Blue Jays, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. fail to reach agreement before ...

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is bound for free agency after the 2025 season as negotiations on a long-term extension with the Toronto Blue Jays hit a wall ahead of a deadline set by the all-star first baseman.

Last-ditch efforts aimed at securing the 26-year-old cornerstone with what would have easily been the richest contract in franchise history, and one of the biggest ever in baseball, picked up over the weekend.

But in a market shifted for young elite talents by the $765-million, 15-year contract the New York Mets gave Juan Soto in free agency, the Blue Jays and Guerrero couldn’t figure out how to price his peak years and beyond.

"They had their numbers, I had my numbers," Guerrero said Tuesday through interpreter Hector Lebron. "It's just business, like I always say, things happen, but we're all good."

Guerrero, who said negotiations were not close, added he loves the team and the city and wants to spend the rest of his career with Toronto.

"I won't close the door if it's a realistic offer," he said.

Guerrero said he told the Blue Jays about his extension deadline at the end of last season.

"I don't want my teammates to go through any distractions about that," he said. "I'm here today. I'm ready and want to win a lot of games and make it to the playoffs. That's all that's in my head right now."

Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins said Tuesday that he was "very disappointed" not to get a deal done before Guerrero's deadline, but he hasn't closed any doors.

"I think Vladdy ... wants to focus on the season, so we will respect that," he said.

Atkins added that the offers the Jays made Guerrero would have been record-setting for the team and would have made him one of the highest-paid players in the game.

Asked if he felt the negotiations were "close," Atkins chose not to share any specifics of the talks.

"It just depends on how you define close, that's too big of a word to talk specifically about," he said. "I'm not comfortable talking about numbers."

The short-term fallout of their failure to negotiate an extension is that the stakes attached to the 2025 season for the Blue Jays just spiked even higher. Not only is Guerrero set to reach the open market in the fall, but so too is Bo Bichette, another pending free-agent cornerstone who is now less likely to extend before becoming a free agent.

Their uncertain status beyond this season imperils the current competitive window, which the Blue Jays will have trouble propping open without the dynamic duo.

That the talks went right down to the wire isn’t surprising, as the baseball industry is largely deadline-driven, with executives and agents alike tending to believe that only when a cutoff is imminent, do the best offers hit the table.

In that way, Guerrero putting a cutoff of Monday night on talks that have run intermittently since the end of the 2021 season, forced the end game that didn’t produce an agreement.

"Every contract negotiation is extremely unique, the dynamic's unique," Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro said later Tuesday morning. "Some of that's due to circumstances. In the end, though, there really aren't degrees of getting done or not getting done. It's either a done deal or not a done deal."

That doesn’t necessarily mean Guerrero is guaranteed to leave next fall, as Aaron Judge turned down a $213.5-million, seven-year extension offer from the New York Yankees in the spring of 2022, only to return for $360 million over nine years. But the Yankees nearly lost their superstar slugger in the process, as the San Diego Padres made a late push and offered him $400 million.

"We have the financial wherewithal to pursue the contracts we want to pursue," Shapiro said, when asked about competing with the other 29 teams in MLB to sign Guerrero.

If Guerrero — and/or Bichette — were to walk, the Blue Jays could theoretically reallocate the combined $46 million the duo is earning this year toward other free agents, seeking to take an alternate route to remaining competitive.

However, Guerrero, with his combination of power, average and zone control, all supported by top-percentile underlying data, is the type of carrying player that rarely gets to market, and there’s no guarantee the Blue Jays can sign the alternate players they pursue.

— With files from Sportsnet staff