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Blue Jays expected to announce completed Bautista deal soon

Jerome Miron / USA TODAY Sports

The Toronto Blue Jays and slugger Jose Bautista reunited on Tuesday after the two sides agreed to a one-year deal with two mutual options that could keep the slugger with the club until 2019, thus ending back-and-forth negotiations between the two sides that reportedly went as far back as spring training.

Bautista's deal, which was originally reported as a one-year, $18-million agreement, will guarantee him $18.5 million and is expected to be announced by the Blue Jays soon, a source told Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports.

The guaranteed money for the Dominican slugger was confirmed by FOX Sports' Ken Rosenthal in his column Wednesday morning.

Bautista, who reportedly turned down $150 million over five years this past spring training before coming out and saying the report was false, will return to the Great White North for his 10th season with the Blue Jays.

The 36-year-old appeared in just 116 games last season after missing time with injury, but did hit 22 home runs and posted an .817 OPS for Toronto.

He is among the top 10 in franchise history in a number of stats including home runs, RBIs, hits, runs scored, games played, and OPS.

HR-RANK RBI-RANK HITS-RANK RUNS-RANK GP-RANK OPS-RANK
265-2 701-5 984-9 698-5 1078-9 .910-3

Bautista earned $14 million last season.

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