DUNEDIN, Fla. — First baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the Toronto Blue Jays failed to come to terms on a contract extension prior to his Monday night deadline, paving the way for the 25-year-old star to hit free agency in November.
“They have their numbers; I have my numbers,” Guerrero said Tuesday.
Guerrero, a four-time All-Star and son of Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero, said he had set a deadline of 9 p.m. Monday, but the last call from the Blue Jays came at 10:30 p.m. When asked if the team was close to what he was asking, Guerrero simply said, “No.”
Without a deal in place, Guerrero said he plans to cut off talks and play out the season as an impending free agent, but he also said later that he “won’t close the door” on a “realistic” offer from the Blue Jays.
“Listen, I want to be here. I want to be a Blue Jay for the rest of my career,” Guerrero said. “But it’s free agency. It’s business. So I’m going to have to listen to 29 more teams and they’re going to have to compete for that.”
The inability to strike a deal is the latest blow for the Blue Jays, whose pursuit of franchise-caliber talent in recent years was a black mark for the franchise. Toronto’s heavy recruitment of two-way star Shohei Ohtani and outfielder Juan Soto wound up in disappointment, as they signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets, respectively, and the potential departure of their best homegrown talent since Hall of Famer Roy Halladay is even more acute.
“Soto’s deal had nothing to do with my decision at all,” Guerrero said. “Even before that, I knew my value. I knew my number.”
Guerrero said the Blue Jays had known about his deadline since last season, and he didn’t want negotiations to carry into spring training and become a distraction.
“I don’t want — especially my teammates — to go through any distractions,” Guerrero said. “I’m here today, I’m ready and want to win a lot of games, and I want to make it to the playoffs. That’s all.”
Toronto could explore a trade for Guerrero, who would warrant one of the biggest returns in recent memory. The Blue Jays, sources said, are more inclined to start the season with Guerrero in their lineup and reassess the possibility of a trade as the July deadline approaches.
Guerrero, meanwhile, said there’s no animosity toward the Jays’ front office.
“I love the city. I love the fans,” Guerrero said. “I mean, it’s hard, but at the end of the day, like I say, it’s business. I’ll do everything that I have to stay here with the Blue Jays. I love it here. I want to be here.”
Over his six seasons in Toronto, Guerrero has developed into one of the game’s most fearsome hitters. Last season, he hit .323/.396/.544 with 30 home runs and 103 RBIs. And come November, big-market suitors are expected lavish him with some of the largest contract offers in baseball history.
In the wake of the 15-year, $765 million contract the Mets this winter gave to Soto — who, along with Guerrero and Fernando Tatis Jr., were part of the all-time-great international signing class in 2015 — the potential free agent jackpot for Guerrero exceeds what the Blue Jays were willing to offer.
They had tried to lock Guerrero up long-term for years to no avail. With the deadline looming, negotiations that had been sporadic over the winter picked up this week with hopes of striking a deal.
Without one in place, Guerrero will report to the Blue Jays’ first full workout Tuesday with the specter of his free agency bound to loom over Toronto’s season after a last-place finish in the American League East last year.
Since he debuted shortly after his 20th birthday in 2019 and homered 15 times as a rookie, Guerrero has been one of baseball’s most-recognized players. His breakout season came in 2021, when Guerrero finished second to Aaron Judge in American League MVP voting, hitting .311/.401/.601 with 48 home runs and 111 RBIs.
Guerrero followed with a pair of solid-but-below-expectations seasons in 2022 and 2023, and in mid-May of last season, he sported an OPS under .750 as the Blue Jays struggled en route to an eventual last-place finish. Over his last 116 games, the Guerrero of 2021 reemerged, as he hit .343/.407/.604 with 26 home runs and 84 RBIs.
Between Guerrero and shortstop Bo Bichette‘s free agency after the 2025 season, the Blue Jays faced a potential reckoning. While Bichette will play out the season and is widely expected not to re-sign with the Blue Jays, the team had hoped an extension for Guerrero would give them a franchise player around whom they could build.
With a payroll expected to exceed the luxury tax threshold of $241 million, the Blue Jays will field a team with playoff aspirations — and one that just as easily could find itself toward the bottom of the standings, with the defending AL champion New York Yankees, much-improved Boston Red Sox, always-solid Tampa Bay Rays and young-and-talented Baltimore Orioles in the same division.
Toronto’s long-term commitments will allow for significant financial flexibility going forward — particularly if they re-allocate the hundreds of millions they offered Guerrero. In addition to Guerrero, Bichette and Scherzer, right-hander Chris Bassitt and relievers Chad Green and Erik Swanson are free agents following this season. Following 2026, the nine-figure deals of outfielder George Springer and right-hander Kevin Gausman come off the books as well.
Building around Guerrero would have been a good place to start. One of only a dozen players in MLB with at least two seasons of six or more Wins Above Replacement since 2021, Guerrero consistently finds himself near the top of MLB leaderboards in hardest-hit balls, a metric that typically translates to great success.
Like his father, who hit 449 home runs and batted .318 over a 16-year career, Guerrero has rare bat-to-ball skills, particularly for a player with top-of-the-scale power. In his six MLB seasons, Guerrero has hit .288/.363/.500 with 160 home runs, 507 RBIs and 551 strikeouts against 349 walks over 3,540 plate appearances.
“My dad played a lot of years, and he never won the World Series,” Guerrero said. “And I always say my personal goal is to win a World Series and gave the ring to my dad. So that’s all I’m looking for.”
