The Toronto Blue Jays face more uncertainty than any other Major League Baseball team, and it might have all been preventable.

Heading into the 2025 season, the Blue Jays are hoping to climb out of the cellar in the American League East and push for a playoff spot. But they’ll do so with the knowledge that their franchise player might not be back the following year.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has been one of the most special hitters in baseball when he’s been right. He has a second-place finish in Most Valuable Player voting in 2021, and rebounded in his age-25 season in 2024 with a fantastic .940 OPS.

The Blue Jays would obviously love to keep Guerrero, whether that’s now, on a long-term extension, or after the 2025 season, when he hits free agency. But one MLB insider believes they may have missed the boat already.

On Friday, Robert Murray of FanSided predicted that Guerrero would make it to free agency with no extension, and mused that Toronto may already have cost themselves the chance to keep him around for the long haul.

“The possibility that Guerrero Jr. plays out the 2025 season without a long-term contract in place appears the most realistic,” Murray said. “On the open market, Guerrero Jr. could land a contract near $500 million — and potentially more.”

“If the Blue Jays really wanted to keep him, they should have been far more aggressive in extending him in previous years rather than waiting until now. Waiting to this point could very well cost them the opportunity to retain the best player on the team, which would only add to the uncertainty after the 2025 season.”

It’s not as simple as blaming the Blue Jays for their inactivity, because Guerrero did have down year in 2023 and wasn’t fantastic in 2022, either. Their best chance at locking him up likely would have been two winters ago, because he was a long way from free agency, but hadn’t just finished an MVP-caliber season.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan speculated earlier this week that Guerrero would become the prize of the MLB trade deadline if the Blue Jays get off to a rough start, so that’s what they’re up against.

If they have another year like last year, this entire era of promise will have crumbled. And Toronto will have to start all over in MLB’s most competitive division.