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How much should the Blue Jays spend to keep Bautista?

Tom Szczerbowski / Getty Images Sport / Getty

Talk of Jose Bautista's future with the Toronto Blue Jays has stretched beyond the Canadian border of late. Struck at a recent "Pitch Talks" by impassioned pleas (from fans and local writers alike) for the club to retain the 35-year-old superstar beyond 2016, Ken Rosenthal has since invited an international audience to peer at the crisis-in-waiting for the already beleaguered front office at One Blue Jays Way.

Mark Shapiro didn't inherit an enviable task. The calculus of retaining a franchise icon (and one of the league's best players) would be wonderfully complex if the Canadian dollar wasn't plunging. Arriving at a decision would probably be easier, too, were Edwin Encarnacion not also eligible for free agency at season's end, or if the Blue Jays' future beyond the upcoming season wasn't so murky in general.

It's complicated

The fans, in no uncertain terms, want him back. An anonymous bit of trade fodder who transformed himself into a homer-bashing, umpire-defying superstar, Bautista carried the franchise through some lean years, helped reacquaint the city with postseason baseball in 2015, and then authored the most memorable moment in team history outside of Joe Carter. If he didn't share a clubhouse with the reigning MVP, he'd be the best player on the best offensive team on the planet.

The new faces in the front office won't be nearly as sentimental towards him, however, as they wrestle not only with determining the direction in which to steer this team, but also with budgetary realities foisted upon them by a corporate overlord that brought home more than $7 billion in revenue in 2015.

It won't be easy, but to suggest the two divergent viewpoints can't be reconciled - that the Blue Jays can't give Bautista a deal that reasonably approximates fair market value and make a good baseball decision - doesn't have to be true. Even though the 2016 free-agent class is mostly underwhelming, there could be a number high enough to keep Bautista from moving on that also works for Toronto's accountants.

Any deal would surely obliterate the three-year, $45-million contract Carlos Beltran landed from the Yankees in 2014, and would cost more than the $68-million deal that 36-year-old Victor Martinez received from the Tigers. But after seeing what Yoenis Cespedes - a much younger, demonstrably less talented outfielder - commanded this offseason, would a three-year, $80-million offer be enough to keep Bautista in Toronto past 2016? It's not entirely inconceivable, at least, and that contract might even work out for the Blue Jays, too.

"Had hit records on my demo ..."

Let's start with the obvious: Bautista, an elite slugger with outstanding plate discipline, has yet to exhibit symptoms of decline. Last year, Bautista smacked 40 homers with a .377 OBP, and was the ninth-best hitter in the majors after adjusting for both park effects and his league's run-scoring environment. Since 2013, only 10 players have accrued more WAR than Bautista, who's also just one of 10 players ever to post an ISO above .250 and a walk rate higher than 15 percent from age 32 through 34:

Name WAR HR OBP wRC+
Babe Ruth 31.4 160 .461 200
Lou Gehrig 26.8 116 .472 175
Jim Edmonds 21.3 109 .409 160
Mike Schmidt 21.3 111 .395 156
Mark McGwire 21.2 180 .442 185
Barry Bonds 20.7 111 .430 163
Edgar Martinez 19 83 .466 170
Jose Bautista 15.1 103 .381 148
Harmon Killebrew 15 107 .407 157
Jim Thome 8.4 96 .386 134

With the tragic exception of Lou Gehrig, every player from this group remained an above-average hitter, at worst, from ages 36-38, and everybody not named Jim Edmonds was at least 14 percent better than league average. Diminishing returns are to be expected, of course, but Bautista has precedent on his side as he wades further into his late 30s.

Name WAR HR OBP wRC+
Barry Bonds 35.4 164 .542 231
Babe Ruth 26.1 121 .476 190
Edgar Martinez 15.4 84 .431 157
Mike Schmidt 13.8 84 .375 135
Jim Thome 5.8 92 .380 131
Mark McGwire 5.2 61 .394 147
Harmon Killebrew 4.1 44 .346 114
Jim Edmonds 2.6 51 .339 104
Lou Gehrig -0.3 0 .273 24

"Did your boys not get the memo?"

Rightly or wrongly, though, Bautista's continued productivity is something of an unstated assumption. The bigger issue is what committing $25 million (or more) to him in each of the next three seasons means for Toronto's roster.

For one, it all but guarantees Encarnacion will sign elsewhere this winter, and probably eliminates the possibility of keeping Josh Donaldson in Toronto beyond his arbitration seasons. Assuming the club's payroll won't climb much beyond $140 million in the near future, it also means that anywhere from 50-77 percent of the salary budget could be tied up in as few as three players through 2019.

Player 2017 2018 2019
Jose Bautista* $25M $25M $30M
Troy Tulowitzki $20M $20M $20M
Russell Martin $20M $20M $20M
Josh Donaldson** $15M $20M -
Marco Estrada $14.5M - -
J.A. Happ $13M $13M -
TOTAL $107.5M $98M $70M

*Estimated annual salary
**Arbitration projection

It definitely isn't ideal, especially if the budget plateaus, but it isn't completely untenable, either. With five veterans coming off the books after 2016, the Blue Jays will trudge into the future with plenty of cheap talent on their 25-man roster (and several compensatory draft picks next June, too). None of Marcus Stroman, Roberto Osuna, Devon Travis, Kevin Pillar, Aaron Sanchez, or Dalton Pompey are earning much more than league minimum right now, and most won't be arbitration-eligible until 2018.

With a reasonable expectation of surplus value from the likes of Stroman, Osuna, and Pillar, "overpaying" for Bautista might actually make sense when considering both the age and contract status of Toronto's core players. Instead of letting Bautista walk and, say, eating some of Troy Tulowitzki's contract for a tepid return in prospect capital, it might make more sense to keep the band together as Donaldson, Stroman, et al navigate their prime years, effectively keeping the turnstiles churning as Toronto's glut of 2016 draft picks grow into MLB-ready products.

Tempting as it is to try to work out an extension with Donaldson instead, keeping even a post-prime Bautista hitting behind the third baseman in a familiar lineup for the next few summers is much more palatable than paying Donaldson through his age-35 season to lead a team that could be unrecognizable - or worse, irrelevant - when 2020 rolls around.

Winning is good business

Keeping the payroll high for the next few seasons may be anathema to Shapiro, a businessman's businessman. But the team's run last summer demonstrated what the Blue Jays are capable of financially when they're good, and the new president has been around the game long enough to see how Rogers Centre becomes a leper colony when Toronto's below .500 in July.

The thing is, even without Encarnacion, Brett Cecil, Drew Storen, and R.A. Dickey, the Blue Jays won't be in a position to rebuild after 2016, anyway. They'll still have too much talent to be bad enough to reap the benefits of being bad. Even their farm system, widely maligned since the trade deadline, remains decent enough, albeit with prospects who may be a year or two away from Toronto. Since fielding a mediocre team has no financial or competitive incentives beyond preventing the club from working out a very hypothetical extension with Donaldson, there isn't much to lose by re-signing Bautista. The opportunity cost by letting the six-time All-Star walk, however, could be massive for a front office already unpopular among Blue Jays fans.

Offering $80 million to keep the city's most beloved bat-flipper in a Blue Jays uniform for the rest of his days would probably help repair that bruised image. In the coming months, Shapiro will just have to decide if it's worth it. As will Bautista himself.

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