It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the Toronto Blue Jays will qualify both Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion barring any unforeseen circumstances, the team’s general manager Ross Atkins told reporters Monday.
Time will tell whether or not they accept or reject the offers.
Bautista is the longest serving member of the Blue Jays after being acquired from the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2008. The 36-year-old struggled in 2016 hitting .234/.366/.452/.817 and only 22 home runs — his lowest total in seven years — in 116 games.
“I haven’t given it much thought to be honest with you, we’ll see what happens. We just got done, I haven’t thought much on it,” Bautista recently said when asked about entering the open market. “If I were to tell you that it never crossed my mind (during the season) I’d be lying to you, but every single day coming in here I was completely focused on helping the team win, and I didn’t think about it too much.”
Encarnacion registered 42 home runs, 127 RBIs and had an OPS of .886 in 2016. The 33-year-old is expected to fetch somewhere in the vicinity of $20-25 million per season in free agency.
“I was never thinking about my free agency (during the season),” Encarnacion said. “I always was thinking about winning – winning games, help this team to win games, that’s all I was thinking all year long and at the end of the year, I put up the numbers I needed to be a free agent. Now we’ll see what’s going to happen. I’d love to stay here but it’s not my decision, I’ve got to wait and see what’s going to happen.”
Atkins added the team is in the process of deciding whether or not to do the same with pending free agent Michael Saunders. The team also expects to pick up Jason Grilli’s 2017 option at $3 million, something Atkins called “as near to a no-brainer” as you’ll find.
