TORONTO – The consensus heading into spring training a year ago was that the Toronto Blue Jays would rather sign Jose Bautista to a contract extension, but that fellow pending free agent Edwin Encarnacion was more likely to accept one.
Timing is, of course, everything and the outlook around the two franchise icons shifted dramatically over the past 12 months. While Encarnacion stayed on the field and raked, Bautista fought through two stints on the disabled list, some decline defensively and an offensive season not up to his high standards.
This fall, it was Encarnacion the Blue Jays pursued aggressively (and unsuccessfully) while Bautista was placed on the back burner. Eventually he settled for a one-year deal with two options that guarantees $18.5 million, but only after GM Ross Atkins had sorted through a host of other options, first.
Sure, things change quickly in player evaluation, but one takeaway to be drawn from this is how unwilling the market is to bet on older free agents who have off years. Even in a so-called down season, Bautista posted an .817 OPS with 22 homers and 87 walks in 116 games, strong numbers if projected over the course of a full season.
But the number teams seemed to fixate on first and foremost was 36, the age Bautista will be during the 2017 season.
"When you get to that point in your career, performance is extremely important," Atkins said Thursday during a news conference to discuss the signing. "Projecting performance to continue at that point, you have to continue to do it for teams to invest significant dollars in you, and those blips that occur in performance can impact your market.
"(Track record) doesn’t go out the window, that’s for sure, but it’s factored in. There’s not a team in baseball that wouldn’t want that calibre of contribution, even the contribution Jose had last year. It’s hard to say exactly why, but my opinion is at that level of free agency, where these individuals are in their career, that sustained performance definitely has an impact."
So, in a twisted sense, the Blue Jays and Bautista may have ended up together the way they wanted last spring, only under vastly different terms than one might have envisioned. And it doesn’t feel the way it should because of lingering concerns last year wasn’t just a blip, but rather the first signs of decline.
In that way players in their 30s certainly aren’t getting any mulligans or any faith in a productive past, even if they’re for the most part coming off solid seasons. American League home run leader Mark Trumbo, Mike Napoli and others still lingering on the open market can speak to that, holding out for better than the one-year deals Carlos Beltran and Matt Holliday accepted earlier in the winter.
Even Encarnacion, arguably the game’s steadiest slugger over the past five years, didn’t get the deal he envisioned, as talks with the Blue Jays failed and eventually he ended up with the Cleveland Indians on a three-year deal that guarantees $60 million.
"This off-season was unusual for players, not just Jose, for players of a similar calibre, maybe not quite the same calibre, but it was an interesting off-season," said Atkins. "You’re never shocked, never surprised but things sometimes play out differently than you would expect. What I would say in addition to that is Jose at 35 years old had one of his worst years in eight years and that’s a tough thing for a free agent of that age. It could have had some impact on the market, but there are a lot of variables that go into it."
Bautista is, obviously, more valuable to the Blue Jays than any other team because of his place in franchise history and his many accomplishments, and their familiarity with him contributed in their belief that last year was an outlier resulting from injuries.
"It’s more likely he has the 2015 season than it is that he has the 2016 season," said Atkins.
At the same time, the Blue Jays had also run out of better options in free agency while their work on the trade market sat at an impasse. The reunion with Bautista should help pacify the restive portions of the fanbase wondering why more hadn’t been done this off-season to bolster a core good enough to contend for a wild card, at least.
Intriguingly, Jeff Blair, on his Sportsnet 590 The Fan radio show Wednesday morning, suggested Edward Rogers, the Blue Jays chairman and deputy chair at team owner Rogers Communications, may have had a hand in the signing, perhaps adding extra money to the payroll.
Atkins was coy when asked about the matter Thursday, saying "I’d rather not get into the specifics of exactly how he was involved, but really his desire and his leadership to help was abundantly clear."
Either way, the spend on Bautista pushed the payroll up to roughly $155 million including an estimated $5 million for 0-3 service time players, and helps prod along the current competitive window, for one more season at least.
The contract includes a mutual option for $17 million in 2018 with Bautista getting the first call, and if that gets exercised, there’s a vesting option based on cumulative games played worth $20 million for 2019.
Typically mutual options are window dressing and while Atkins insisted that "there is a significant chance it could be picked up on both ends," the reality is there’s little chance of that happening if the team isn’t competitive this year.
The Blue Jays are in the contradictory situation of trying to compete in the present while simultaneously building for the future, and Atkins said the resources and direction provided by ownership is allowing the club to push back a rebuild, with a caveat.
"All 30 teams have to stay agile and understand that we’re dealing with human beings and these assets to organizations are human and change and evolve," he said. "What we’ve tried to do is to become more flexible and agile, and to sustain championships is to build from within. That doesn’t happen overnight. If we can continue to win while we build from within and make trades like the one (for Francisco Liriano) last year where we’re not giving up talent but adding talent to our system, add (prospects like Cuban Lourdes) Gurriel Jr., to our system, have the draft we had, put the resources into international, continue to go into free agency, you’re threading a needle."
The Blue Jays are hoping to be doing the same with Bautista, counting on him to bounce back at 36 rather than decline. They remain in pursuit of a left-handed reliever and a backup catcher, and if circumstances play right, perhaps one of the trades stuck in the trenches comes together.
In the meantime, the fans have a franchise icon back, maybe not the one they preferred this off-season, but perhaps the one they really wanted all along.