Blue Jays Have Created Perfect Scenario to Extend Jansen

The Toronto Blue Jays should consider jumping on the chance to keep their catcher long term with a contract extension

The Toronto Blue Jays have a number of contract extension decisions to make over the next while. I highlighted some of them HERE, but one that I completely whiffed on was Danny Jansen. Perhaps I left him out because for some idiotic reason he isn’t one of the first people I think of when we talk about the “core” players in Toronto. But, here’s the thing: he very much is part of that group and should continue to be for a few more years.

Right now, Jansen is set to become a free agent in two more years. He is also about to see a pay bump in arbitration that likely puts him above the $3m mark, but also gives him more money than he’s seen his entire career. He’s projected to get $3.6m in arbitration and he’s earned $3.4m for his career. Even if Spotrac’s numbers aren’t exact, you get the point. Jano is going to start costing more each year…rightfully so.

When anyone talks about Jansen, they wax poetic about his defense and work with his pitching staff. He also has some power and can hit in general. In short, Jansen seems to be the exact catcher every team in baseball would love to run out there game after game for years to come.

For their part, the Blue Jays have created a situation that would appear to be perfect to offer Jansen a contract extension. By trading away Gabriel Moreno who was tabbed as the ‘catcher of the future’, Ross Atkins has created an opening for that title. It could very well be Alejandro Kirk (maybe the Jays feel better about his projectability at the position than a lot of fans do), but he’s not a free agent until 2027, so there isn’t much point in discussing an extension. He’s here for the “long” term.

But, Jansen is in a different situation. With only two more years left before he becomes a free agent, it would be smart to extend him now. Now that there is no one kicking the door down to take his job from him, it makes sense to keep him around longer. It is not known how available he was in trade talks, but trading Moreno, and the cost of catchers this winter, could suggest that Toronto agrees about keeping him around.

If that is the case, there are a couple of recent transactions upon which we can draw to try and think about what an extension could kinda, sorta, maybe look like. Firstly, Willson Contreras signed for 5 yrs/$87.5m earlier in December with the St Louis Cardinals. Contreras is 30, coming off a 3.3 fWAR season where he hit 22 HR and had a wRC+ of 132. He’s a career 15.5 win player and has been one of the better catchers in baseball since 2016.

Secondly, after trading for Sean Murphy, Atlanta got him to sign an extension of 6yrs/$73m. Considering he’s 28 now, they’ve got him for the bulk of his ‘prime years’ and the most they’ll pay him in any season is $15m. Murphy put up a 5.1 fWAR season, thanks in part to his very good defense. He just needed to be league average with the bat, his glove is that good. Turns out, he was better than that: 122 wRC+. If you’re Atlanta, you jump at that chance. The interesting part about Murphy’s deal is that he wasn’t set to become a free agent until 2026. Atlanta buys out his arbitration years and a couple of his free agent years.

This is where Toronto should be looking. Obviously, the two above examples are about players that are among the league’s best at the backstop position. Jansen, while very under-rated, is not among that group. But, he is no slouch either. 2022 saw him put up a wRC+ of 140 with 15 HR. He seemed to have had his bat working last season. For many, it was about time. We’d known he could hit, but had only seen flashes of it in the past. Perhaps, his 2022 is for real. If I were his agent, I’d be pushing that it is. Even if it isn’t, even if Jano is somewhere between his 2022 and his 2021 wRC+ of 105, I’d feel comfortable enough in his bat.

When Danny Jansen plays, he is valuable to the Blue Jays. In each season that he’s had 200+ plate appearances, he’s been valuable. If anything, his bat was dragging his value down. Maybe that is not an issue anymore. The real issue with this lies in how many plate appearances the club can reasonably bank on from him. The most he’s seen in a season is 384 plate appearances and he hasn’t come close to that 2019 total since. There is definitely a risk to approaching an extension and it lies in Jansen’s health. The Blue Jays have to weigh how big a risk they feel this is.

They’ll weigh it against the cost certainty they’d get from signing an extension. Toronto could offer a 5yr deal, which would buy out his two more years and give him a 3yr free agent deal. It would also mean that he would enter free agency at 32, which could be appealing for him. It would certainly give the Blue Jays the best years he has to offer, which we know has value to them. They love Jano.

The question would likely come down to cost. Any deal makes sense for the right price. Using Fangraphs and the value they place on fWAR, Jansen was ‘worth’ $20.7m and the year before, when he put up 1.4 fWAR, it was $11.3m. Using his 2021 as a floor, a 5yr/$55m deal could get a conversation going. Obviously, using his 2022 ‘value’ and offering a 5yr/$100m deal doesn’t make much sense here. That said, the club would have to convince Jano to avoid 3yrs of free agency at a time when the cost of catching could escalate even further. Maybe by then, Jansen could top a Contreras-esque deal. Maybe. But, he would certainly be thinking about that.

In the interest of creating an offer that would be genuine and successful, I’d offer something in the $12-15m AAV range. I’d start with 5yrs/$60 and hope that that number is so much higher than anything he’s earned to date and would entice him to consider. This might be an overpay, but given the context of this offseason and where costs could go, it might not be.

This deal could provide Toronto with the stability they need behind the plate and the cost certainty that allows them to focus on offering bigger extensions. Even if the 5yr/$60m is completely out to lunch, the idea of extending Danny Jansen is not. It’s definitely something that should be done forthwith.