Jose Bautista Denies Report That He's Considering Retirement, Has Guaranteed Major League Offers On The Table

We’re gonna throw it back to two years ago when Jose Bautista arrived at Blue Jays camp in the spring of 2016. Bautista was about to become a free agent at the end of that season, and was in search of a five-year, $150 million deal in free agency. Perhaps even more. The Blue Jays weren’t interested in coming anywhere close to that price tag, and instead were willing to work towards getting a three-year deal done that was somewhere in the $75 million range, similar to what the Mets did with Yoenis Cespedes.

Here’s what he had to say about taking a hometown discount to stay in Toronto:

After making these comments, Bautista went on to hit .234 with an .817 OPS and 22 homers in 2016. That winter, when he had hopes of putting at least $150 million in the bank, he instead heard crickets. Teams even went as far as to saying that they wouldn’t sign him because their fans hate him. Harsh, but we appreciate the honesty and transparency.

But even after Bautista had, statistically, his worst offensive season since 2009 — the season prior to the year he came out of nowhere to hit a league-leading 54 bombs — the Blue Jays still brought him back on a one-year deal worth $18 million in 2017, the highest salary he had ever earned in a single season. He was 36 years old, by the way.

You might not believe this, but last year was Bautista’s worst season ever in the big leagues. Worse than any season he had prior to his breakout year in 2010. Worse than any season that he had with the Pittsburgh Pirates when he was a nobody. Last year, Bautista’s wins above replacement was an astoundingly bad -1.7 in 157 games played, the second most games he had ever played in a single season.

He’s now 37 years old with reports swirling that this might be the end of the line for him. He chose to address those reports, which of course, were falsely thrown out there by Jon Heyman. Rough offseason for that dude, getting called out for incorrect reports left and right.

Jose Bautista had a couple seven-figure offers (probably $1 million, or just over), but he didn’t think they were commensurate with his value. So he may retire. If so, thus becomes the first case of a player who sought $150 million in talks two years earlier (by some miracle he got $18.5 million after 2016), and was out of the game a year later.

Here’s what Bautista had to say, per Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports:

Longtime slugger Jose Bautista told Yahoo Sports on Thursday he is not considering retirement, dismissing a report that suggested the slow free agent market has caused him to think about stepping away from the game.

“Right now I’m just considering my options, and it depends on two criteria,” Bautista said in a phone conversation. “That’s winning and making sure that my family’s in a good situation.”

Bautista, 37, said he has guaranteed major league offers on the table but is weighing the desire of the teams to contend as well as how the location will impact his three young daughters.

A report in FanRag said Bautista could retire coming off a season in which he hit .203/.308/.366 with 23 home runs and 65 RBIs. Bautista denied that is an option and said: “I’m comfortable believing that a team that wants to win will see how I can positively impact their ballclub and give me a phone call.”

I’ve got a weird feeling about this one. I think the Blue Jays threw out that one-year deal last year as sort of a thank you for all the years that you were amazing and we paid you like you weren’t, but that’s just how the baseball economics system works. Teams get most of your prime years on the cheap, and then teams overpay for the back nine years in free agency. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s just how it is. The only problem is, Bautista was a late-bloomer, so the Blue Jays got his best seasons on the cheap and he never got a chance to cash in during free agency in his early 30’s like most other big-name sluggers do.

It wouldn’t shock me at all if Bautista, who very clearly views his salary as a unit of measurement for respect, does not return to Major League Baseball. There are so many free agents out there still, and young players that teams have internally that they would give a chance to help out their big league roster before they gave a notable amount of money to a 37-year-old outfielder who can’t play the outfield anymore, who’s also coming off the worst year of his career. If any team does choose to do that, then it’ll presumably be the Blue Jays, who are apparently the only team who can stand this guy.

Either that, or it’s going to be some small market team like the Rays or the A’s who want to try to capture lightning in a bottle on the cheap, hoping to get a Joey Bats with something to prove who they can later flip at the trade deadline for something. Anything at all.