined to exercise its end of a $17 million option for 2018. That led to the three-team odyssey that capped his big-league career, underlining how “extremely challenging” the end can be for legacy players and teams to navigate.

“It’s probably one of the most difficult things you deal with, a great player towards the end of his career,” said Shapiro. “Part of what makes elite players elite is that they don't see their skills change. They don't see their skills fade. They need to project and image that same ability and talent. So they have to arrive at that decision on their own. I think the most important thing for a front office to do is never tell a player they're at that point. You may have to make a decision that's in the best interest of your organization to part ways. But it's never for us to say when a player's career is over. They have to reach that decision on their own. In a perfect world, it aligns while they're here, and you can naturally come to a conclusion. In a more realistic world, you do what we’re doing today.”

That he and the Blue Jays are here at all is remarkable considering the way he arrived, as a waiver-deal acquisition brought in to cover a gap created by an injury to Scott Rolen. Upon joining the Blue Jays, he worked closely with then-manager Cito Gaston and hitting coach Dwayne Murphy, who helped him transition from a toe-tap trigger he used with the Pittsburgh Pirates to the leg-kick he made famous in Toronto.

By getting his front foot down earlier, timing his load with when the pitcher started his delivery rather than as he was throwing the ball, he unlocked his power and Bautista set a franchise record with 54 home runs in 2010. His emergence, along with that of Edwin Encarnacion, prompted the Blue Jays to speed the timeline on a rebuild, eventually leading to the post-season runs of 2015 and ’16.

“I don't know if there are any lessons for other guys, but for myself, it was just the urgency,” Bautista said of what made the changes take hold. “I was reaching that point in my career where I was either going to continue to be that utility/bench guy for the rest of my career or try something different and hopefully it worked. And it did. That's the way I looked at it.”

From that point on, Bautista methodically worked his way deeper and deeper into franchise lore, something manager John Schneider hopes his players glean from Saturday’s ceremony.

“It’s just how you can be remembered, recognized for your accomplishments on the field, both individually and as a team,” he explained. “Whenever you can recognize (success), whether it's the World Series teams '92, '93, it's always good to remind guys of the history of the organization and for Jose to be kind of be close to some of these guys, it kind of opens your eyes a little bit to how special a group can be and how you can be really remembered for a long time by doing some pretty cool things in big moments.”