Originally a third baseman, Guerrero shifted to first base during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. Had the Blue Jays signed Alonso, they signaled the possibility of Guerrero returning full-time to third, where he played a dozen games last year.
Without an extension in place, the 6-foot-2, 245-pound Guerrero will have to wait to reset a market that previously had been topped by the eight-year, $248 million extension Miguel Cabrera signed just shy of his 31st birthday in 2014.
Teams without long-term first-base solutions beyond 2025 that could target Guerrero, who turns 26 in March, include the Yankees (Paul Goldschmidt is on a one-year deal) and Mets (Alonso can opt out of his two-year contract following the season).
SUNRISE, Fla. — Auston Matthews hadn’t scored against Florida in more than a year. He ended the drought — and might have also saved Toronto’s season.
Matthews got his first goal of the series to break a scoreless tie in the third period, Joseph Woll stopped 22 shots and the Toronto Maple Leafs kept their season alive by beating the Florida Panthers2-0 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series Friday night.
“Just a gutsy, gutsy win,” Matthews said.
Game 7 is Sunday night in Toronto. The winner will face Carolina in the East final.
“We played a simple game tonight,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said.
Simple, but effective. Toronto blocked 31 shots, plus killed off all four Florida power plays.
Max Pacioretty added an insurance goal for the Maple Leafs, who improved to 4-2 when facing elimination since the start of the 2023 playoffs.
Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 15 shots for the Panthers, the defending Stanley Cup champions who oddly are only 8-7 in potential closeout games over the past three postseasons.
“You win or you learn,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. “Tonight, we learned.”
Florida coach Paul Maurice is 5-0 in Game 7s, including the final game of last season’s Stanley Cup Final. The Panthers are 3-1 all time in the ultimate game of a series — 2-0 on the road — while the Maple Leafs have lost each of their past six Game 7s. Of those, four were against Boston and now-Panthers forward Brad Marchand.
“We’re not going to show any video of those Game 7s,” Maurice said. “We’ll look at our game tonight and see where we can get better.”
It was the 68th game of this season’s playoffs — and only the second that was 0-0 after 40 minutes. The other was Wednesday night, when Edmonton eliminated Vegas with a 1-0 victory in overtime in Game 5 of that Western Conference semifinal series.
Toronto had five goals in Game 1, four more in Game 2 and had three by the early goings of the second period of Game 3. Add it up, and that was 12 in basically the first seven periods of the series.
From there, Toronto got basically nothing — until Matthews broke through.
The Toronto captain was 0-for-31 on shots against Florida this season, including the regular season. Bobrovsky had stopped 85 of the last 86 shot attempts he had seen in the series. And the Maple Leafs hadn’t had the lead in basically the equivalent of 3½ games — 216 minutes, 30 seconds, to be precise.
But when a pass got away from Florida’s Aaron Ekblad, Matthews had a slight opening — and that was all he needed. A low shot skittered along the ice and beat Bobrovsky for a 1-0 lead with 13:40 left.
“It’s a big win, from top to bottom,” Matthews said. “We earned that.”
LONDON, Ontario — The judge handling the trial of five Canadian hockey players accused of sexual assault dismissed the jury Friday after a complaint that defense attorneys were laughing at some of the jurors.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia will now handle the high-profile case on her own.
The issue arose Thursday after one of the jurors submitted a note indicating that several jury members felt they were being judged and laughed at by lawyers representing one of the accused as they came into the courtroom each day. The lawyers, Daniel Brown and Hilary Dudding, denied the allegation.
Carroccia said she had not seen any behavior that would cause her concern, but she concluded that the jurors’ negative impression of the defense could impact the jury’s impartiality and was a problem that could not be remedied.
Michael McLeod, Dillon Dube, Carter Hart, Cal Foote and Alex Formenton were charged with sexual assault last year after an incident with a then-20-year-old woman that allegedly took place when they were in London for a Hockey Canada gala celebrating their championship at that year’s world junior tournament. McLeod faces an additional charge of being a party to the offense of sexual assault.
All have pleaded not guilty. None of them is on an NHL roster or has an active contract with a team in the league.
The woman, appearing via a video feed from another room in the courthouse, has testified that she was drunk, naked and scared when men started coming into a hotel room and that she felt she had to go along with what the men wanted her to do. Prosecutors contend the players did what they wanted without taking steps to ensure she was voluntarily consenting to sexual acts.
Defense attorneys have cross-examined her for days and suggested she actively participated in or initiated sexual activity because she wanted a “wild night.” The woman said that she has no memory of saying those things and that the men should have been able to see she wasn’t in her right mind.
A police investigation into the incident was closed without charges in 2019. Hockey Canada ordered its own investigation but dropped it in 2020 after prolonged efforts to get the woman to participate. Those efforts were restarted amid an outcry over a settlement reached by Hockey Canada and others with the woman in 2022.
Police announced criminal charges in early 2024, saying they were able to proceed after collecting new evidence they did not detail.
BALTIMORE — Margie’s Intention outran Paris Lily in the stretch to win the Black-Eyed Susan by three-quarters of a length Friday.
The 1 1/8-mile race for 3-year-old fillies was delayed around an hour because of a significant storm that passed over Pimlico, darkening the sky above the venue. Margie’s Intention, the 5-2 favorite at race time, had little difficulty on the sloppy track with Flavien Prat aboard.
Paris Lily started impressively and was in front in the second turn, but she was eventually overtaken by Margie’s Intention on the outside.
Kinzie Queen was third.
Morning line favorite Runnin N Gunnin finished last in the nine-horse field.
