The big news around baseball this week is superstar slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sticking in Toronto on a $500MM extension that will keep him with the Blue Jays for the next 14 years. While the deal is primarily notable because of Guerrero himself being one of the brightest young stars in the game whose free agency had long been anticipated by fans around the league, it’s also the most firm statement yet from the Blue Jays that they fully intend to continue attempting to compete even amid an increasingly difficult AL East division.
Entering Spring Training, the club had a number of key players set to come off the books within the next few seasons. That’s still the case for the majority of those players, with important pieces like Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt, George Springer, and Daulton Varsho poised to hit the open market within the next two seasons. With that being said, the club’s offseason additions of Andres Gimenez and Anthony Santander combine with their recent extensions for Guerrero and Alejandro Kirk to give the club a talented nucleus of position players to build a new iteration of the club around with pre-arb and early arbitration players like Ernie Clement, Bowden Francis, and Will Wagner helping to further build out that foundation.
With nearly two full seasons until Gausman, Springer, and Varsho depart for free agency, it’s not entirely clear what the Jays’ needs will look like by the time that comes around. Toronto’s impending losses of Bassitt, Scherzer, and Green come November will surely need to be addressed, but most teams need pitching every winter and replacing those players should be fairly straightforward. With Guerrero signed, that leaves the most pertinent question facing Toronto at this point as what to do with shortstop Bo Bichette. The 27-year-old was a consensus top-15 prospect in the sport when he came up to the majors back in 2019 and has spent most of his career paired with Guerrero as one of the club’s two up-and-coming stars.
While Bichette has never had the MVP-caliber campaigns Guerrero posted during the 2021 and ’24 seasons, the hype surrounding him has largely been justified by his body of work in the majors. In 46 games down the stretch in 2019 after a mid-season call-up, Bichette made a big impression by slashing .311/.358/.571 with a 143 wRC+ and 11 homers in just 212 plate appearances. A 29-game stint with Toronto during the shortened 2020 season saw him come down to Earth just a bit as he posted a 120 wRC+, but that level of production proved to be very sustainable for Bichette as his first full three seasons saw him slash .298/.339/.476 with a 125 wRC+ and 13.6 fWAR.
From 2021 to ’23, Bichette was sandwiched between Yordan Alvarez and Sean Murphy on the fWAR leaderboard, good for 22nd in baseball, and his 125 wRC+ allowed him to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with top infielders like Trea Turner and Alex Bregman. Between those strong numbers and his relative youth, Bichette seemed certain to be ticketed for a large payday with the only question being whether it would come in Toronto or elsewhere. Unfortunately, the 2024 season threw all of that completely off the rails. Not only was Bichette limited to just 81 games last year due to multiple calf strains and surgery on his middle finger, but he also struggled badly in the games he was healthy enough to partake in. In 336 trips to the plate last year, Bichette slashed just .225/.277/.322 (71 wRC+).
A look under the hood reveals that Bichette’s strikeout and walk rates were both as good as they’d ever been last year, but he was completely sapped of his power. He hit just four home runs after regularly flashing 25-to-30 homer power in previous years. His .303 xwOBA suggested that he was getting somewhat unlucky in terms of batted ball luck, and that likely contributed to a career-worst .269 BABIP. While a batting average closer to his xBA of .255 would have surely helped his overall production look a bit more robust, the expected numbers aren’t all that kind in the power department. His xSLG was just .375, which while better than his actual production last season, would’ve been well below average if he had enough plate appearances to qualify. That’s in large part thanks to a massive drop-off in barrel rate. Bichette barreled up just 4.4% of his batted balls last year, less than half of his career norm across the rest of his career.
A mediocre defender at shortstop even in his best years, Bichette’s value is so tied to his bat that last season’s struggles made it difficult to imagine him finding the star-level contract in free agency without a big bounceback in the 2025 campaign. Despite both Bichette himself and the Blue Jays as a whole failing to meet expectations last year, Toronto opted not to trade him ahead of his final year under team control, betting on him to regain his form this season. There’s still a long way to go in this season, but the early returns are looking good on that decision. Bichette’s .277/.333/.362 (103 wRC+) slash line entering play today is still pedestrian but nonetheless a big improvement over last year, and more importantly he’s resumed hitting the ball with authority (7.3% barrel rate, 46.3% Hard-Hit rate) in a way that mostly aligns with his career norms.
While it’s certainly good news for both Bichette and the Blue Jays that the shortstop appears to be back to posting quality offensive numbers, what that means for his future is uncertain. There’s some similarities to Cody Bellinger in Bichette’s profile as a free agent, as the two players share All-Star caliber upside as bat-first options at a premium defensive position that could make them very attractive in free agency, but pair that upside with worrisome injury-riddled campaigns where they looked like below-replacement level talents. During the 2023-24 offseason, Bellinger was limited to a short-term deal by the market, though his three-year, $80MM pact with the Cubs afforded him a healthy AAV and multiple opt-out opportunities. Bellinger was marketing his age-28 season that winter just like Bichette would be come November, though a distinct lack of high-end positional talent in free agency this winter (outside of star outfielder Kyle Tucker) could allow Bichette to find a stronger market.
Still, that market uncertainty could be part of why the Jays have not broached the possibility of an extension with their shortstop. Bichette told reporters back in February that the sides hadn’t had talks, and he reiterated to Hazel Mae of Sportsnet yesterday that “nothing’s on the table” for him from the Blue Jays in terms of an extension. Bichette has made it clear he’d like to remain in Toronto, citing a desire to play for a single organization throughout his entire career and continue his partnership with Guerrero. If Bichette proves himself healthy and effective again this year, that could make plenty of sense for a Blue Jays club that will need more offensive firepower than it got last year even after adding Santander to the mix. On the other hand, the Blue Jays already have a luxury tax payroll of $200MM for 2026 (per RosterResource) before even considering arbitration-level contracts for players like Varsho and Clement.
That could make adding another big salary to the books difficult for the Blue Jays to stomach, and the club has seemingly set itself up to better stomach the loss of Bichette by trading for Gimenez. The 26-year-old has played the vast majority of his big league games at second base, but he has shortstop experience and is regarded as perhaps the best defensive second baseman in the entire sport, suggesting he should have little trouble sliding over to the left side of the infield. Given Bichette’s aforementioned mediocre defense at short, Gimenez could actually prove to be an upgrade at the position in terms of his glove.
That would then mean needing to replace Gimenez at second base and Bichette’s bat in the lineup, however. A big season from Wagner this year could make that possible to do internally. Other internal options who could help out include Davis Schneider, Addison Barger, Orelvis Martinez and Leo Jimenez. In terms of external options, this coming offseason has infielders like Gleyber Torres, Ha-Seong Kim, Alex Bregman and Trevor Story as possibilities, depending on some opt-out decisions.
How do MLBTR readers think the situation in Toronto will play out? Will Bichette be allowed to hit free agency? And, if so, will he be playing in Toronto or elsewhere come Opening Day 2026? Have your say in the poll below:
