Bichette, Blue Jays reach 3-year deal to avoid arbitration
TORONTO — The Blue Jays have agreed to phrases on a three-year, $33.6 million cope with shortstop Bo Bichette, avoiding arbitration in 2023 and masking his three years of arbitration eligibility.
The contract doesn’t tie Bichette to the Blue Jays for any extra years past his authentic staff management, nevertheless it provides each side some monetary certainty within the years to come back. Bichette, who turns 25 in early March, might nonetheless hit free company following the 2025 season.
Bichette’s title has lengthy been centered in extension discussions alongside Vladimir Guerrero Jr. With so many younger superstars throughout baseball signing huge offers — some earlier than even reaching their arbitration years — there’s an apparent temptation from each side. It’s about discovering some extent within the center that is smart for each, although, which staff president Mark Shapiro has known as “shared risk” previously.
“The closer they get to free agency, the more that changes their equation of risk,” Shapiro mentioned in early December. “It makes them probably less willing to give up the risk of what it means to be out there. The timing, it impacts the sharing of the risk and that sweet spot equation. I think that’s the right word. We’re looking for the sweet spot.”
At the identical time, a younger participant like Bichette is aware of how helpful they’d be on the open market with as much as 30 bidders, not only one, so these conditions can be fascinating to look at within the coming years and that concentration is going to solely develop brighter. With Bichette and Guerrero, you possibly can additionally add in Alek Manoah as an early extension candidate, recent off a third-place end in American League Cy Young Award voting at 24.
The season forward is ripe with potential for Bichette, who performed a surprisingly common model of baseball by way of a lot of 2022. Then, in September, he erupted.
From Sept. 1 on, Bichette hit .406 with seven dwelling runs and a 1.105 OPS over 32 video games, taking part in with that electrical vitality we noticed a lot of in earlier seasons. The free-swinging shortstop is a perennial All-Star candidate when he’s at his finest, and given his age, there’s nonetheless important upside for a participant who’s described all through the group as one among this membership’s hardest employees.
