As free agency nears, all eyes will be on Vladimir Guerrero Jr in 2025.
If the Ross Atkins doesn't sign Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to a contract extension before he becomes a free agent, Blue Jays fans will find it very difficult to support this team in 2025.
The Blue Jays may conceivably may still sign Vlad Jr, then we are going to be talking about him all year the way we talked about Juan Soto last year.
That is not to say that if he does become a free agent he will come close to ringing the kind of bell that Soto did when the Mets signed him for $765 million.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that if he does play this out with the Blue Jays, he is going to be this year's hot name, and here we go again.
It seems as if Vlad Jr. has been around longer than he has. But he didn't show up in the big leagues until 2019, which means a year after Soto showed up in Washington. Soto turns 27 next October.
Vlad Jr doesn't turn 26 until right before the season starts, a season in which he will get the chance to deliver the way Soto did for the Yankees, and the way Aaron Judge did when he became a free agent right after hitting 62 home runs.
Aaron Judge was the guy to talk about that year, as he became only the third 60-home run hitter in Yankees history, and the first since Roger Maris back in 1961.
Then Soto, in so many ways, became as much a story last season as Judge did chasing 60 homers again in New York while Shohei Ohtani looked as if he might make his own run at 60 in Los Angeles.
Judge got paid and then Shohei sure got paid. And, well, people in outer space now know how much Soto got paid after that bidding war between the Mets and the Yankees.
Now, in all ways, it's Vlad Jr.'s turn at bat. It is why, in so many ways, he will be a bigger star than he has ever been in 2025 if he is the one putting the biggest possible bet on himself.
It is worth remembering, as he is approaching his walk year, that when his talent really exploded for the first time in 2021, when he hit 48 homers, knocked in 111 and had a .311/.401/.601 slash line for the Jays, he was as much a young player to watch and talk about as anybody in the game. He was one of those at-bats.
And by the way, and by comparison, in the season that got Soto paid, he hit 41 homers, knocked in 109 and his slash line was .288/.419/.569.
«Last year was the trailer,» Guerrero said during Spring Training in 2022. «Now you guys are going to see the movie.»
It is not the way things have worked out since then, for the Blue Jays or for him.
He is still one of the best young players in baseball, without question. Last season, he hit 30 homers, knocked in 103 and had a batting average of .323, the best of his career.
The Blue Jays thought they were built to contend again in the American League East, but did not.
But Judge was doing what he was doing for the Yankees, and Soto was doing what he was doing one spot ahead of him in the Yankees' batting order and in New York. And Shohei Ohtani was hitting all those home runs and stealing more than 50 bases and the Dodgers were on their way to winning the World Series.
None of them are going anywhere. Nor is Bobby Witt Jr., another hot name in the Jr. Club.
But it is also a fact that none of those other guys are going to be available when the 2025 season is over, the way Vlad Jr. might -- even if the Blue Jays decide to deal him before his current contract runs out the way the Padres dealt Soto to the Yankees.
Vlad Jr. is that talented, and that young. He will get even more attention in the upcoming season than he did when he first showed up in Toronto as a rookie. It was good being Soto last season.
If he is blessed with good health and part of a contending team, it's going to be good being Vlad Jr this season.
Everybody has a right to wonder just how big a star he can be, as he is about to enter what should be his prime years, if he got the kind of stage that Soto has in New York and the kind of stage Shohei Ohtani has in Hollywood.
We may be about to find out. To stay with his own movie analogy, Vlad Jr. is ready for his closeup.
SOURCE: MLB.com
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