The Blue Jays Won't Pay Jose Bautista $150 Million, But They Will Use A Recently Signed Contract As A Benchmark
Jose Bautista was never getting $150 million. Maybe he thought that he could, but that was never happening.
We’ve been following this Bautista contract situation since he arrived at spring training this year, and made it very clear that he’s not going to give the Blue Jays a hometown discount. His comments were received as being blunt and somewhat greedy, but that’s just not true at all. He was 100% correct in saying that he’s given the Blue Jays a hometown discount for five seasons already. He said five years, but it’s actually been six years. From 2010 through 2015, Bautista made $66.4 million. That’s an average annual value of $11.1 million. According to FanGraphs, Bautista was actually worth $234.3 million, which is an average annual value of $39.1 million per season.
Where Bautista loses out on tens of millions of dollars is that he was quite the late bloomer. He didn’t have his first All Star season until he was 29, when he hit 54 home runs in 2010. But since that year of 2010, nobody has more home runs than Bautista. He’s hit 239 homers since the start of that year, and the runner-up is Miguel Cabrera, who has 217 homers. You know what else Cabrera has? An 8-year, $248 million contract. Something tells me that somebody, most likely an agent, got in Bautista’s ear and told him that if Cabrera has X, then you deserve Y. Unfortunately for Bautista, that’s not how it works.
Year one of Bautista’s new contract will be his age-36 season. And, by the way, Bautista denied the reports that he was in search of $150 million, while Jon Heyman reported that he actually wanted more than that. Anyway, part of Bautista’s case to get paid such a high figure this late in his career was that his production hasn’t dropped off since his offensive spike in 2010, and that, despite his age, he takes great care of his body and has avoided injuries.
Well, he’s been on the disabled list since June 17 with a strained left big toe, and he had been hitting .230 with an .815 OPS, 15 doubles and 12 home runs prior to the injury. His age doesn’t help his cause, an injury doesn’t help his cause, and neither does his dip in production this season. But does that mean that the Blue Jays are going to straight up pass on retaining his services? Absolutely not. Heyman reports that Toronto is willing to use another slugger’s recently signed contract as a benchmark to keep Bautista with the Blue Jays.
Bautista is known to want $150 million for five years, as first reported by Rick Westhead of TSN.ca. The Jays won’t do anything close to that, but word is, the Jays might be amenable to a “Cespedes type deal,” meaning three years for around $25 million a year on average.
Interestingly, that’s exactly half the asking price. It isn’t known that they would definitely do that, but Bautista does seem to be more of a priority for them, and they might consider it. Bautista has cited his incredible career path, where no drop off has been seen through age 35, to seek a deal that takes him to age 41.
This past January, the Mets signed Yoenis Cespedes to a three-year deal worth $75 million, which included a $10 million signing bonus, a full no-trade clause, and an opt out after the 2016 season. It’s not certain whether or not the Blue Jays care about the details within the Cespedes deal, like the opt out and no-trade protection, as much as they care about the length and dollar amount.
Stating the obvious, but that offer is not going to get it done. If a player is looking for $150 million over five years, he’s not going to all of a sudden think that $75 million over three years is a fair counter. You obviously shoot high and meet somewhere in the middle, but that’s not “somewhere in the middle” or even close to it. Toronto’s best bet is to go with the Cespedes contract offer, in addition to two option years based on plate appearances, and bonuses based on All Star selections and MVP finishes, as he enters his age-39 and 40 seasons.
Even then, it sounds like he’d take that as a slap in the face for having to prove himself, considering he’s proven himself and then some to that organization. But you can’t blame the Blue Jays for wanting to protect themselves, while investing in a player who is in the final years of his career.